Noticias de Marzo, 2009
March
2009 News
Mexico
 |
|
Indigenous girls in Mexico |
Discriminación institucional
en la educación rural en México
Niñez carece de infraestructura adecuada
Los
estados de Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas y Michoacán,
entidades con población indígena, ocupan los
últimos lugares en infraestructura, mobiliario y
equipo básico en las escuelas primarias, lo que
evidencia una fuerte discriminación hacia los
pueblos indígenas y afrodescendientes, la misma que
empieza desde el entorno social.
El
desdén, dice un comunicado de la organización Visión
Mundial México, se observa en la infraestructura a
escuelas primarias indígenas y rurales, pues la
inmensa mayoría carece de piso de cemento,
electricidad, drenaje o fosa séptica...
Institutional racial prejudice
denies education to children across rural
Mexico
Indigenous and African-descendent children
are not provided with adequate educational
infrastructure because of their race - World Vision
Mexico
Mexico City - The states of Guerrero, Oaxaca,
Chiapas and Michoacan, which have the highest
populations of indigenous people in the nation, rank
lowest in the availability of school infrastructure
such as the furniture and basic equipment needed to
support primary education. This pattern shows a
strong bias towards indigenous peoples and
Afro-descendants, a prejudice that starts in the
social environment.
This shows a distain for these children, said a
press release from World Vision Mexico, which can be
observed in the infrastructure of rural indigenous
schools. The vast majority of them lack concrete
floors, electricity, sewage or septic tanks.
Added to this is the fact that teachers must work in
classes that are too large, or that are smaller but
consist of children in multiple grades, which causes
a deterioration of the quality of education and
little opportunity for advancement in different
environments...
In
sum, says World Vision, the Mexican education system
reproduces the inequality, exclusion and
authoritarianism that exists in the social and
political environment, especially in poor regions
inhabited by indigenous peoples.
This happens despite the fact that on August 14,
2001 Mexico adopted a constitutional reform that
recognizes the right of non-discrimination. It
states: "Any discrimination based on ethnic or
national origin, gender, age, disability, social
status, health, religion, opinions, preferences,
marital status or any other that is contrary to
human dignity and has the aim of nullifying or
impairing the rights and freedoms, is prohibited."
According the the 2008 report by non-governmental
organizations Children Count – 2008 -
Afro-descendant and indigenous children in Mexico
are living in a state of abandonment and violation
of their rights.
According to the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, Mexico
ranks tenth in the number of illiterate persons
among the nations of Latin America, and eleventh in
terms of women who can not read or write. Mexico and
Brazil are the focal points of educational
backwardness in the region. Between 33 and 36
million youth and adults in Mexico cannot read or
write.
The Educational System Extends Social Exclusion
This lack of educational opportunities affects the
children of farm laborers, children living on the
street and people with disabilities. The problem is
most serious among the indigenous population, and
particularly impacts indigenous women who live in
the states with the least economic development:
Chiapas, Guerrero, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and
Puebla.
Inhabitants of indigenous villages and communities
represent the majority of people who do not have
access to the education system. There is more
educational backwardness and insecurity, as well as
inefficient terminal is above the national average.
This situation is the result of educational policies
that for decades have paid just to discrimination
and neglect, and now the great challenge of the
social debt.
Being indigenous in Mexico means that you have no
access to school, or that the school you do have is
of poor quality. In addition, in many cases,
indigenous students face discrimination from
teachers and other students. They also receive an
education that is not tied to their indigenous
culture and community.
CIMAC Noticias
March 25, 2009
LibertadLatina
Commentary
The
intentional racial discrimination and marginalization faced by
innocent children in the schools across rural Mexico has been a
reality for centuries. It is still a reality that in some regions of
Mexico, a poor indigenous person is expected to work like a slave,
from dawn to dusk, throughout life, for a simple payment of enough
tortillas and beans to survive on.
While the majority of the world's people and
institutions sit silently by, watching this happen,
well-financed organized crime mafias and other
criminal elements exploit this population without
end. Many indigenous people in Mexico and other
regions of Latin America have never actually known
what freedom feels like.
This racially prejudiced tolerance for exploitation
allows sex traffickers to kidnap, rape and sell into
prostitution many thousands of the poor, indigenous,
Afro-descendents and others, because under the rules
of machista impunity, this condition is 'just ok!'
Well, it is not ok. It is an outrage, an abomination
and a crime against humanity that will not end
without having the morally principled power brokers
of the world (read-the United States), demand
fundamental changes in the behavior of government,
religious and social institutions in Mexico.
The hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. and
other foreign aid flowing into Mexico each year must
not be handed over without conditions that demand
that Mexico respect international conventions that
protect the basic rights of women, children and
ethnic minorities from impunity.
We demand an end to U.S.
support for impunity in Mexico
As the U.S. ramps-up to support the intensifying war
against Mexico's multi-billion dollar drug cartels
(who are also the largest kidnappers and traffickers
of women), the rights of women, children, ethnic
minorities and the poor in general cannot be
overlooked, and they cannot be allowed to be
trampled for the sake of expediency.
We cannot support even one dollar of aid to a
corrupt and intentionally sexist and racially
prejudiced federal government that continues to act
with impunity in the treatment of its residents and
the hundreds of thousands of women and girl migrants
who face sexual violence with no government
response.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 29, 2009
Mexico
En Tijuana, nueve de cada
diez niñas y niños mixtecos no van a la escuela
Tijuana, Baja California.- De 30 mil niñas y niños
mixtecos que habitan en la ciudad de Tijuana, unos
26 mil 500 no asisten a la escuela --9 de cada 10--
de acuerdo a datos proporcionados por la Comisión de
Derechos Humanos y Grupos Vulnerables del
ayuntamiento y por el supervisor de Educación
Indígena de la zona este de Tijuana, Bartolomé Cano
Allende, informó la Agencia Internacional de Prensa
Indígena (AIPIN)...
In Tijuana, 9 out of 10 Mixtec indigenous children
don’t attend school
Tijuana,
Baja California – Of the 30,000 children of the
Mixtec indigenous ethnicity who live in the city of
Tijuana, only 3,500 attend school. According to the
thousand children who live in the city of Tijuana,
about 26 thousand 500-of-school - 9 out of 10 -
according to data provided by the Commission on
Human Rights and Vulnerable Groups and the
supervisor of Indigenous Education in the area east
of Tijuana, Bartolomé Cano Allende.
Olga Macias, chair of the commission, said that
about 30,000 Mixtec children
living in the city, representing 10 percent of the
total child population. However, of those 30 only
3,500 thousand students, 11.6 percent, whereas 88.4
percent are engaged in begging, selling or crime.
One of the factors exacerbating this problem is the
fact that many Mixtec parents [have their children
work with them on the street]. Mixtec people suffer
discrimination because of the way they speak and
dress, which are part of their ethnic identity.
El Sol de Mexico
Via Cimac Noticias
March 22, 2009
See also:
LibertadLatina
Commentary
Mixtec, and other indigenous and poor children living in Tijuana and
its surrounding region must live by begging, selling candy, washing
car windshields and stealing on the streets of that rough city. All
of these 'occupations' also involve the fact that children on these
streets sell sex to Mexican men, and also to some of the thousands
of U.S. men who cross into Tijuana each day to visit the estimated
5,000 prostitutes in the city's red light district. called La
Coahuila. Many brothels employ girls as young as age 12.
Teresa Ulloa, of the Coalition Against Trafficking
in Women - Latin American and Caribbean, has
accompanied police of raids in Tijuana where
7-year-old girls were rescued from prostitution.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 29, 2009
See also:
Television news report on La Coahuila red light
district in Tijuana.
(In Spanish)
YouTube.com
Extensive video documentary on
youth prostitution in Lima Peru's red light district,
which is very similar to La Coahuila.
(In Spanish)
YouTube.com
En desventaja, niños mexicanos
indocumentados
Many of the 80,000 Mexican
children who cross from Mexico into the U.S. alone,
as undocumented immigrants, are fleeing abuse at
home, or are escaping from child prostitution
rings...
[According
to attorney Christopher Nugent, of the law firm
Holland and Knight, ...Thousands of Mexican and
Central American children flee northward into the
U.S. each year to escape child prostitution...
...Nugent... emphasized that Tijuana [on the U.S.
border with San Diego County] has also become a zone
controlled by powerful child prostitution networks.
Many children [in prostitution] from Tijuana are
trying to flee to San Diego.
Georgina Olson
Excélsior
July 3, 2008
Los
Mixtecos que viven en el Condado de Ventura y otros
a través del estado están culturalmente y
lingüísticamente aislados. Muchos de ellos sin
educación formal y la mayoría no habla el español ni
el ingles solamente su idioma nativo, el Mixteco.
Como resultado, ellos se enfrentan a la explotación
y discriminación en el trabajo, vivienda, y en la
vida diaria. La vida para estas jóvenes familias
trabajadoras es demasiado difícil porque sus vidas
están orientadas a creencias culturales
profundamente arraigadas.
www.Mixteco.org
Mixtecs in Ventura
County [California] --and throughout the state--are
culturally and linguistically isolated. Many are
illiterate, and most speak neither Spanish nor
English, but only their native language, Mixteco. As
a result, they face exploitation and discrimination
in labor, housing, and everyday life. Life is
extremely difficult for these young hardworking,
family-oriented people with deeply rooted cultural
beliefs...
www.Mixteco.org
Central America, El Salvador
 |
|
CEMUJER activist Alba Maritza
Ramos hangs crosses in trees near the
University of San Salvador, as part of a
permanent campaign to end femicide in El
Salvador. |
Confusas políticas en la región de Latinoamerica
“Es importante hacer un llamado en toda la región de
America Latina y el Caribe para que la trata de
mujeres y niñas con fines de explotación sexual
comercial sea visualizada como una expresión de
violencia de género”, declaró Irma Rocío Guirola del
Centro de Estudios de la Mujer de El Salvador (CEMUJER).
En entrevista con Cimacnoticias, la encargada de
difundir el diagnóstico de la trata de personas en
América Central, agregó que hoy en día prevalece la
visión de considerar a la prostitución como un
trabajo o una expresión legítima y válida, cuando en
realidad es un acto que degrada a las mujeres al
considerarlas objetos sexuales...
Trafficking in women and girls should be seen as
gender-based violence
Anti-trafficking policies across Latin America are
confusing
During the First Regional Meeting on Best Practices
to Combat the Demand-for, and the Legalization-of
prostitution in the 21st Century, organized by the
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in
Latin America and the Caribbean (CATWLAC), Rocío
Guirola, of the Center for the Study of Women in El
Salvador (CEMUJER)
spoke. She stated that: "It is important for us to
call upon the entire region of Latin America and the
Caribbean to begin visualizing the trafficking of
women and girls for purposes of commercial sexual
exploitation as an expression of gender violence.”
Guirola, who presented an analysis of trafficking in
Central America for the conference, added today a
vision prevails in the region that regards
prostitution as a job, or as a valid and legitimate
expression, when in fact it degrades women as sexual
objects.
Guirola added that the trafficking in women and
girls in Central America is very serious, given that
the phenomenon is rooted in cultural patterns that
look at the issue from a patriarchal, misogynist and
male centric point of view.
During the meeting, which takes place from March 23
to 25 in Mexico City under the theme "Best Practices
Against the Demand and the Legalization of
Prostitution in the 21st Century,"
Guirola stressed that the region’s population is
very tolerant of the different expressions of
violence against women and in particular the
trafficking of women for commercial sexual
exploitation.
While he said that there are very specific features
for each country, there are many similarities in
situations that go hand in hand with tolerance by
society, yet the policies are confusing to develop
effective strategies to prevent the sexual
exploitation of women and girls.
There is progress in some countries in Central
America, more than in others. In the case of El
Salvador, progress is being made on the national
political scene. The government, for example, is
working to improve the ability of electronic records
to be used across agencies, Guirola said.
However Guirola emphasized that today, a large
number of the cases that have been prosecuted have
never resulted in definitive prison sentences for
the traffickers.
Guirola added that many of these countries have laws
where the relationship to the crime of human
trafficking is tenuous, and where there is only a
partial understanding of the role of organized
crime. These laws lose sight of the gender and
human rights that must be included in the process
addressing human trafficking.
Guirola commented that under current laws the
authorities identify the victim as the principal
source of testimony or evidence, which makes the
victim into an informant or key witness, one who
must be protected during her collaboration.
Civil society organizations must, she added, insist
that witness protection programs be made available
to these women.
Guirola believes that it is important in this region
to create and strengthen national committees on
human trafficking that will implement strategies and
monitor progress.
Another issue on which we must work urgently, stated
Guirola, is the case of Nicaragua where the
authority in power (President Daniel Ortega’s
leftist Sandinista Government} has no concern at all
for the issue of trafficking, and has no respect for
the rights of women and girls.
Guirola concluded by saying that: "Each country of
the central region has its own problems, but in all
cases their actions have an impact and affect women
and girls who are trafficked for commercial sexual
exploitation in the region."
Sandra Torres Pastrana
CIMAC Noticias
March 25, 2009
Central America, El Salvador
 |
|
Women Creators
of Peace and Life press conference |
Women Ask Funes to Create
Policies that Guarantee Their Rights
The Salvadoran
organization, Women Creators of Peace and Life, have
asked the recently elected president of the Republic
of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, to create policies
that guarantee women's rights during his tenure. The
representatives of the organization state that
women's rights were not taken into consideration
during the past twenty years of [the
far-right-wing]ARENA [party's] rule.
Some of the issues that
many Salvadoran feminist organizations hope that the
new government will address are reproductive rights,
sex education, women's labor, domestic violence, and
the femicides.
The feminist
organization, CEMUJER, has called for an end to the
impunity for those responsible for the murder of
women. In the last two months, sixty women have been
murdered in El Salvador. Ima Rocio Guirola, a
representative of CEMUJER, stated that there have
been no concrete measures taken to stop the rate of
femicides in El Salvador and believes that the
Salvadoran government could help by passing the
Comprehensive Law against Violence against Women.
