Latina Women & Children at Risk

U.S. Latina Slavery - San Diego, CA

This Section Last Updated on January 22, 2008

The (ongoing) San Diego, California

Child Mass Sexual Slavery Scandal

Underage Girl Sex Slaves in San Diego Filmed by Southern California's NBC4

About the Child Rape Camps of San Diego County, California - A Crime Against Humanity inside the U.S.A.

The articles here below describe one of the largest known child and youth sex trafficking cases in the United States to date. In one of several related cases, hundreds of Mexican girls between 7 and 18 were kidnapped or subjected to false romantic entrapment by organized criminal sex trafficking gangs. Victims were then brought to San Diego County, California. Over a 10 year period these girls were raped by hundreds of men per day in more than 2 dozen home based and agricultural camp based brothels.

A Latina medical doctor employed by a U.S. federal agency provided condoms to the victims for years, and was told by her supervisors not to speak out and organize efforts to rescue the victims. This doctor was ordered under threat of legal action to keep quiet about the mass victimization of children in "rape camps."

When a joint FBI, INS and San Diego Sheriff's raid was finally organized and executed, ten years after local law enforcement first learned about local trafficking, many of the criminal traffickers and johns escaped. The 50 johns and traffickers who were captured were later released when the intimidated child victims refused to accuse their enslavers. Most of the victims were then deported to Mexico without being provided with any victim services.

A number of murdered immigrant teen girls have been found in San Diego, possibly linked to trafficking rings.

The San Diego child sex trafficking case continues to evolve. In June, 2003 one of the key trafficking ringleaders was convicted of a charge that would bring him 18 months in jail. The rural rape camps continue to exist and were filmed by a local TV station (see below).

The San Diego Sex Trafficking Case deserves the full attention of the criminal justice system, social service providers and victim advocates. Previous to the notoriety of this case, anti-trafficking advocates noted that some concerned members of Congress and other decision makers would ask "if 50,000 enslaved persons are trafficked into the U.S. each year, where are they?"

That question still needs to be researched and answered on a national basis. In the present, the San Diego case provides the "smoking gun" that documents the true horror of the Latin America to U.S. trafficking crisis.

The San Diego case represents a large tip of the national trafficking 'iceberg,' and this case must be addressed with aggressive legal zeal. The San Diego child sex trafficking case is a true abomination in the eyes of the creator and in the eyes of the entire the human race!

Failure to deal with this case effectively will send a clear message to traffickers that the U.S. does not care about the lives and mass-rape of the hundreds of 7 to 18 year old girls who have been, and are today, victimized in this international criminal enterprise. To accomplish an end to such trafficking, cross-cultural compassion and an end to anti-immigrant hostility in U.S. society will have to take place. Otherwise, such hostility and apathy will allow traffickers to continue their criminal violence against these victimized women and children with impunity.

End criminal impunity now!

LibertadLatina.org

Latest San Diego Related News

Added July 5, 2008

Mexico

En desventaja, niños mexicanos indocumentados

Mexico's Undocumented Migrant Children are at a Disadvantage for Refugee Benefits

Thousands of Children Cross Alone into the U.S. Each Year to Escape Child Sex Trafficking Networks

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. As such, they would possibly qualify for permission to stay in the United States.

These children would be able to avail themselves of this opportunity if U.S. Border Patrol officers would provide them with the appropriate interview form, as federal law requires. Instead, they minors are typically deported in less than 24 hours after their arrests.

This is the reality facing children at risk, as described by attorney Christopher Nugent. For many years, Nugent, of the law firm Holland and Knight, has represented Mexican and Central American children and adults with immigration problems. His work has been pro bono.

The Border Patrol treats unaccompanied Central American children differently from Mexican children arrested as undocumented migrants. They are held for 72 hours before a decision is made to deport them. They are taken to a juvenile detention center where they are given access to lawyers. Nugent estimates that approximately 20,000 Central American children each year cross into the United States...

"There are many Mexican children who qualify to receive asylum… most minors are between 13 and 17 years, but are also 10-year-olds who migrate alone" said Nugent, who regretted the fact that these Mexican children are not given the option to talk with lawyers or with the Mexican consulate.

...Thousands of Mexican and Central American children flee northward into the U.S. each year to escape child prostitution...

Nugent explained how in Mexico there exists terrible child trafficking in the area of Acapulco, Guerrero, and that many now call this region "the new Bangkok" of child sex tourism. Nugent also emphasized that Tijuana [on the U.S. border with San Diego County] has also become an zone controlled by powerful child prostitution networks. Many children [in prostitution] from Tijuana are trying to flee to San Diego.

According to Nugent 70 percent of children who migrate and come to the Office of Refugees in the United States have suffered some sort of trauma from violence or sexual exploitation...

[Expanded Translation]

Georgina Olson

Excélsior

July 3, 2008

Added Jan. 22, 2008

California, USA

Respected anti-trafficking activist opposes nomination of new police chief due to past failure to act against child sex trafficking in migrant labor camps

John Monti, member of Save Our State, appeared before the City Council of San Diego on January 22, 2008 to oppose the appointment of Captain Boyd Long, San Diego Police Department, as assistant police chief of the department.

Monti said, “My opposition is based on the complete denial of what has been happening and has happened in McGonigle Canyon.” Monti displayed a red backpack in the council which was found in McGongicle Canyon when girls were brought to be prostituted at a well-known “prostibulo,” outdoor prostitution area, in the part of the canyon known as “Los Diablos” by the migrants. The backpack contained lubricant, contraceptives and tissue paper and had belonged to an unknown prostituted girl.

"To deny that there is a problem is silence – it is a silence that equals death,” thundered Monti. Monti is alarmed that knowledge of the human trafficking and forced prostitution of women and children is being suppressed by law enforcement and open-borders activists. “Those girls are equally deserving of protection as anyone else in our country – legal or illegal. If we say there is no problem when there is – we create victims and more victims, because no one will know this is going on. If it is to be stopped the public must know so they can identify victims when they see them.”

- John Monti

Activist

Jan. 21, 2008

LibertadLatina note:

John Monti, a bilingual middle school teacher