Since 2007, women's organizations in El Salvador
have urged the Salvadoran government to list
femicide as a crime and to create a special police
unit to investigate crimes against women. Perhaps
with the election of Mauricio Funes to the
presidency, the Salvadoran government will concern
itself more with the needs and rights of women.
Sara Skinner, US
Grassroots Coordinator
The Share Foundation
March 24, 2009
See also:
Datos recogidos por el Centro
de Estudios de la Mujer (Cemujer) reportan que en lo
que va del año se han cometido 60 asesinatos de
mujeres. La mayoría de víctimas fueron atacadas a
tiros y el resto a cuchilladas.
Data collected by
CEMUJER indicates that to date, 60 women have been
murdered in El Salvador. The majority of victims
were shot, and the rest were stabbed to death.
www.ElSalvador.com
March 20, 2009
Latin America and the Caribbean
Apoyada por medios, Internet e impunidad
Ante el avance de las redes prostitucionales en
Latinoamérica, que se apoyan en los medios de
comunicación, los proveedores de Internet y otros
actores, quienes no son llamados a rendir cuentas,
hoy diversas organizaciones aliadas a la Coalición
Regional contra el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas en la
Región Latinoamericana (CATWLAC, por sus siglas en
inglés) se manifestaron en contra de “cualquier
Forma de Violencia contra las Mujeres, entre ellas,
la Trata y el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas”.
Al término de la Primera Reunión Regional de Buenas
Prácticas para combatir la Demanda y la Legalización
de la Prostitución Siglo XXI, realizada en esta
ciudad desde el pasado día 23, se dio a conocer la
Declaración Final donde señala la Coalición que la
trata de personas y la violencia constituyen un
obstáculo que impide la democracia, el desarrollo y
la paz.
Bajo consignas como “¡Ninguna mujer nace para
puta!”; ¡Ni una Mujer más Víctima de las Redes de
Prostitución!; ¡No a la legalización de la
prostitución y del negocio prostituyente! y ¡Las
mujeres en las mesas de diálogo, negociación y toma
de decisiones!, la reunión estuvo presidida por la
directora regional de la Coalición, maestra Teresa
Ulloa Ziáurriz.
Urge, dice la Declaración final, frenar la trata,
rechazarla y atacar la naturalización y banalización
del problema; emitiendo y ejecutando políticas de
seguridad de los Estados y de los sistemas de
justicia, acordes a la dimensión de este flagelo,
para recuperar el derecho de las mujeres y niñas a
una vida libre de violencias.
CATWLAC urges and end to the growth of trafficking
in women and girls in Latin America
Traffickers are aided and abetted by the media, the
Internet and impunity
In the face of the growing power of prostitution
networks in Latin America, which rely on the media,
Internet providers and others who are never called
to account, organizations allied with the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in the Latin
America and the Caribbean (CATWLAC) today called for
an end to "all forms of violence against women,
including the trafficking of women and girls."
At the end of the First Regional Meeting on Best
Practices to Combat the Demand-for, and the
Legalization-of prostitution in the 21st
Century, held in Mexico City since March 23rd,
the CATWLAC released its Final Declaration, which
states that the Coalition stated that trafficking
and violence constitute an obstacle to democracy,
development and peace.
Under coalition adopted the slogans: No woman is
born be to a whore!; Not
one more woman victim of prostitution rings!; No to
the legalization of prostitution and business of
pimps!; and Women must have a place at the table of
dialogue, negotiation and decision making!
The conference was organized by director of the
regional coalition [veteran women’s rights
attorney], Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz.
It is urgent, said the final declaration, that human
trafficking be stopped. The group rejected any
‘normalization’ of the problem. The statement added
that nations and their systems of justice must
implement security policies that are appropriate to
the dimensions of this scourge, to allow women to
regain the right to live a life free from violence.
CATWLAC called for an end to any attempt to
criminalize the actions carried out by women in
Latin America, Caribbean and the world to achieve
peace, justice and social development.
The meeting included experts and experts from
various countries in Latin America, who expressed
their concerns, analysis and proposals concerning
the situation of women victims of the growing
phenomenon of prostitution.
The growth in prostitution is mainly due, says the
Coalition, to the patriarchal power relationship
with which women have had to live since long ago,
today’s reality of extreme poverty, and
discrimination and inequality between women and men,
which are conditions that are aggravated in the
context of the lives of children, indigenous peoples
and followers of minority religions.
The Coalition also declared that the trafficking of
women and girls is a contemporary form of slavery,
and the pain suffered by victims and their families
is irreparable.
The conference statement emphasized that today,
justice systems [in the region] subject victims to a
double victimization by stigmatizing them, by
denying them access to the justice they are due, and
by denying them reparations and compensation for the
damages they have suffered.
Therefore, the Coalition asserts until the severity
of this crisis is made visible, [governments] will
not sanction these crimes adequately, and the
corruption and impunity that allows the trafficking
in women to exist will continue to grow.
Compliance with International Conventions
The Final Declaration of the conference also
highlights the urgent need fore nation’s in the
region to respect and comply fully with the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), with the
associated general recommendations and observations,
as well as the immediate ratification of the
Optional Protocol, in the case of countries that
have not done so.
CATWLAC urges governments to develop policies,
action plans, adequately funding and effective laws
against the trafficking and smuggling of women and
young girls for prostitution and other forms of
sexual exploitation, labor trafficking, and
trafficking in organs and tissues.
Key points of the Declaration
* To establish justice and peace in Latin America
and the Caribbean, "women, girls and young women are
entitled to a life free from all violence, and the
enjoyment of all social, cultural and civil rights."
* To acknowledge the contribution, experience and
wisdom of the human rights of women are experts on
their work and commitment.
* It is also urgent that effective integrated and
holistic social assistance and reintegration for
victims of trafficking be provided from a human
rights perspective. Victims should not be subject to
criminal proceedings, arrest or fines.
* An immediate end to all repressive operations
against prostituted women and girls. They are
victims, not criminals, and therefore should not be
persecuted or punished.
* Strong rejection of proposals to legalize and
regulate prostitution, which only favors the sex
industry and governments to become active agents of
the sex trade, making them into ‘prostituting
states.’
Finally, a call CATWLAC called upon the [global]
feminist and human rights movements to make this
declaration their own, and that, collectively and
individually, they denounce the trafficking in
women, girl children and adolescents, which activity
reduces women’s dignity to the level of being
nothing but a sex object for sale.
Nancy Betán Santana
CIMAC Noticias
March 25, 2009
The World, Washington, DC
 |
|
Ambassador-at-Large to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
nominee Luis C.
de Baca |
Obama's Abolitionist
If you are a human trafficker or someone who profits from the
modern-day slave trade, and you come up against Lou
de Baca: God help you. Tuesday, President Obama
nominated de Baca, one of the nation's most
decorated federal prosecutors, to be his
Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons at the State Department
(TIP). If confirmed, de Baca will serve as America's
antislavery czar, heading up a vital but woefully
under-funded office dedicated to pressuring foreign
governments to free slaves, defined as those forced
to work, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond
subsistence. He has his work cut out for him.
Despite over a dozen international conventions
banning slavery and the slave trade, there are more
slaves today than at any point in human history.
Estimates begin at 12.3 million slaves worldwide,
and go as high as 27 million. In the United States,
which until now has been de Baca's principal
battleground, as many as 17,000 are trafficked into
slavery annually.
… In 14 years as a trial attorney, then as a special
litigator in the Justice Department's Civil Rights
Division, de Baca won convictions for more than a
hundred human traffickers, and most recently as
Majority Counsel at the House Judiciary Committee,
he updated America's flagship anti-slavery law to
provide police with more tools to break slave
traders' backs.
Most meaningful to de Baca, however, are his successful
rescues and rehabilitations of over six-hundred
slaves. That is a record unmatched by any law
enforcement official at any level since
Reconstruction. And central to his approach has been
his deeply felt compassion for the victims…
…As the recession may shrink an already razor-thin budget to
combat human trafficking, de Baca has his work cut
out for him. His predecessors as TIP ambassador
succeeded or failed based on their abilities to
rally public support for the new abolitionist
movement.
De Baca needs a constituency, starting now. John Kerry, Dick
Lugar, and the rest of the senators who sit on the
Foreign Relations Committee must understand the need
for swift confirmation: for those in bondage, delay
is denial. And then de Baca, and the antislavery
groups that his office will partner with, need our
sustained support…
E. Benjamin Skinner
The Huffington Post
Ben Skinner is the author of
A Crime So Monstrous
(Free Press)
March 25, 2009
Washington, DC
 |
|
During the 2006
Freedom Network's Paul & Sheila
Wellstone
Anti-Trafficking Award ceremony, the award winners, the
Florida-based
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
(CIW), were introduced by veteran federal prosecutor Lou de
Baca (back row, far left), then of the USDOJ Civil Rights
Division.
De Baca was the conference
keynote speaker and previous year's winner of the Wellstone
Award. Mr. De Baca spoke eloquently about the long
relationship between the CIW and the Civil Rights Division,
dating from the early 1990's, and how those pioneering
efforts helped lay the groundwork for the burgeoning
anti-trafficking movement today. |
Nombra Obama a hispano como enviado contra
trata de personas
Washington, DC
- El
presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, nombró al hispano Luis
de Baca como embajador especial del Departamento de Estado para la
lucha contra el tráfico de personas, informó hoy la Casa Blanca.
Según
indicó el presidente en un comunicado, De Baca será, gracias a su
"singular experiencia y talento comprobado", un elemento
"indispensable" en los esfuerzos para defender los derechos
humanos.
Luis de
Baca es asesor legal del Comité sobre el Poder Judicial de la Cámara
de Representantes del Congreso estadunidense, donde realiza labores
de asesoramiento en materia de seguridad nacional, inmigración,
derechos civiles y temas relacionados con la esclavitud moderna.
En el
Departamento de Justicia, De Baca fue asesor legal en jefe de la
Unidad para el Procesamiento Judicial de Casos de Trata de Personas
de la División de Derechos Civiles.
Durante
el Gobierno de Bill Clinton (1993-2001), fue coordinador de las
actividades del departamento contra la servidumbre forzosa y la
esclavitud.
Ha
investigado y llevado ante la Justicia casos de trata de personas en
los que las víctimas fueron privadas de su libertad para obligarlas
a ejercer la prostitución y otros tipos de explotación sexual,
trabajo agrícola, servicio doméstico y trabajo en fábricas.
Estas
actividades le valieron uno de los premios más reconocidos en este
campo de prestación de servicios a víctimas de la trata de personas,
el Premio Paul & Sheila Wellstone de la Freedom Network.
Además,
fue galardonado como distinguido exalumno latino de la Facultad de
Derecho de la Universidad de Michigan.
EFE
March 24, 2009
Washington, DC Today, President Barack Obama
announced his intent to nominate Luis C. de Baca as
Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at
the State Department.
President Obama said, "I’m grateful that this fine public servant
has agreed to join my administration, and I am confident that with
Secretary Clinton he will be an indispens-able part of our team as
we work tirelessly to stand up for human rights and the rule of law.
I am confident that his unique experiences and proven ability will
make him a strong advocate for our values and for justice around the
globe."
President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following
individual today: Luis C. de Baca, Nominee for Ambassador-at-Large
to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, State Department.
Luis C.
de Baca is Counsel to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, on
detail from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of
Justice. On the Committee, his portfolio for Chairman John
Conyers, Jr. includes national security, intelligence, immigration,
civil rights, and modern slavery issues. At the Justice Department,
de Baca served as Chief Counsel of the Civil Rights Division's Human
Trafficking Prosecution Unit. During the Clinton Administration, he
was the Department's Involuntary Servitude and Slavery Coordinator
and was instrumental in developing the United States'
victim-centered approach to combating modern slavery. He has
investigated and prosecuted human trafficking cases in which victims
were held for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation,
farm labor, domestic service, and factory work. De Baca received the
leading honor given by the national trafficking victim service
provider community, the Freedom Network’s Paul & Sheila Wellstone
Award, and has been named the Michigan Law School’s Distinguished
Latino Alumnus. De Baca graduated from Iowa State University and
holds a J.D. from Michigan Law School, where he was President of the
Hispanic Law Students Association and an editor of the Michigan Law
Review.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
March 24, 2009
LibertadLatina
Commentary
We congratulate U.S. President Barak Obama and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton for having presented the first Latino nominee slated
to hold the position of
Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons,
within the U.S. State Department.
We also congratulate Luis de Baca, who's work over
the years on the issues of human trafficking has been known to us.
We wish Mr. De Baca Godspeed in his efforts to
represent the United States effectively as a beacon of leadership in
global efforts to end modern human slavery. We especially encourage
Mr. De Baca to focus special attention on the crisis of impunity
affecting millions of women and girls in Latin America and the
Caribbean. We believe that Mr. De Baca will give those issues a fair
hearing, and effective action, a welcome change from the relative
silence of efforts made to address the region during the
administra-tion of President George W. Bush.
Among the most critical issues that must be addressed
in the region is the current failure of the rule of law in
the southern Mexican border region, where an estimated 450 to 600
women and girls are systematically raped each day by criminals, and
where large numbers of these victims are kidnapped and sold to sex
trafficking rings.
Because the frontier between Mexico and Guatemala is
the gateway for almost all South and Central American migrants
seeking to reach the U.S., impunity in the region allows these
estimated 164,000 to 220,000 women and girls per year to face sexual
assault, and possible trafficking, with no law enforce-ment response
whatsoever.
In the border city of Tapachula, some 20,000 Central
American women and girls are prostituted in over 1,500 bars and
brothels. Over half of these victims are underage teens.
Many of those at-risk and enslaved in the region are
indigenous women and girls, who's basic human rights have never been
defended by Mexico, Guatemala, nor other nations in the region.
Along the U.S. / Mexican border, the Russian mob owns
"countless" brothels where girls as young as age 7, and even 5 month
old infants, are prostituted to a clientele that includes thousands
of U.S. men who cross into Mexico to have sex with children - in the
border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros,
among others.
Among the many human slavery hot spots around the
world, Mexico's crisis, and its overflow into the child rape camps
of San Diego County, California, and the basement brothels of
Queens, New York and Washington, DC, must all be on-the-radar-screen
of any serious global effort to end modern slavery.
'Little Brown Maria in the Brothel' deserves,
finally, to be free! Obtaining her freedom will not be easy, and it
will not happen overnight. For Maria to achieve freedom, the rule of
law must be reestablished where impunity now reigns.
That is no easy task.
The victim community and those at risk await our
effective efforts to defend them from the grip of criminal impunity.
We welcome the efforts of the Obama administration,
in collaboration with the world community and civil society, to put
an end to this scourge.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 25, 2009
See also:
I met Mr. De Baca briefly at an
International Organization for Migration conference in
2003, where I described a number of critical issues
facing the region that were not effectively being
addressed by the member nations of the Organization of
American States.
The issues list that I discussed in 2003 is still
relevant today.
LibertadLatina
speaks out and advocates
for Latina women & girl's human rights at a Washington,
DC International Organization for Migration (IOM)
conference on sex trafficking in Latin America and the
Caribbean region attended by non-profits and U.S. State,
Justice and Homeland Security officials.
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
Dec. 18, 2003
Florida, USA
How Clearwater helped destroy an international
sex slave ring
Clearwater - She came from Guatemala, a woman in her early 20s
smuggled into the United States for what she thought was a
housekeeping job.
The journey from her small town to the Texas border took 26 days.
From there she was whisked to a safe house near Houston, then
brought to Tampa and moved once more to a house in Jacksonville.
There, an enforcer for the human trafficking operation told the
woman her debt had jumped from $5,000 to $30,000.
The enforcer demonstrated how to use a condom by rolling it over a
beer bottle. He said she'd have to pay back the debt as a
prostitute, according to authorities.
She turned 25 tricks the next day and nearly every day for eight or
nine months.
This tortured existence - the daily life of a human trafficking
victim - ended May 22, 2007, when authorities intervened. The
woman's captor, Juan Jimenez Henao, was arrested in Clearwater. But
the investigation went much further. It connected with an
international human trafficking network.
Carlos Andres Monsalve, 29, the ringleader, was arrested and
sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Henao served a short prison
term and is scheduled to be deported.
In total, seven people were indicted and six victims identified...
Jonathan Abel
March 15, 2009
Mexico
 |
|
Patricia Cervantes, mother of femicide
victim Neyra Cervantes |
“Asesinadas (muertas) de Juárez”, 15 años de
continuada impunidad
Femicide in Juarez - 15 Years of Continual
Impunity
Hace exactamente un año usé el titulo de “Las Muertas de Juárez, 15
años después”, una investigación especial en tres partes para el
programa de televisión “México Confidencial” que se transmitió –en
otra versión-- también de tres partes por radio y se publicó en un
periódico.
Hace un año estuve en Ciudad Juárez para esa investigación sobre el
feminicidio: la idea era seguir los pasos de una historia sin final
que durante todo este tiempo ha generado grandes alegatos, inmensas
manifestaciones y resultados dudosos.
Seguir las huellas del hoy tratado como “fenómeno” de “las Muertas
de Juárez”, es decir las mujeres asesinadas en esa ciudad, me llevó
también a recorrer nuevamente las páginas del libro de mi querido
amigo Víctor Ronquillo, un texto hoy traducido incluso al italiano
que mostraba la abismal realidad de Juárez, la misma que quince años
después yo encontraría casi exactamente igual...
Laura Viadas
Cimac Noticias
March 23, 2009
Related story:
Tell President Calderón: Justice for Neyra and
the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua
In July 2003, the remains of Neyra Azucena Cervantes were found in
Chihuahua, Mexico. Neyra had disappeared in May of that year and her
family worked tirelessly searching for her. Her cousin David Meza
had even traveled from Chiapas, one of the southernmost Mexican
states, to help in the search. A week after her remains were
discovered, David was arrested for her murder, and was tortured into
giving a confession.
Next week, nearly six years after Neyra's murder, I am heading to
Mexico City with my colleague Tamaryn Nelson, who coordinates our
programs in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will be joining
together with some amazing individuals and organizations to urge
President Calderón of Mexico to resolve the disappearance and murder
of Neyra and the cases of nearly 500 other murdered women on the
Mexico/U.S. border. You can help us in this call for justice by
signing this petition by the end of day Wed, March 26th - that's
only 8 days away, so act now!
We [have secured] a meeting with President Calderón on Friday March
27th, where we will accompany WITNESS founder and musician Peter
Gabriel, the actor Diego Luna, Saul Hernández of the legendary rock
band Jaguares, as well as our partner organization in Mexico, the
Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights
(CMDPDH) and Amnesty International (AI), to deliver the petitions
signed by so many of you from around the world, and to call for an
end to the violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and
across all of Mexico. Patricia Cervantes, Neyra's mother, will
deliver the petitions by hand to the Mexican government. We are also
organizing a huge press conference, so regardless of whether we can
meet with the President, rest assured we're still going to make our
voices heard.
Please sign this petition by March 26, 2009
La Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos
y WITNESS han estado recolectando firmas para pedir al Presidente de
México Felipe Calderón que resuelva las desapariciones y asesinatos
de cientos de mujeres en Chihauhua y Ciudad Juárez.
Pon tu firma en la petición que Peter entregará al gobierno de
México el próximo 27 de marzo. Por favor firma si no lo has hecho e
invita a tus amigos a hacerlo. Tenemos hasta el 27 de marzo para
engrosar la lista de firmas de esta petición.
Para firmar la petición haz clic aquí
Rebecca Lichtenfeld
www.Witness.org
Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de
los Derechos Humanos
March19, 2009
Mexico
WOLA and Others Condemn Extrajudicial
Execution [Murders] of Mexican Indigenous Leaders
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), along with the
Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the Due Process of Law
Foundation (DPLF), and Human Rights Watch (HRW) sent a letter to the
Attorney General of the Mexican State of Guerrero yesterday
expressing deep concern over the kidnapping and execution of Raúl
Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas, president and secretary of the
Organization for the Future of the Mixteco People, a group that
defends indigenous rights in the state of Guerrero.
Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas were kidnapped by
individuals who identified themselves as ministerial police on
February 13th while attending a public event...
WOLA, LAWG, DPLF and HRW hope that a swift and impartial
investigation is conducted to bring to justice the perpetrators of
these killings, particularly in light of the credible allegations
against the local police. The Mexican government has an
obligation under international law to protect these communities…
Washington Office
on Latin America
Feb. 26, 2009
Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean
 |
|
South American indigenous Woman participates
in the 11th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter
in Mexico City
CIMAC Noticias |
Added:
March 23, 2009
Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean
No sólo las letradas pueden
ser feministas, dicen indígenas
XI Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe
Uno de los desafíos políticos del feminismo es
transformar el lenguaje, reconociendo la
pluriculturalidad de los países, y fomentar así el
respeto a las diversas formas de ser feminista,
afirmó Martha Sánchez, coordinadora de la Alianza de
Mujeres Indígenas de Centro América y México.
Sánchez fue una de las panelistas de la plenaria
"Las realidades latinoamericanas ante los
fundamentalismos de hoy", la primera de las cuatro
programadas durante el XI Encuentro Feminista de
América Latina y el Caribe, en la ciudad de México
DF, del 16 al 20 de marzo.
Analizar el impacto global del fundamentalismo en la
economía, la política y la cultura, para la región
latinoamericana y caribeña, es uno de los propósitos
de este Encuentro.
Indigenous women: Literate women are not the only
ones who can be feminists
From the XI Meeting of Latin American and Caribbean
Feminists
Mexico City – According to Martha Sanchez,
Coordinator of the Alliance of Indigenous Women of
Central America and Mexico, one of the political
challenges of feminism is to transform language,
recognizing the multiculturalism of our nations, and
to encourage respect for the different ways in
which one can be a feminist.
Sanchez was member of the panel "The realities in
Latin America in the Face of today’s
fundamentalism," the first of four planned panels
during the XI Latin American and the Caribbean
Feminist Encounter, held in Mexico City between
March 16-20, 2009.
Analysis the impact of fundamentalisms in the global
economy, politics and culture for the Latin American
and Caribbean region is one of the purposes of
themes of this year’s conference.
Sanchez, an indigenous Mexican women, stated that
"political language must be changed to reflect the
multiculturalism of women and allow them to express
their broad diversity. Not only indigenous women,
but to young women, lesbians and rural women need to
recognized. In her opinion, our dialog should
identify itself with the largest number of women."
Sanchez regretted that throughout history, we have
not achieved “recognition of our history of
struggle, of the types of leadership that we have
exercised, and the unique paths that we [as
indigenous women] take to bring about a better life
for women. Although we do not speak directly about a
patriarchal system, we do in-fact fight patriarchy
with our actions.”
Sanchez added that for indigenous peoples, it is
difficult to create stronger alliances with
[mainstream] feminists, because they don’t
understand what the concepts of collective rights,
land rights and traditional customs mean to us.
"I feel that they want to impose their own way of
looking at violations of human rights, and we want
to denounce it from own perspectives. Not only can I
fight for my rights as an indigenous woman, but we
have demonstrated that we part of the global
movement," Sanchez said.
As main achievements of the feminist movement have
emphasized the open minds, have generated a
political discourse, contributed to the expansion of
democracy in theory and practice, and thus have
contributed to a mission and vision for new
generations of women.
"I dream of indigenous women who are feminists, and
we are working. In how generational transmission
occurs between older and younger women, between
indigenous occurs. We will find at the end of the
meeting, but knots are irreconcilable: individual
thought and collective action, "he said.
Sanchez identified herself as a feminist. She said
that other indigenous women don’t see themselves
that way, because they assume that feminists can
only be literate women, women with careers. We must
dispel that myth” Sanchez concluded.
Julia Vicuña Yacarine
CIMAC Noticias / SEMlac
March 19 2009
Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean
Isabel Spencer, feminista de República Dominicana
Las mujeres afrodescendientes en América Latina y el
Caribe padecen, además de la discriminación por su
condición de género, la discriminación racial, una
problemática que la agenda feminista debe asumir
como parte de una lucha más de las mujeres de la
región.
Así lo exigieron hoy las afrodescendientes, entre
ellas Isabel Spencer, de República Dominicana,
durante el cierre del XI Encuentro Feminista
Latinoamericano, que se celebró del 16 al 20 de
marzo, en la Ciudad de México y que contó con la
participación de mil 600 mujeres feministas.
Feminism must combat racism
towards African descendants - Elizabeth Spencer,
Dominican feminist
Elizabeth Spencer, from the Dominican Republic,
spoke during the closure of the XI Latin American
Feminist Encounter, held from March 20 to 16 in
Mexico City and attended by 1,600 feminist women.
Spencer stated that women of African descent in
Latin America and the Caribbean face a double
discrimination resulting from their condition as
women and as women of African ancestry. She added
that this is problem which the feminist movement
must take on, as one more struggle facing women in
the region.
Spencer, who is a member of a lesbian feminist
collective and also the Network of Women of African
Descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, told
Cimac Noticias that acknowledging the challenges of
our condition as Black women is critical. She added
that in Black-majority nations of the region, women
face more severe treatment than in other nations.
Spencer: "In a society that operates under a
patriarchy, is a double problem because I like a
woman, black, lesbian and an artist, I have five
elements that put me at risk of being an indigent
person in my country. Women of African descent have
a double problem: we suffer discrimination as women
who are Black. In my case, my status as a lesbian
adds to my social condition of ‘being screwed.’
Spencer explained that "there is an integrated
racism, which creates different types of treatment
for black women. Black men have privileges that
black women do not enjoy, such as labor and
professional rights. Their rights are respected by
society more than our are.
Spencer lamented that the issues facing African
descendant women had not been addressed at the
Feminist Encounter. However she was also encouraged
by the fact that she was able to network with Black
women and those of other races, so that the theme of
racism will be part of the agenda for the next
Feminist Encounter, which will take place in
Colombia.
"I came to this meeting with the idea of finding
partners in all issues concerning women. As a Black
woman I did not feel that a space existed for me.
The group touched on the issue of sexual diversity,
but I don’t know to what extent women in general
understand our problems,” said Spencer.
Spencer reiterated that racism toward women of
African descent must be made a part of the feminist
agenda as much as other issues. Spencer: “We cannot
ignore issues of race. We are black Caribbean women.
Our issues should be discussed just as feminists
debate abortion and sexual diversity. We also want
to talk about the problem of race.”
However, "I’ve made allies, and was able to
communicate with other sisters of African descent
and share proposals for the next Encounter. We began
movement of these issues, which makes me feel
better. Alliances between women always strengthen us
personally and professionally,” added the Dominican
feminist.
Spencer: "It should not be only African descendent
women who collaborate with me. It should be all
women. Because the point is that we are all women,
and we live in a patriarchal society that hurts all
of us."
Daily Feminism
For Isabel Spencer, feminism "is trying get up every
morning to put into practice everything that I
believe in, to live it in everyday work in our
women’s collective. This is my contribution, what I
can do to improve things."
"There has to be a personal reflection, from which I
defend my rights as a woman, African, lesbian,
facing the reality of a front and clear through my
daily life so we can improve," he said.
Regardless of how government works, Spencer said,
"we should defend our rights. I hope, I believe in
feminism as a way of life, as a deconstruction of a
system that is screwed-up. Events like this are
encouraging and necessary because we always come out
a stronger.”
According to Spencer, the feminist movement in Latin
America and the Caribbean is an important one in
which "we cannot waste time. We should value our
negotiations at the governmental level. It is a good
time to present new proposals that support the
struggle and bring clarity and expansion to our
work.”
Spencer concluded her comments my noting that in
this movement, "we are moving forward, and through
our work we build on what others have done More
women will come along to continue what we do today.
We are making progress.”
Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes
Mexico City
March 20, 2009
Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean
Medio millón de víctimas y una Ley defectuosa
Para erradicar la cadena de explotación sexual
contra mujeres y niñas, es necesario evidenciar que
la cadena se extiende gracias a la demanda, porque
si no hubiera compradores de sexo y pornografía, los
demás actores no existirían, afirmó la maestra
Teresa Ulloa, directora de la Coalición Regional
contra el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas para América
Latina y el Caribe (CATWLAC, por sus siglas en
Inglés).
En conferencia de prensa, en donde anunció la
Primera Reunión Regional América Latina y el Caribe,
“Buenas prácticas para combatir la demanda y la
legalización de la prostitución siglo XXI”, que se
llevará cabo del 23 al 25 de marzo del 2009, Teresa
Ulloa expuso que no sólo los tratantes deben de ir a
la cárcel, las autoridades deben tomar medidas para
disminuir la demanda.
Trafficking of women and girls is triggered by
poverty: Teresa Ulloa
We have half a million victims and a flawed
trafficking law
Mexico City - Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in
Latin America and the Caribbean (CATWLAC) recently
held a press conference to announce the First Latin
America and the Caribbean Regional Meeting: "Best
practices to combat the demand, and the legalization
of prostitution in the 21st Century,"
which will take place from 23 to March 25, 2009.
According to Ulloa, to eliminate the chain of sexual
exploitation against women and girls, it is
necessary to show that the chain includes demand.
Ulloa noted that if there were no buyers of sex and
pornography, the other actors would not exist.
Teresa Ulloa added that authorities should not focus
just on arresting traffickers, but should also make
efforts to reduce demand.
Therefore, Ulloa stated, it is important to discuss
the implementation of legislative measures modeled
on the experiences of countries like such as Sweden,
who’s experience has shown that the implementation
of punitive measures against demand results in
reduced consumption of sex and pornography.
In regard to another issue, Ulloa said the [global]
economic crisis is going to cause human trafficking
to explode.
According to CATWLAC, seven out of ten women in the
world have been subjected to sexual, physical,
psychological, economic, and institutional forms of
violence.
She believes that poverty is "the worst of the
pimps" because it has caused the phenomenon of
trafficking in women and girls for sexual
exploitation has skyrocketed in recent years.
Women and girls are sold for sex up to 60 times per
day
Ulloa also said that organized crime has diversified
its business. Across Latin America and the
Caribbean, she said, the sex industry represents 17
per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ulloa:
"This makes clear that women and children are viewed
as items to be bought, sold, and rented, exploited
and enslaved.”
Teresa Ulloa said that the networks have come to
realize that trafficking is a more profitable
business that the illicit drug trade because a girl
or woman can be sold 40 or 60 times a day while a
dose of drug is sold only once.
In Mexico there are about half a million women,
children and youth who are victims of trafficking
and exploitation, not only in the country, but
abroad, Ulloa said.
Ulloa said that among the successes of the CATWLAC
last year involved the training of 3,500 people
including policemen, prosecutors, immigration
agents, teachers, youth and children.
Flaws in the Anti-Trafficking Law and [its
Associated Federal] Regulations
In regard to Mexico’s federal anti-trafficking law,
Ulloa is not concerned about the recently published
regulations [which President Calderon delayed
creating for 11 months]. However, Ulloa stated that
the law itself contains a number of errors, which
may have been intentional or not, which will impede
the prosecution of trafficking cases.
Ulloa: “This is very serious, because the law does
not apply to all forms of trafficking, and it does
not apply to all of the persons who may be involved.
She emphasized that the new law does not consider a
crime to have been committed if the victim expressed
their consent. However, under the 1949 Convention (the
1949 Convention on the Exploitation of the
Prostitution of Others),
an international instrument signed and ratified by
Mexico since 1951, a crime is considered to have
been committed even if the victim consented.
Reunion in the First Regional Latin America and the
Caribbean, "Best practices to combat the demand and
the legalization of prostitution XXI Century", will
feature the directors of the national coalitions of
20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as
well as representatives of the Civil society from 22
countries in this region, Mexican authorities and
donor agencies.
The objective is to evaluate strategies and methods
to oppose the legalization of prostitution and
tackle the demand for prostitution and all forms of
sexual and labor exploitation in the region.
In additional to Teresa Ulloa, the press conference
was also presented by Mariblanca Staff Wilson of the
Women's Movement Alliance of of Panama; Graciela
Collantes, the Argentine Association of Women for
Human Rights (AMMAR), Beatriz Elena Rodríguez, of
Survivors of Prostitution and Trafficking in
Colombia, and Rubí de María Gómez, of the Center for
Gender Studies at the Autonomous University of
Michoacán.
Sandra Torres Pastrana
Cimac Noticias
March 19, 2009
Mexico
Narcos también trafican
personas
Negocio que ven más redituable
La Coalición Regional contra el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas en
América Latina y el Caribe denunció que la trata de
personas en México se ha agravado principalmente por
la mayor participación del narcotráfico en este
delito.
México, epicentro de la trata
"El
narcotráfico está aprovechando toda su estructura
para este tema, (los capos) se dieron cuenta de que
es mucho más redituable que el tráfico de drogas
porque a una mujer la explotan 40 ó 60 veces al
día", afirmó la directora regional de esta
organización civil, Teresa Ulloa.
Durante una reunión anual de la Coalición, que se
desarrolla en la capital mexicana, Ulloa mencionó
que más de medio millón de mexicanos, principalmente
mujeres y niñas, son víctimas de redes criminales
dedicadas a la trata de personas con fines de
explotación sexual.
Drug cartels also traffic in
women
Mexico City - The Regional Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and
the Caribbean (CATWLAC) reported that trafficking in
Mexico has worsened mainly because of increased
participation in drug trafficking cartels.
Mexico, the epicenter of trafficking
"Drug trafficking is taking advantage of their
infrastructure [to focus on trafficking]. The capos
(bosses) realized that [sex trafficking] is much
more profitable than drug trafficking because a
woman can be sold 40 or 60 times a day," said
regional director of this civilian organization,
Teresa Ulloa.
During an annual meeting of the CATWLAC, which takes
place in the Mexican capital, Ulloa said that more
than half a million Mexicans, mostly women and
girls, are victims of criminal networks engaged in
trafficking for sexual exploitation.
She said that the organizations involved in this
crime have the ability to take women who have been
tricked [by false employment or romantic promises]
and transport them to foreign countries in a period
of 12 hours.
Ulloa added that human trafficking has worsened in
the most marginalized states around the country, and
has lead to a boom in business for criminal gangs.
"The marginal and poor populations are always the
most affected by [the global economic] crisis.
Traffickers exploit these conditions by deceiving
female youth into believing their false promises of
a better future," said Ulloa.
Ulloa
said that Mexico has become the epicenter of
"origin, transit and trafficking in Latin America."
She also criticized the Law to Prevent and Punish
Trafficking in Mexico, considering it insufficient
to punish those responsible.
"There has been not one conviction so far
trafficking at the federal level," said Ulloa. She
announced that the Coalition has asked the Mexican
Attorney General to file a claim of constitutional
dispute in regard to the Law Against Trafficking in
Persons, pending a review of the omissions and
contradictions [within the law that make it
ineffective].
EFE
Marc, 2009
Mexico, Latin
America, the Caribbean
Feminismo debe luchar contra
racismo hacia afrodescendientes
Isabel Spencer, feminista de República Dominican
México DF - Las mujeres
afrodescendientes en América Latina y el Caribe
padecen, además de la discriminación por su
condición de género, la discriminación racial, una
problemática que la agenda feminista debe asumir
como parte de una lucha más de las mujeres de la
región.
Así lo exigieron hoy las afrodescendientes, entre
ellas Isabel Spencer, de República Dominicana,
durante el cierre del XI Encuentro Feminista
Latinoamericano, que se celebró del 16 al 20 de
marzo, en la Ciudad de México y que contó con la
participación de mil 600 mujeres feministas...
Feminism must combat racism towards African
descendants - Elizabeth Spencer, Dominican feminist
Mexico City - Elizabeth Spencer, from the Dominican
Republic, spoke during the closure of the XI Latin
American Feminist Encounter, held from March 20 to
16 in Mexico City and attended by 1,600 feminist
women.
Spencer stated that women of African descent in
Latin America and the Caribbean face a double
discrimination resulting from their condition as
women and as women of African ancestry. She added
that this is problem which the feminist movement
must take on, as one more struggle facing women in
the region.
Spencer, who is a member of a lesbian feminist
collective and also the Network of Women of African
Descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, told
Cimac Noticias that acknowledging the challenges of
our condition as Black women is critical. She added
that in Black-majority nations of the region, women
face more severe treatment than in other nations.
Spencer: "In a society that operates under a
patriarchy, is a double problem because I like a
woman, black, lesbian and an artist, I have five
elements that put me at risk of being an indigent
person in my country. Women of African descent have
a double problem: we suffer discrimination as women
who are Black. In my case, my status as a lesbian
adds to my social condition of ‘being screwed.’
Spencer explained that "there is an integrated
racism, which creates different types of treatment
for black women. Black men have privileges that
black women do not enjoy, such as labor and
professional rights. Their rights are respected by
society more than our are.
Spencer lamented that the issues facing African
descendant women had not been addressed at the
Feminist Encounter. However she was also encouraged
by the fact that she was able to network with Black
women and those of other races, so that the theme of
racism will be part of the agenda for the next
Feminist Encounter, which will take place in
Colombia.
"I came to this meeting with the idea of finding
partners in all issues concerning women. As a Black
woman I did not feel that a space existed for me.
The group touched on the issue of sexual diversity,
but I don’t know to what extent women in general
understand our problems,” said Spencer.
Spencer reiterated that racism toward women of
African descent must be made a part of the feminist
agenda as much as other issues. Spencer: “We cannot
ignore issues of race. We are black Caribbean women.
Our issues should be discussed just as feminists
debate abortion and sexual diversity. We also want
to talk about the problem of race.”
However, "I’ve made allies, and was able to
communicate with other sisters of African descent
and share proposals for the next Encounter. We began
movement of these issues, which makes me feel
better. Alliances between women always strengthen us
personally and professionally,” added the Dominican
feminist.
Spencer: "It should not be only African descendent
women who collaborate with me. It should be all
women. Because the point is that we are all women,
and we live in a patriarchal society that hurts all
of us."
Daily Feminism
For Isabel Spencer, feminism "is trying get up every
morning to put into practice everything that I
believe in, to live it in everyday work in our
women’s collective. This is my contribution, what I
can do to improve things."
"There has to be a personal reflection, from which I
defend my rights as a woman, African, lesbian,
facing the reality of a front and clear through my
daily life so we can improve," he said.
Regardless of how government works, Spencer said,
"we should defend our rights. I hope, I believe in
feminism as a way of life, as a deconstruction of a
system that is screwed-up. Events like this are
encouraging and necessary because we always come out
a stronger.”
According to Spencer, the feminist movement in Latin
America and the Caribbean is an important one in
which "we cannot waste time. We should value our
negotiations at the governmental level. It is a good
time to present new proposals that support the
struggle and bring clarity and expansion to our
work.”
Spencer concluded her comments my noting that in
this movement, "we are moving forward, and through
our work we build on what others have done More
women will come along to continue what we do today.
We are making progress.”
Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes
Mexico City
March 20, 2009
Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean
Inicia el lunes XI Encuentro Feminista
Latinoamericano y del Caribe
Del 16 al 20 de
marzo próximo se llevará a cabo el XI Encuentro Feminista
Latinoamericano y del Caribe, un espacio de reflexión crítica de
intercambio de ideas, perspectivas, proyectos y utopías, en el que
participarán más de mil 500 mujeres de las diversas expresiones
políticas y sociales de los movimientos feministas mexicanos,
latinoamericanos y caribeños.
En esta edición, se
informó hoy por la mañana en una rueda de prensa, el Comité Impulsor
del XI Encuentro ha elegido el tema de los fundamentalismos porque
hoy en día existen sectores de la sociedad mundial que mantienen una
postura extrema que busca imponer sus puntos de vista y que
pretenden eliminar la diferencia sin dar paso a la otredad...
The 11th Latin
American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter begins
The 11th Feminist
Encounter of Latin America and the Caribbean with be held from 16th
through the 20th of March, 2009. The event is a critical exchange of
ideas, perspectives, dreams and projects, involving more than 1,500
women from various social and political expressions, and feminist
movements from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The organizers of
the event have chosen as this year’s theme an analysis of
fundamen-talist movements, given that there are sectors in the
global society who seek to impose extreme points view and also
desire to eliminate opposing viewpoints.
Hence, the program
includes a discussion and debate on fundamentalist expressions in
the fields of economy, culture, society, politics and feminism.
The meeting, to be
held in the Historic Center of Mexico City, is a place of reflection
where we will analyze the impact on women of the imposition of such
models, among other topics...
Other themes to be discussed are: the relationship between feminism
and various social movements; globalization; social exclusion and
gender justice; inclusion and expansion of the feminist movement;
feminist critiques by black women and lesbian youth; the
institutionalization of feminist organizations; and the relationship
of feminism with the state, the United Nations and other
international political institutions.
The Feminist
Encounter of Latin American and Caribbean has been held every two or
three years since 1981.
CIMAC Noticias
March 12, 2009
Washington, DC
The American University Washington College of
Law and the Center for Health and Gender Equity are pleased to
announce the upcoming conference entitled "Human Trafficking,
HIV/AIDS, and the Sex Sector", taking place March 18.
The conference will
bring together international and U.S. experts to share experiences
and discuss the ways in which the Obama Administration can create
new policies on human trafficking and HIV/AIDS that are consistent
with international human rights standards, best practices in public
health, and grounded in reality.
"Human trafficking
and forced labor are global human rights issues," says Ann Jordan,
Director of the Program on Human Trafficking and Forced Labor at the
Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
"Over the past
eight years, the U.S. has supported some excellent programs, but it
has also adopted an ideologically-driven approach to the sex sector
that harms women and their families, increases the vulnerability of
people in the sex sector to violence, trafficking and HIV infection,
and prevents health care workers from accessing sex workers."
"We are proud, says
Serra Sippel, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender
Equity, to host a conference that will foster an informed and
healthy dialogue on these persistent problems and how they may be
addressed moving forward."
American University Center for Health and Gender
Equity - Washington, DC
Contact: Jason Policastro
(202) 895-45379
Cell: (717) 476-1764
Mexico
Mexico's Catholic Church and President
Felipe Calderon Charge U.S. with Corruption
After describing the US military as vain and bewildered, the
hierarchy of the Church indicated in its weekly publication that
Mexico has recognized the serious problem of corruption among its
authorities and public servants and demanded that the U.S. do the
same
The Catholic Church
in Mexico today chimed in and sided with Mexico’s President Felipe
Calderon on the controversial subject of U.S. government corruption
and demanded that the U.S. government have a “change of attitude”
that involves a “serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the
protection that — from the highest levels of power to the
businessmen and public servants — is provided the traffickers, whose
impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs.”
Last week we
reported that Mexican President Calderon said that he blames U.S.
"corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent
drug cartels.
"Drug trafficking
in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on
the part of the American authorities," he said...
Michael Webster
March 09, 2009
Mexico
Calderon Rejects ‘Absurd’ Reports on Mexico
Drug War
Mexican President
Felipe Calderon delivered his strongest defense yet of his
government’s fight against drug cartels, alleging some U.S.
officials are corrupt and accusing the media of lying.
“To say that Mexico
doesn’t have authority over all of its national territory is
absolutely false and absurd,” Calderon said today in Mexico City.
Mexico hasn’t lost
any territory to traffickers, Calderon said. He criticized the media
for mounting a campaign of “lies” against Mexico. His comments come
two days after Dennis Blair, U.S. Director of National Intelligence,
said Mexico isn’t in charge of parts of the country…
“How can you
explain a drug market so large in the U.S.-- the largest market in
the world -- without the corruption of certain U.S. authorities,”
Calderon said…
Drug war-related
deaths reached a record 6,290 last year and Mexico increasingly
blames the U.S. for the carnage, saying the U.S. has done little to
stop the flow of arms into Mexico and to curtail demand for drugs at
home.
The U.S.’s Blair
told a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting on March 10 that “the
corruptive influence and increasing violence of Mexican drug cartels
impedes Mexico City’s ability to govern parts of its territory.”
…President Barack
Obama said that, while he’s concerned about escalating drug
violence, there’s no need yet to send U.S. troops to the border, the
Dallas Morning News reported…
Texas Governor Rick
Perry has called on Washington to send a thousand troops or border
agents to the region because Ciudad Juarez, across the border from
El Paso, has become a focal point of drug violence, the Morning News
reported.
At a White House
briefing today, spokesman Robert Gibbs reiterated the
administration’s policy that violence is “not going to be solved in
the long term through the militarization of the border.”
…Mexican drug lord
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman made Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires
list for the first time this year, underscoring the growing power of
the country’s cartels. Guzman, 54, has a net worth of $1 billion,
making him the world’s 701st wealthiest person, according to Forbes.
He heads a drug cartel based in the western state of Sinaloa.
“It’s unfortunate
that a campaign has escalated that seems to be a campaign against
Mexico,” Calderon said. “Public opinion and even magazines aren’t
only dedicated to attacking and lying about Mexico’s situation, but
also to exalting criminals.”
Mexican cartels
sell $13.8 billion a year worth of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and
amphetamines to U.S. drug users, according to White House figures.
Mexico is the corridor for about 90 percent of the cocaine consumed
in the U.S.
Numerous
high-ranking Mexican police officials and prosecutors have been
accused of collaborating with traffickers.
U.S. officials such as Democratic Representative Nita
Lowey of New York and Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers have urged
Obama’s administra-tion to make violence in Mexico a priority...
By Jens Erik
Gould
March 12
Bloomberg
LibertadLatina
Commentary
The comments of President Felipe Calderon, accusing high ranking
United States officials and a large number of U.S. government
agencies of corruption and complicity in promoting U.S. consumption
of illicit drugs produced in Mexico are, on their face, patently
absurd.
President Calderon's accusations appear to be a firebreak - a tactic
in firefighting and politics where you set a counter-fire to contain
a firestorm. He is hurling accusations to deflect legitimate
criticism that his government is losing control and that it has a
major problem with corruption, across the board.
Although we are not drug enforcement analysts, we can use as a
comparison an analysis of the Mexican government's response to the
issues of modern human slavery, sex trafficking and to the existence
of gender hostile living environments across Mexico, as examples of
evidence proving the fact that Mexico faces major problems in the
areas of official corruption, collusion with organized crime and a
complete failure to protect society's most vulnerable members from
unimaginable levels of criminal violence.
Here are a few of the cases that we have covered over the past
several years at
LibertadLatina,
which raise legitimate concerns about the impunity that Mexico's
government allows to exist in regard to women and children's basic
human rights...
|
Crisis Issue # 1
According to non-governmental organizations
working along Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, between
164,000 and 220,000 migrant women and underage girls are sexually
assaulted with impunity each year, with absolutely no Mexican law
enforcement response whatsoever.
That is just the figure for the
southern border region. In some of these cases, policemen are
themselves the rapists.
In many cases, the victims are sold to local
and interna-tional sex trafficking mafias who sell them to brothels
in Mexico City, Tijuana, San Diego, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York
City, Tokyo and Amsterdam.
It is a legitimate concern that Mexico indeed
has no real control over its southern border region. That zone is
effectively owned by armed gang-rapists, and by traffickers in
women, children and illicit drugs.
Crisis Issue # 2
In the face of a catastrophic rate of murders
of women (typically involving gang rape, torture and mutilation), at
such an unprece-dented level that a new term had to be defined -
femicide -
to describe the phenomenon, President Felipe Calderon's National
Action Party (PAN), and their top conservative allies in the Church
have declared publicly that women in Ciudad Juarez (the mega-center
of femicide in the nation) and across Mexico were themselves to
blame for being kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered. They assert
that such incidents are the fault of immodest women who wear
short skirts - not the fault of raping, homicidal men who act with
impunity.
PAN party member and former Ciudad Juarez mayor
Francisco Javier Barrio Terrazas, recently appointed
as Mexico's Ambassador to Canada, for example, has expressed
the idea that the women kidnapped and raped in Ciudad Juarez had
brought trouble upon themselves for being immodest.
When Barrio
Terrazas
was the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, and later when he was
the governor of the State of Chihuahua (where Ciudad Juarez sits),
he staunchly refused to form any special investigative body to
address the femicide issue. He also rejected federal efforts to
intervene in the crisis.
Barrio Terrazas
therefore recently drew a a rebuke of his appointment as Ambassador
to Canada by Return Our Daughters Home, an organiza-tion of
mothers of femicide victims in Ciudad
Juarez, who had earlier sought
Barrio Terrazas'
help to end the murder-spree in Chihuahua state.
The same conserva-tive and blatantly
misogynist PAN political beliefs are also apparently the root cause
for the fact that President Calderon had intentionally delayed
publishing the federal regulations required to enforce the nation's
first anti-slavery legislation for 11 months after the bill's
signing into law, thus weakening the intent of Congress to finally
provide effective tools to federal agencies to coordinate their
efforts to fight rampant sex and labor trafficking.
Crisis Issue # 3
Award-winning women and children's rights
activist, author and journalist Lydia Cacho was kidnapped by corrupt
state police agents, threatened with rape by those agents, and was
then jailed in Puebla state on trumped-up charges (an allegation of
state collusion with pedophile networks that is validated by
secretly-taped conversations between Puebla state's governor and one
of the richest child sex traffickers in the country), in retaliation
for having written a book exposing child sex trafficking in Cancun
and the mass corruption on the part of government and wealthy
business interests involved.
In response, the Supreme Court of Justice of
the Nation (SCJN) ruled that it could not investigate, (as the
Constitution authorizes the Court to do in cases of state
corruption) because Lydia Cacho's basic rights and guarantees were
not violated.
When the Court voted, Lydia Cacho, observing
the proceedings on closed circuit television in a supportive
congresswoman's office, reported that the Chief Justice burst out
laughing when the final vote rejecting the investigation was cast.
This occurred despite the fact that an Associate Justice'
preliminary report found probable cause to investigate.
In response to that Court decision, the
federal Attorney General's special prosecutor for violence against
women,
Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, resigned
in utter disgust. The federal investigation that Perez Duarte
started into the criminal behavior of the perpetrators in the Lydia
Cacho case literally vanished into thin air after the case
was passed-on to the woman who followed Perez Duarte as the special
prosecutor for violence against women and human trafficking.
Crisis Issue # 4
As
Lydia Cacho reported in a recent editorial, investi-gators in
Britain have been repeatedly astonished that the Mexican Attorney
General's office has been the only law enforcement agency
internationally that has simply refused to collaborate with their
efforts to track down Internet-based child pornography abusers. |
Mexico has a long history of acts of indifference,
impunity and official corruption. These are accusations which are
made daily by Mexican congress-ional members, activists in the
Mexican women's movement and by many brave journalists (who often
face retaliation from the state for writing about the truth). It is
hard to fathom the idea that corruption does not exist, and that
such dishonesty does not impact Mexican policy and action against
drug traffickers, human traffickers and the millions of men who
sexually exploit poor women and girls in their communities.
In reality, the greed of such criminals and the
multi-billion dollar drug and sex trafficking cartels has taken over
effective control of much of the political and economic life of
modern Mexico.
Poor people join the criminal mafias for 'good'
reasons of self interest, resulting from a lack of job opportunities
(even without a recession).
Policy mistakes by the government of Mexico include:
-
The past failure of Mexico to invest its oil and
industrial wealth in expanding equal rights and employ-ment
opportu-nities for women, the poor and traditionally oppressed
ethnic minorities
-
A failure to invest in education and a social
safety net (there is no real welfare, no food stamps and no
social security - the only 'escape valve' requires migration to
the United States)
-
A failure to promote the education of girls,
resulting in generations of uneducated women who must rely upon
men for their basic survival
-
A failure to reign-in corruption and graft that
drains tax dollars and forces the poor to pay bribes for just
about every govern-ment and private service
-
NAFTA's damaging impacts on subsistence
agriculture and other sectors of the economy
-
An unforeseen shift of low wage factory jobs from
Mexico to China by the hundreds of thousands
In Latin America, if you cannot work, you cannot eat.
If you cannot eat, you will die. When a drug or sex trafficker comes
along and says: "Hey man, kidnap me a few 12-year-old girls, and I
will buy them from you for a good price..." the man who is feeling
the hunger pangs will go ahead and commit those crimes with little
or no remorse.
We
at
LibertadLatina
focus ongoing atten-tion on documenting news about the crisis in
gender rights in Mexico because it is the most critical crisis in
human trafficking and community-based sexual exploitation in the
Americas, after the Dominican Republic...
-
Mexico is the
gateway for almost all migrants attempting to escape the gender
hostile living environ-ment and poverty in Latin America, to
reach the U.S.
-
It is also a
'mega-center' for modern sex trafficking and female slavery
-
It is a place
where the sexual exploitation of indigenous women and girls is
blatant and openly perpetrated
-
Mexico is
also a society with a well-establish-ed women's rights move-ment
- one with exceptional journalistic skills.
Thus, the Mexican emergency in gender rights is uniquely visible for
the world community to see close-up. We feel that it is important to
maintain the spotlight on these issues because the crisis is getting
worse with each passing day, and the current administra-tion in
Mexico is not doing much at all to stop this catastrophe.
Part of our goal is
to translate some of the huge body of Spanish language information
that has been created in response to this emergency. This effort
allows true information about the facts on the ground to be shared
openly across the English-Spanish language barrier.
Some academics, non-governmental organizations and government
agencies in the U.S. have misunderstood (intentionally or not)the
intensity of the gender crisis in Mexico and across Latin America in
the past. We believe that such a lack of clear understanding has
been responsible for at least part of the inaction by the U.S.
Government and U.S. based academics and activists in favor of
defending women and girls facing impunity in Mexico and the rest of
Latin America.
LibertadLatina
accurately presents the facts so that
well-informed decisions may be made by those who have the power to
change the situation on the ground, especially through the use of
U.S. foreign policy.
The mass gender atrocities that women and girls face across Mexico,
from femicide to sex trafficking to a condoned culture of the rape
of women and children, must be responded to by people of conscience
across the world. The Calderon administra-tion has not stepped up to
the plate to defend women and girls. Shame on them!
The basic reasons why a charge of corruption is valid against
government officials in Mexico involves the fact that such
corruption openly exists at all levels of government in plain view.
Nobody can actually hide such a pervasive aspect of social
interaction.
This 'culture of impunity' is one that is reinforced by Mexico's
centuries-old traditions of institutional sexism, anti-Indigenous
racism and classism. Today that legacy allows mass gender
atrocities to occur in an environment that is completely free
from any risk that a rapist, kidnapper, murderer or sex trafficker
of innocent women and children will ever be prosecuted or jailed. If
the victim is indige-nous, the legal risks for the criminal
victimizer are miniscule.
Last, we
are not impressed with the fact that President Calderon has hurled a
charge of corruption against the U.S. during the beginning of the
administration of President Barak Obama. President Calderon never
said such things during the administration of former President
George W. Bush (who kept quiet about corruption in Mexico).
It appears obvious that President Obama's willingness to allow some
honesty into the official dialog about corruption in Mexico is
ruffling President Calderon's feathers.
Now that the discussion has hit a nerve in Mexico in regard to the
realities surrounding illicit drug trafficking and corruption, it is
time to take the discussion up a notch, and for the Obama
Administration to demand that President Calderon put an end to his
administration's institutionalized sexist practices and policies of
official apathy and inaction on women's right issues. These
behaviors allow gender atrocities to take place
en-mass while the world sleeps.
President Calderon must end the gender hostile living environment
in Mexico that today denies the fundamental rights of citizen and
migrant women and girl children to a life free from the constant
risk of rape, kidnapping and sale into sex slavery! If no action is
taken in Mexico City, then leaders in Washington, DC and other world
capitols must 'play the parent' and end this tragedy.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 14/15, 2009
See also:
LibertadLatina
About the crisis of femicide facing
women and girls in Ciudad Juarez, in Chihuahua state, Mexico
Video documentation
Leticia Valdez Martell speaks out at
rally for Lydia Cacho
Leticia Valdez Martell speaks at large and
angry public rally in front of Mexico's Supreme Court to
protest the Court's decision to reject a Court investigation
of Puebla governor Mario Marin and accused pedophile
millionaire Kamel Nacif, plotters in the kidnapping and
torture of activist journalist Lydia Cacho in revenge for
her publishing of an exposé targeting pedophile networks in
Cancun: Demons of Eden.
(In Spanish)
TVCiudania (Citizen
TV)
Presented on YouTube
Dec. 3, 2007
LibertadLatina
Journalist / Activist Lydia Cacho is
Railroaded by the Legal System for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks In Mexico
Mexico and Central America
 |
|
Hell on Earth
Infierno en
la Tierra
Map shows border region between Guatemala and
Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche states in Mexico -
Map-of-mexico.co.uk |
Mujeres migrantes en la Frontera Sur: no sin
ellas el 8 de marzo
Afirma la ONG Enlace, Comunicación y
Capacitación
La vida sigue y la humanidad continúa inmersa en un vacío
sistema ritualista: el día de la paz, de la bandera, de los derechos
humanos… Pero quienes tenemos un compromiso con las mujeres del
mundo, en particular con las que viven la experiencia migratoria en
nuestro país y regiones vecinas, no queremos un simple recordatorio
con golpes de pecho.
Enlace, Comunicación y Capacitación quiere levantar la voz y
subrayar la letra, en este Día Internacional de la Mujer, para
insistir en la situación que padecen las mujeres migrantes de la
frontera sur de nuestro país: la violación sistemática que se ejerce
a sus más elementales derechos humanos.
Queremos ponerle rostro a esa violencia, con base en
experiencias que las propias mujeres migrantes nos han relatado, de
las cuales, en diversos casos, hemos sido testigos.
We cannot celebrate International Women’s Day
without remem-bering our migrant sisters in crisis on Mexico’s
southern border
Life goes-on, day-by-day, and we continue
participating in an empty, ritualistic process. Our annual peace
day, flag day, and even human rights days... But those of us who
have a commitment to women across the world, and in particular to
the women facing migration across Mexico’s southern border and its
neighboring regions, don’t want to hear just another day of [empty
oratory and] chest beating.
Our organization - Liaison, Communi-cation and
Training, wants to underscore that point on this International
Women's Day.
We want to spotlight this systematic violation of
women’s most elemental human rights.
We
want to put a face to this violence, based on the experiences that
women migrants have reported, situations which, in many cases, we
have also witnessed.
Their experiences are not isolated. They are the common experience
of thousands of women who face being uprooted and subjected to
violence by their dual condition of being both poor and women.
We also remember those women who live through the
painful realities that come from having husbands and children who
have migrated. Such migration brings with it the heavy emotional
burden of inevitable family breakups in addition to having to take
charge of more community, household and field work than their
husbands ever did when they were home...
The Rice Cooker, the antechamber of hell
Between
Tapachula and the town of Huixtla [near the Guatemalan border] is an
immigration checkpoint. This forces migrants to go into the forest
in order to get around the checkpoint. It is there, in the region
called the Rice Cooker, where migrants face the most
intensive violations of their rights.
Since
before her trip, Maria had been warned of the risk of rape, so
before leaving, he decided to get an [anticontra-ceptive] injection.
She
told us that she never thought that it would happen to her, a
sentiment that is shared by most women who leave their homes to
migrate.
Maria
and her cousin entered the Rice Cooker alone. The area was
covered with overgrown tall grass. After a while, they were
intercepted by five armed men.
"They
were pointing their guns at us. It was all very strange ... the land
was overgrown with weeds. But after walking a short while, where
they told us to walk, we saw that they had set up a camp, complete
with a bathroom, toilet paper, utensils, and other things that I
don’t remember.
That's when the five men raped me.
It
is something that I don’t want to remember.
These men thought that my cousin was my husband, and they forced him
to watch what they did to me. He tried to defend me, but they
pointed a gun at him. They screamed at him to force him to watch the
rapes. Now, I am scared all of the time.
After that they stole everything we had, and they let us go. We
returned to Tapachula and got help..."
(Extended English translation)
Dafne Isis Cruz Monroy*
CIMAC Noticias
March 7, 2009
LibertadLatina
Commentary
The gang rape with impunity that Maria in the above article
experienced is also the fate of 450 to 600 new female victims on
Mexico's border with Guatemala each day.
Beyond those stark statistics about the border region, women are
subjected to the same threat of rape throughout the long journey
across Mexico. The rapists are organized thugs, individual men and
also soldiers and policemen.
In all of these cases, the perpetrators act with impunity, knowing
full-well that law enforcement will never bring them to justice.
The Guatemalan-Mexican border region is the gateway for almost all
Central American and South American migrants seeking to reach the
United States. Rapists and sex traffickers have therefore set
themselves up, like trolls under a bridge, just waiting to catch
their human prey.
Many who are raped are not simply set free. They are sold for a good
profit to local and international sex traffickers who take these
women (and a very large number of underage girls who are also
migrating) overseas to be sold to brothels in the United States,
Europe and Japan.
The southern Mexican border city of Tapachula boasts an estimated
20,000 Central American migrant women who are trapped in
prostitution. Over half of that number are underage girls. These
women and girls were either trafficked, or in many cases they simply
had no money to continue the journey to the U.S. border.
While Mexico's government adamantly insists that Mexican citizens
who move to the United States as undocumented immigrants must be
treated with dignity and respect, that government is itself guilty
of allowing a state of impunity to exist in regard to the treatment
of Latin American migrants who cross through its territory.
Sex traffickers refer to the south-to-north migration routes
across Mexico as 'the Milky Way' because it is such a good hunting
ground for kidnapping women and girls. As undocumented migrants,
they have no identity and thus often express no willingness to
report their abuse to a law enforcement community that has proven
historically that it is not interested in hearing what they have to
say.
We believe that the U.S. Government, other governments, the
Organization of American States, the United Nations, and
inter-governmental and also non-governmental organizations all must
take action now, and insist to Mexico that it put a stop to the
mass gender atrocities taking place along its southern border.
The fact that the victim community is made up largely of poor
Indigenous and Mestiza (mixed Indigenous and European ancestry)
women and girls, who have always been looked down upon by the elites
who govern (you never see a brown person on the Mexican-owned
Univision television network, for example), does not give Mexico
permission to continue, in the year 2009, condoning the rape with
impunity that Spanish conquerors and their socially elite
descendants have imposed upon the female Indigenous and also the
Mestiza population during each of the last five centuries.
Today, that historically violent sexist impunity, that now affects
women and girls of all ethnicities, plays itself out in many ways.
The most pernicious of those behaviors is a social tolerance for
rape, child molestation, child prostitution and the kidnapping of
women and children into sexual slavery.
It concerns us greatly that President Felipe Calderon delayed for 11
months the publication of the regulations needed to enforce the
nation's first anti-trafficking law, while ignoring four warnings
from Congress about the delay.
It is also troubling that President Calderon's allies in the
Christian Democrat and conservative National Action Party (PAN), as
well as some conservative prelates who are their staunchest allies,
have together publicly rationalized the femicide in Ciudad Juarez
and across Mexico by blaming women for being 'immodest' - while
openly justifying acts of rape as uncontrolled responses by 'normal'
men to women's wearing of short skirts.
In the midst's of this lack of national moral leadership on
protect-ing even the most basic of women's human rights, we applaud
the efforts of certain brave members of the Senate and Chamber of
Deputies in Mexico to hold the government of President Felipe
Calderon accountable for defending women and girls from impunity.
Someone must stand-up and be the 'parent' in this crisis.
If President Calderon won't do it, and if the Congress of the
Republic can't push him to end impunity, then it is up to the United
States Government and other world bodies to place constraints on the
hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that Mexico receives.
Although Mexico is facing tough times as it prosecutes the war
against drug cartels, the human rights of women and children cannot
be muffled, much as a rapist muffles a victim's scream's, while the
whole nightmare is clouded by the fog of the counter-narco war.
The victims, and those at risk await our effective efforts to
defend them from impunity today.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
For International
Women's Day
March 11/12, 2009
See also:
Central America: Activists infiltrate sex
rings
Activists who infiltrated child trafficking, prostitution and
pornography networks in Central America and Mexico painted a sordid
picture in a new report on the growing commercial sexual
exploitation of children in the region, presented by Casa Alianza in
the Costa Rican capital...
…It took a multi-disciplinary team of 56 experts 10 months to
prepare the organiza-tion's first ''region-wide investigation of
child trafficking, prostitution, pornography and sex tourism in
Mexico and Central America.'' The probe was carried out in high-risk
conditions in which the experts infiltrated rings of traffickers in
minors, pedophiles and producers of child pornography…
The child sex exploitation networks were made up of people
like taxi drivers, owners and managers of hotels and bars, and
pimps, many of whom demonstrated a high level of specialization in
the illegal trade…
Psychologist Viviana Retana, [a] member of the team of
investigators, told IPS that the trafficking
of children as sexual merchandise was a constant phenomenon in
Central America and Mexico, as well as other countries in Latin
America. ''The rings of pedophiles and procurers are very
well organized, operate with advanced technology and handle large
amounts of money,'' she explained. The authors reported that
procurers in Mexico buy 12 to 15-year- old girls from Central
America - mainly Salvadorans and Hondurans - for 100 to 200 dollars.
Inter Press Service (IPS
April 5, 2002
Al salir, viajar por México hacia EU y regresar a casa
Migración de centroamericanas, el fenómeno de la violencia
Central American women face violence during
migration
During the meeting, which was convened by the Latin American Association of
Organizations for the Promotion of Development (ALOP), Ruby Escamilla explained
that
six to
eight out of every ten Central American women - some 30 to
40 percent of 1,500 migrants who cross Mexico's southern border daily, suffer
some form of sexual violence...
[That amounts to 450 to 600 new victims
of rape with impunity each day, with no law enforcement response
whatsoever.]
Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes
CIMAC Noticias
Dec. 23, 2008
LibertadLatina
The city of
Tapachula, near Mexico's border with Guatemala,
is one of the largest and most lawless child sex
trafficking markets in all of Latin America.
A 2007 study by...
ECPAT
[End Child Prostitution and Trafficking]...
revealed that over 21,000 Central Americans, mostly
children, are prostituted in 1,552 bars and brothels
in Tapachula.
More Central American women
trapped into prostitution in Mexico
Almudena Calatrava
EFE News
Jan. 02, 2004
In 2006, the International
Labor Organization conducted a survey of adult
attitudes in Mexico, Central America and South
America, where it is quite easy [for men] to engage
in sexual relations with children.
Some 65% of respondents stated that
they don't see any problem, and they don't feel any
sort of conflict or fear in regard to having sex
with boy and girl children, and "they don't feel
that there is anything wrong with doing it."
...Mexico has been converted into a
paradise for pimps and a living hell for thousands
of Central American girl children like Jackeline
Jirón Silva, whose captors have prostituted her
during the past 32 months. It is known that during
half of that time, Jackeline has been held in the
southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
Ana Lilia Pérez
Revista Contralínea
Oct. 22, 2007
Iraq
Iraq's Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping
Daughters
She goes by "Hinda," but that's not her real name. That's what she's
called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her
several times a week from across the country. They think she is one
of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the
stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist
who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway,
where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex
market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to
fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are
sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. "The
buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it's like the trade in cattle,"
Hinda says. "I've seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of
their daughters." (See pictures of Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
...It remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State
Department's Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government
is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, "offers no protection
services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent
trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a
problem in the country..."
Time Magazine / CNN
March 7,
2009
LibertadLatina
Commentary
A demand for 'war' against
traffickers
The
conditions of life for women and children who are caught in the
hands of sex traffickers and other criminal gangs are very similar
across the world. They are terrible. War zones present especially
difficult conditions for the defense of the rights of these victims
and also those who are at risk of such exploitation.
Although the U.S. is focused on combat in Iraq, it cannot be
overlooked that the great majority of widows in that nation receive
no pension, and thus many of them resort to selling their own
daughters, if not themselves, to local and international sex
traffickers to 'survive.'
During the past several years published reports from Mexico, Panama,
Argentina and Bolivia have told the story of how mothers sell even
their 5-month-old infants as prostitutes, catering to local men and
the thousands of US and European sex tourists who flood Latin
America like so much money-laden sludge.
In both the examples of Iraq and Latin America, historic patterns of
institutional sexism, the related, deliberate under-education of
women, and the current global economic decline combine to exclude
poor urban and rural women from the paid labor force. As a result,
women are at the 'mercy' of men. In many cases, men are simply not
going to offer mercy to those who are the most vulnerable in
society, poor women and their underage children.
Today
in Mexico and Colombia conditions of war have provided sex
traffickers with 'cover' while they kidnap, rape and traffic women
and children en mass. As in the case of Iraq, Latina women
living in war conditions are the easiest targets for violent male
criminals who commit gender crimes with impunity in the absence of
the rule of law.
These
are snapshots of the tip of the iceberg of this crisis. What
is really going on is a nightmare that the rest of the world has
little visibility into.
Humanity cannot allow these mass atrocities against women to
continue.
The United Nations and the Organization of American States, among
others, have set lofty goals for ending world poverty and violence
against women by 2015. But with the intitutional-ized sexist
impunity that is the foundation of decision making within the
govern-ments of countries like Iraq and Mexico (a condition
which has been completely uncontested by the world and by the United
States), there is no hope for achieving these lofty goals. In fact,
for activists on the ground in these environments, we would have to
say that such goals amount to nonsense.
The
people of the world must not make the assumption that officials
within our elected governments actually have a handle on this
situation, or that all of them actually care about what happens to
these women and children.
In
reality, the world is losing control rapidly. The global economic
downturn will only accelerate the descent of humanity into
tolerating ever- more severe and 'unspeakable' forms of exploitation
and slavery.
Therefore we speak out in defense of the innocent!
We
look forward to seeing real change from the new US administration of
President Barak Obama.
With
a thousand crises on his Cabinet's plate, it is hard to think that
women and children exposed to the risk and the reality of
exploitation will have a chance at a better life. But the effort
must be made, and that effort must be well-organized and well
coordinated, much as a government would approach managing a war of
life or death with a strong military adversary.
When
civilizations have faced such challenges in the past, they have
stood-up and fought to defeat pervasive evil.
We
demand that women and children be afforded the same level of urgent
priority as other national security emergencies. The United States
government and inter-governmental organizations must be motivated to
demand an end to these mass gender atrocities from nations where
impunity reigns. Nations that today receive billions of dollars in
foreign aid from the U.S. and from the world community.
These
crimes grow exponentially in the face of corruption, economic
downturn and an $11 billion dollar international slavery trade that
focuses 80% of it efforts on enslaving women and girls so that they
may be sold to brothels across the world, to be beaten and raped
with impunity 30, 40 and 50 times a day by men with no conscience.
As pop star and anti-slavery activist Ricky
Martin has stated with sincerity and conviction:
Let's
all make sure that our elected representatives know that its on!
Hold them accountable on these critical issues!
So
Iraq wants additional U.S. funding? Then make the sexist officials
of that country support women and children in need. They cannot
survive by absorbing sunlight as if they were plants. So how are
they going to survive?
Mexico urgently wants the $300 million just approved by the US
Congress to fight its violent drug cartels, who are also the
nation's largest sex trafficking networks.
In
exchange for those funds, Congress and President Obama must demand
that strings be attached to that aid (something the Calderon
government has always fought against on national sovereig-nty
grounds).
This
is not an issue of national sovereignty. We are quite confident that
the majority of Mexican women and children who life on the edge of
this chaos would agree that the United States cannot continue to
pour foreign aid money into a Mexican government infrastructure that
systematically denies and ignores the rights of women to equality
and the right to a life without violence.
The
anti-drug cartel oriented
Merida Initiative and other major
foreign aid packages must include provisions for accountability,
beyond the watered-down approach that was implemented by the US
State Department
Trafficking in Persons office under
the administration of former President George W. Bush.
An
end to President Calderon's active obstruction of women's equal
rights, including the right to live free from being sex trafficked,
must be made a condition of U.S. support for aid.
The
great majority of Latin American nations need to hear the same stern
warning from the U.S., because almost none of them view gender
exploitation as a top priority. Corruption and a tolerance of
impunity are their 'daily bread.'
There
is virtually no social safety net in Latin America. If you or a
close family member are not healthy enough and lucky enough to work
(locally or by migrating), then you will indeed actually die from
hunger as your fellow citizens turn their heads away. In that
context, sex and labor trafficking becomes a viable option for some
women, and the same dire poverty causes many men to say: "Hey, I
can kidnap, rape and then sell little girls and women, and actually
make a good living from that activity."
The
poor women and children of these countries (and especially
Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations - who have no voice in
national life) are viewed as 'expendable' by governments and social
elites. Thus, women and children suffer in virtual silence as an
unholy alliance between the wealthy, corrupt officials and sex
traffickers derives profits from their exploitation. This is not a
new scenario. It has played itself out for 500 years on Latin
America's plantations and in its urban centers.
As
the global economic downturn makes life even more difficult for the
220 million Latin Americans who live on $2 dollars or less per day
(as well as for everyone else), and as the drug cartels, mafias and
Japanese yakuzas reach their violent tentacles and fangs further
into the lives of the innocent to make a fast buck, someone will
have to play the parent in this increasingly audacious display of
lawless impunity.
We
hope, pray and also insist that President Barak Obama and U.S.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton step-up to the plate and
jump-start this epic struggle against this epidemic of mass gender
atrocities.
Otherwise, the traffickers will continue to dance in the streets
while the women, children and men trapped in slavery and
exploitation will continue to live through daily gang rape and
torture, leading to a greatly shortened life.
Be it
in Iraq, Mexico, Colombia or Japan, that outcome is
unacceptable!
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
International
Women's Day
March 8/9, 2009
The Americas
OEA realiza encuentro sobre trata de personas
con representantes de la sociedad civil
Una Reunión Preparatoria de representantes de la Sociedad Civil con vistas a la
Segunda Reunión de Autoridades Nacionales en Materia de Trata de Personas, a
realizarse en Buenos Aires (Argentina) entre el 25 y el 27 del presente mes, se
inició en la fecha en la sede de la Organización de los Estados Americanos
(OEA), en Washington DC. El evento, que se extenderá hasta el miércoles 4 de
marzo, es organizado por el Departamento de Seguridad Pública de la Secretaría
de Seguridad Multi-dimensional de la OEA.
El objetivo de la reunión preparatoria de la Sociedad Civil para la Segunda
Reunión de Autoridades Nacionales en Materia de Trata de Personas, es presentar
un espacio de diálogo a las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONGs) que
trabajan en la lucha contra la trata en las Américas, para que puedan
intercambiar información sobre los avances, desafíos y buenas prácticas, y en
base a sus experiencias, formular recomendaciones a los Estados Miembros de la
OEA para una mayor coordinación y eficacia entre las diversas instituciones
gubernamentales y ONGs que trabajan en torno a dicha temática.
El encuentro cuenta con la participación de representantes de 27 organizaciones
de la Sociedad Civil.
Organización de los
Estados Americanos
3 de marzo de 2009
The OAS organizes meeting on human trafficking
with representatives of civil society
Washington, DC -
A
preparatory meeting of representatives of the Civil Society with a
view to the Second Meeting of National Authorities on Human
Trafficking, that will take place in Buenos Aires (Argentina) from
the 25th till the 27th of March, began at the Organization of
American States’ headquarters in Washington DC. The event, which
will be held until March 4th, is organized by the Department of
Public Security (DPS) of the Secretariat for Multidimensional
Security...
During the
two-day event, [27 non-governmental organizations] will report on
progresses, good practices, and challenges in the areas of:
prosecution on the crime of human trafficking, administration of
justice, strategies for international cooperation and institutional
strengthening, prevention of human trafficking, protection and
comprehensive victim assistance, particularly for women, children
and adolescents, including strategies of international cooperation.
During the second day, Civil Society organizations will offer
practical recommendations to OAS member states. These
recommend-ations will be presented to the Member States during the
Second Meeting of National Authorities.
The Department
of Public Security hopes that through the dialogue with civil
society organizations, Member States will coordinate efforts to
combat a crime that requires an interdisci-plinary and coordi-nated
response, involving diverse actors of the society from the countries
of origin, transit and destination.
This event has
the financial support of the Government of Canada.
South Florida Caribbean News
March 3, 2009
See also:
Press release:
The OAS organizes a meeting on human
trafficking with representatives of civil society
Organization of American States
March 3, 2009
Segunda Reunión de Autoridades Nacionales en
Materia de Trata de Personas - Marzo 25 a 27, 2009
Deuxième Réunion des autorités nationales en
matière de traite des personnes, Buenos Aires, Argentine - 25 au 27
mars 2009
Segunda Reunião de Autoridades Nacionais em
Matéria de Tráfico de Pessoas, Buenos Aires, Argentina - 25 a 27 de
março de 2009
Second Meeting of National Authorities on
Trafficking in Persons, Buenos Aires - Argentina - March 25 to 27,
2009
Sobre el Cumbre de las
Americas - Abril 19, 2009...
Recomendaciones de la Sociedad Civil
El 6 y 7
de febrero de 2009, más de 150 participantes de la sociedad civil de
los países sudamericanos se reunieron en la sede de la Facultad de
Derecho de la Universidad San Martín de Porres, en Lima, Perú, con
el fin de formular sus recomendaciones en preparación para la Quinta
Cumbre de las Américas, "Asegurar el futuro de nuestros ciudadanos
promoviendo la prosperidad humana, la seguridad energética y la
sostenibilidad ambiental." Entre de las recomendaciones son las
sigientes:
“Estamos decididos a perseverar en nuestros esfuerzos para prevenir,
combatir el terrorismo y el crimen organizado, en particular la
trata de personas, para la explotación sexual y otras formas de
explotación, que se ha convertido en la nueva esclavitud del siglo
XXI. Y nos comprometemos a proteger a las víctimas y perseguir a los
criminales, en concordancia con las leyes internacionales,
incluyendo la referida a los derechos humanos…. Y el crimen
organizado”.
About the April 19, 2009
Summit of the Americas...
Civil society recommendations
On February 6 and 7, 2009, more than 150 civil
society participants from the South American countries met... in
Lima, Peru, to formulate recommendations for the Fifth Summit of the
Americas, “Securing Our Citizens’ Future by Promoting Human
Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability.”
Among their set of recommendations was
the following text:
"We are
determined to persevere in our efforts to prevent and combat
terrorism and organized crime, in particular trafficking in human
lives for sexual exploitation and other purposes, which has become
the new slavery of the 21st century. And we commit to protecting the
victims and prosecuting the criminals, in accordance with
international law, including human rights…. and organized crime.”
Organization of American States (OAS)
Indigenous Latin America
Radio Programs Tackle Discrimination against
Indigenous Women
Quito — In
Latin America, Indigenous women encounter many obstacles. They are
frequently discriminated against for being women, for being
Indigenous, and in many cases, for being poor. However, their voices
are growing louder, demanding recognition of their rights.
Organizations that fight discrimination against Indigenous women are
gaining strength, supported by UNIFEM.
As part of
a UNIFEM regional project, “Working against Ethnic, Racial, and
Gender Discrimination – For the Effective Exercise of Indigenous
Women’s Rights in Latin America,” two organizations, ALER and
Radialistas Apasionados y Apasionadas, have produced a series of
radio programmes on Indigenous women’s rights.
The series
was designed to highlight common problems encountered by Indigenous
women and provide innovative solutions, in an entertaining manner.
Among the areas covered are the right to respectful and
multicultural education, access to justice, access to land,
protection of Indigenous territories, multicultural health care and
prevention of HIV/AIDS.
The radio
programs are presented in Spanish and a number of Indigenous
languages...
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
Dec. 18, 2008
Brazil
 |
|
Monseñor José Luis Azcona |
|
Amenazan de muerte a un obispo español por
denunciar el tráfico sexual
El obispo español de Marajó
(Brasil), monseñor José Luis Azcona, está amenazado de muerte por
denunciar a las mafias de tráfico y explotación sexual de mujeres y
niños en las que están implicados, según denunció el prelado,
"políticos, empresarios y policías".
Nacido en Pamplona hace casi 69 años
y perteneciente a la orden de los Agustinos-Recoletos, Azcona
incluso acudió a una comisión de investigación en el Parlamento
sobre la explotación de menores en el Estado de Pará, donde confirmó
sus denuncias. "Recogen a niñas del colegio y se las llevan para
explotarlas sexualmente, sobre todo en la Guayana Francesa y en
España", narra...
Spanish bishop in Brazil receives death
threats for denouncing the sex trade
The Bishop of Marajó,
Brazil, Monsignor Jose Luis Azcona of Spain, has been threatened
with death for denouncing trafficking gangs who are involved in the
sexual exploitation of women and children. The prelate denounced the
fact that "politicians, businessmen and policemen” participate in
this criminal activity...
The
Bishop has also accused Brazil's politicians and police of not
taking the "necessary measures" to stop trafficking. He noted: "In
Marajó a policeman was discovered to have trafficked 178 people,
many of them underage girls, into prostitution,
mostly to [neighboring] French Guyana.”
The only organization
that has spoken up in support of the Bishop is the Brazilian
Bishops' Conference. In a statement, they expressed full support to
those who have suffered death threats. "Any aggression is an attack
on all of us, his brothers in the Episcopal ministry, and
those
who serve with unbridled zeal and courage," the bishops said.
The letter added: "In
Christ we are as one with them, and with those who defend the
Indigenous peoples, women, children and adolescents who are sold
into sexual exploitation and are killed by drugs. We also support
those who work for environmental protection and against the
devastating greed that has had such dire consequences for human
life.”
Full English Translation
www.europapress.es
04/03/2009
Mexico
 |
|
Senator
Manlio Fabio Beltrones
(PRI Party)
Photo: Oswaldo Ramírez - Milenio Online |
Manlio critica reglamento contra trata de
personas
El coordinador del PRI en el Senado,
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, cuestionó diversas disposiciones dictadas
por el Ejecutivo en el Reglamento de la Ley para Prevenir y
Sancionar la Trata de Personas.
El legislador planteó la necesidad de
revisar dicho ordenamiento con detenimiento para hacerlo congruente
al espíritu de la legislación...
PRI Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones criticizes
President Calderon’s published regulations enabling the Law to
Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons
The
coordinator of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in the
Senate, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, has challenged various provisions
issued in [the much-awaited and recently published] Executive
Regulations of the Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons.
Senator Beltrones stated that the regulations must be revised to
bring them into line with the intent of Congress for the law. The
Senator, who is also president of that body's Political Coordinating
Committee, noted that the anti-trafficking bill was first promoted
by members of the Senate of the Republic.
Beltrones
added that the legislation as passed was able to establish [an
effective] legal framework to combat trafficking. He added that
human trafficking has international dimensions and subjects the most
vulnerable and defenseless members of society, including women,
adolescents and girl children, to modern day slavery...
The Senator stated
that Article 10 of the Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in
Persons says that "the Federal Executive shall establish an
Inter-Ministerial Commission, which shall prepare a National Program
to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons." Beltrones: "This is
essential to facilitate the task of diagnosing the problem,
developing strategies, developing a plan of action and setting
priorities to move us faster towards improving the care and
rehabilitation of victims, and to combat trafficking…"
The PRI's Senate leader emphasized that by adopting the Act,
Congress had responded to the long-standing demands for action by
domestic and international academics, scholars and non-governmental
organizations...
Full English translation
www.ehui.com
March 3, 2009
See also:
Calderón atora la ley contra la trata de
personas: Beltrones
Senator Beltrones: Mexico’s Human Trafficking
Law is Stuck Thanks to President Calderon's Refusal to Act
Background
• The
PRI in the Senate last week issued a
warning in the Standing Committee of Congress that requires
President Felipe Calderón to issue the regulations of the Law to Prevent
and Punish Trafficking in Persons.
• It
is the fourth warning made to President
Calderon, with the first three having been issued on July 8, September
10 and December 4, of 2008 respectively. These
previous calls to action went unanswered by President Calderon.
• The
warning signed by the PRI states that: "The
Federal Executive has committed a serious omission
for not having issued the regulations that will activate the
law."
Angelica Mercado
Milenio Online
Jan. 26, 2009
Mexico
Gobierno no atiende la trata de personas
Sólo
atienden aquello que les pueda representar votos y apoyos en función
de los próximos comicios electorales
En
nuestro país el negocio de la gente sigue creciendo. La compra venta
de niños para sexo y pornografía, las mujeres cautivas y
esclavizadas, adolescentes sin posibilidades de escapar. El fenómeno
del comercio de personas se ha incrementado en los últimos años,
tanto en México como a nivel internacional. La trata de personas
puede manifestarse en distintos delitos cometidos contra uno:
secuestro, violación, abuso, tratos crueles o degradantes,
suplantación de identidad, trabajos forzosos, daños a la salud,
lesiones, la prostitución forzosa; la utilización de niñas y niños
para la elaboración de pornografía, el tráfico o la venta de
órganos, entre otros...
A
pesar de que el gobierno mexicano ratificó el Protocolo de Palermo,
primer instrumento internacional que definió la trata de personas,
apenas 15 meses después de que entró en vigor
la Ley para Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas (primera
legislación especializada en la materia) emitió el reglamento para
la atención a las víctimas en el país (28-II-09).
El
Gobierno Federal y los gobiernos estatales, de todos los colores,
deben garantizar la protección de los ciudadanos y frenar el
incremento en delitos como secuestro, violencia intrafamiliar,
femenicidios y trata de personas, por mencionar los más agudos.
Es
necesario dejar de pensar que toda la violencia en nuestro país está
vinculada con el narco, abramos lo ojos. La violencia nos tiene
sitiados, tenemos que romperlo y liberarnos de este secuestro
nacional.
Mexico's government does not address trafficking in persons
Politicians serve only those who are potential supporters in the
upcoming election
[President Calderon
finally publishes the regulations to enable the nation's first
federal anti-trafficking law.]
In
our country the business of selling people continues to grow. This
involves the purchase and sale of children for sex and pornography,
and captive, enslaved women and teens unable to escape their
bondage. The phenomenon of trade in people has increased in recent
years both in Mexico and internationally...
During his May 2007 visit to Mexico, the UN Special Rapporteur on
the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Pornography estimated
that
85,000 girls and
boys were being used in making pornography.
In 21 of Mexico’s 32 states, sex tourism and a significant incidence
of trafficking in children and adolescents for commercial sexual
exploitation has been detected.
Moreover, the International Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
(CATW) argues that Mexico ranks fifth worldwide in regard to such
victims. They also state that at least
250,000 children
and teenagers are involved in the sex trade...
Although the Mexican government has ratified the Palermo Protocol,
the first international instrument to define trafficking,
it took
[President Calderon] 15 months after the enactment of the Law to
Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the first national
legislation to address the subject in Mexico) to publish the law's
required regulations...
We
need to under-stand, with our eyes open, that not all violence in
our country is linked to the drug traffickers. Violence has besieged
us. We must break away from it and liberate ourselves from this
'national kidnapping.'
http://sdpnoticias.com/
March 3, 2009
Darfur, Sudan
Soldier says he was ordered to kill, rape
In an interview with CNN, [a] soldier said he was conscripted
in the summer of 2002, taken from a marketplace and trained to kill
his own people...
"The order is that the soldiers at the front, and there are
some people who are watching you from behind, if you try to escape
or do anything you will get shot. The order is that we go to the
village, burn it and kill the people. …
"I had no choice but I will say that I
didn't kill anybody but the raping of the small
children, it was bad."
Among the rape victims were girls as young as 12, said the
former soldier, who attempted to desert but was caught and tortured
with burning rubber.
The interview was released the same day the
International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands issued
an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir
for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
United Press
International
March 4, 2009
LibertadLatina
Commentary
The
atrocities in Darfur warrant immediate international action to stop
them. We salute the
International Criminal Court in the Hague for having
the moral integrity to proceed with signing an arrest warrant for
the president of Sudan.
During the 1970's and 1980's a number of civil wars in Latin America
featured a very similar use of mass rape and murder against civilian
populations. Innocent women, children and men faced these horrors by
the hundreds of thousands in Guatemala and other Latin American
nations as the world stood by, largely silent, and did nothing to
help them.
That
pattern of criminal impunity has left in its wake a 'tradition' of
femicide and human trafficking in the region.
War criminals - you can run... but you cannot
hide!
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 4, 2009
See
also:
Violence Against Women in Latin America
...Gender-based violence was integral to the European
conquest of Latin America, setting a pernicious pattern in which
Indigenous women have been disproportionately targeted for rape as a
weapon of war. Non-Indigenous women have also been abused during
armed conflicts, including [during] more than 70 US military
interven-tions into their countries.
Under the military regimes of the [South American]
Southern Cone countries in the 1970s, thousands of women endured the
disappearance and murder of their children and other loved ones,
while women political prisoners were systematically subjected to
sexual torture.
Violence against women was also a widespread
counter-insurgency tactic in Central America in the 1980s. During
the 1990s, women in the heavily militarized state of Chiapas, Mexico
were subjected to sexual harassment, rape,
forced prostitution and compulsory servitude in military camps.
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, Latin
American governments have followed the Bush Administration's lead in
subordinating human rights to militarized notions of "national
security". The trend has undermined governments' obligations to
human rights, including women's right to a life free of violence...
www.MADRE.org
Jan. 6, 2006
LibertadLatina
About the crisis facing Indigenous
women and girls in Guatemala
About the crisis facing women and
children in El Salvador:
From: "No Rescue From Atlacatl
Battalion"
(The Atlacatl Battalion was a U.S.
trained Special Forces
unit of the Army of El Salvador, many of who's officers
were trained at the
U.S. Army's School of the Americas.)
The Eyewitness account of Rufina Amaya
to the massacre in the village of El
Mozote.
To date, the remains of 809 victims of
this barbaric act have been identified
by forensic experts, many found in mass
graves.
...The women were disposed of next.
"First they picked
out the young girls and took them away to
the hills," where they were raped before being killed, Amaya
reported. "Then they picked out the old women and
took them to Israel Marquez's house on the
square. We heard the shots there."
The children died last. "An order
arrived from a Lieutenant Caceres to Lieutenant. Ortega to go ahead
and kill the children too," Amaya observed. "A soldier said
'Lieutenant, some-body here says he won't kill children.' 'Who's the
sonofabitch who said that?' the lieutenant
answered. 'I am going to kill him.' I could hear them shouting from
where I was crouching in the tree."
A boy named Chepe, age 7, was the only
child to survive the siege. He later described the terrors he
witnessed: "They slit some of the kids' throats, and many they
hanged from the tree ... The soldiers kept telling us, 'You are
guerrillas and this is justice. This is justice.'
Finally, there were only three of us
left. I watched them hang my brother. He was two years old. I could
see that I was going to be killed soon,
and I thought it would be better to die running, so I ran. I slipped
through the soldiers and dived into the
bushes. They
fired into the bushes, but none of their
bullets hit me..."
The above was one of many
massacres and random murders carried out by U.S. trained and funded
army units in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. If such
behavior is illegal in Darfur, Sudan, why was it not illegal in El
Salvador and Guatemala, who suffered equally high rates of innocent
civilians who were raped and murdered?
Spain,
South America
Spain arrests nine for sex trafficking
Nine people were
arrested in the Spanish province of Alicante for being alleged
members of a band dedicated to sexually exploiting undocumented
South American women, police said on Tuesday.
The arrested people,
most of whom are Brazilian, stand accused of bringing the women into
the country and forcing them to engage in prostitution in clubs and
individual homes in the province of Alicante and nearby areas.
The members of the
group provided false documentation for the personal use of the
women, and they also sold such documents to other foreigners.
Law enforcement
personnel identified the alleged head of the network, a man with a
criminal history of similar activities and who is barred from
entering Spain...
EFE
March 3, 2009
Mexico
Lydia Cacho
 |
|
Lydia Cacho
laneta.apc.org |
Asombro internacional ante impunidad de
pedófilos en México
Mi viaje
comenzó en Londres, donde un investigador sobre pornografía infantil
declaró que, de las redes internacionales de pedófilos que su equipo
descubrió, el único país que no quiso colaborar para investigar a
los abusadores mexicanos, fue México. La impunidad de la PGR sigue
sorprendiendo a los británicos...
He entrevistado a
especialistas y altos mandos del ejército encargados de Migración e
Inteligencia Antinarcóticos. El Coronel Turusbeckov, con el
semblante sombrío asegura que mientras ellos detienen a los
tratantes de mujeres, la policía del estado los libera. La
corrupción, dice ¡no sabe lo tremenda que es! El Coronel
evidentemente no conoce México...
Redes de Abuso
Hago otra
entrevista que esclarece el vínculo entre maquiladoras, explotación
laboral y sexual. Una especialista noruega asegura que las redes se
tejen desde fuera hacia adentro.
Afuera las autoridades
más poderosas, en el centro los criminales. La cobardía y
complicidad de las autoridades mexicanas nos podría convertir en la
Tailandia de América. Afuera la Suprema Corte, adentro…haga usted la
lista. Desde este lado del mundo, me queda claro que sólo una
sociedad fuerte y una prensa libre pueden evitar el destino que nos
auguran quienes conocen los mecanismos de la esclavitud del Siglo
XXI.
The international community expresses
astonishment in the face of pedophile impunity in Mexico
My journey began in
London, where a researcher on child pornography told me that
Mexico was the only country that refused to
cooperate with his team’s efforts to pursue abusers discovered by
their investigations. The impunity of the Office of the
Attorney General continues to amaze the British.
I then left for
Turkey, and continued on to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. This former
Soviet satellite nation has now become a supplier of women and girls
for commercial sexual exploitation in Turkey, Russia and the United
Arab Emirates. Poverty and impunity are allies of the traffickers of
women and girls…
[A Kyrgi policeman
asked:] "If child exploitation is banned in East Asia and the
Pacific, where else would [a pedophile go?." In a serious tone he
added that such a man would go to Mexico or Brazil. Sexual predators
know the routes of impunity. They understand which countries are
safe for them...
Networks of Abuse
I conducted another
interview that clarifies the link between maquiladoras [low wage
foreign-owned factories in Mexico] and labor and sexual
exploitation. A specialist in Norway told me that such networks are
woven from the outside in.
Outside sit the
[government] authorities, and inside sit the most powerful
criminals.
Thanks to the cowardice
and complicity of the Mexican authorities, we could become the
Thailand of the Americas. On the outside sits the Supreme Court. As
far as the inner circle [of criminals] is concerned... 'fill in the
blanks.'
From this side of the
world, it was clear that only a strong society and a free press can
avoid the fate desired by those who promote twenty-first century
slavery.
Full English Translation
Lydia Cacho
Published in Lydia Cacho’s column in El Universal, CIMAC Noticias,
and
www.LydiaCacho.net
March 02, 2009
See also:
LibertadLatina
Journalist
/ Activist
Lydia
Cacho
is
Railroaded by the
Legal Process for
Exposing Child Sex
Networks
In Mexico
Latin
America
Economic crisis could destabilize some
countries
…CIA Director Leon Panetta… said the CIA has stepped up its
collection and analysis of information related to the worldwide
economic meltdown. It began Wednesday producing what will be a daily
economic intelligence briefing for the administration.
The recession "is affecting the stability of the world and as
an intelligence agency we have to pay attention to that because we
have to know whether or not the economic impacts on China and Russia
or anywhere else are in fact influencing the policies of those
countries when it comes to foreign affairs, when it comes to the
issues that we care about," he said.
Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela are in dire
economic straits and could be destabilized by the global economic
crisis, he said…
The Associated Press
Feb. 25, 2009
LibertadLatina
note:
Today
220 million people live on 2 dollars per day or less across Latin
America. Even without the current global economic crisis, this
population was already living through a dire emergency.
We
encourage the administration of U.S. President Barak Obama to take
these factors into account when addressing the economic downturn in
the Americas.
Corrupt
governments, their collaborators in corrupt non-govern-mental
organizations and the multi-billion dollar drug and sex trafficking
networks and mafias stand to make a lot of money by kidnapping,
raping and then selling into sexual slavery the poor, the Indigenous
and the Afro-descendant women and children of Latin America.
When
times get tough, the general population and especially the elites in
these nations look upon these most vulnerable of their citizens as
expendable resources. They say: "If we can make a buck by selling
them, let's do it!" That sounds preposterous on its face, but it is
the reality on-the-ground across Latin America.
I have
seen these realities up-close in Latin America myself.
Only
strong moral and economic voices across the world can change that
ugly reality for those innocents who are today victimized with
impunity as the world stands silent.
End impunity now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 3, 2009
|
¡Feliz Día Internacional de
la Mujer!
Happy International Women's
Day! |
|
March 8 /
Marzo 8
|
|
|
|
|
¡Feliz Día Internacional de
la Mujer!
Happy International Women's
Day!
LibertadLatina
Nuestra declaración de
2005 Día Internacional de la Mujer
es pertinente hoy en día, y define bien la
emergencia
hemesferica que enfrentan las mujeres y en
particular as niñas de todas las Américas.
Pedimos a todas las personas de conciencia
que siguimos trabajando duro para inform al
público en general acerca de esta crisis, y
que aumentamos nuestra presión popular sobre
los funcion-arios electos y otros
encarga-dos de tomar decisiones, que deben
cambiar el statu quo y responder con
seriadad, por fin, a las
atrocidades
de violencia de género
-en masa- que afectan cada vez mas a
las mujeres y las niñas de las Américas.
¡Basta ya con la impunidad y la violencia de
genero!
LibertadLatina
Our 2005 statement for
International Women's Day
is relevant today, and accurately defines
the hemispheric emergency facing women and
especially girl children in the Americas.
We ask that all people of conscience work
hard to continue informing the general
public about this crisis, and that we all
ramp-up the pressure on elected
officials and other decision makers, who
must change the status quo and respond,
finally, to the increasingly severe mass
gender atrocities that are victimizing
women and girls across the Americas.
End Impunity and violence against women now!
Chuck Goolsby
LibertadLatina
March 8, 2008 |
|
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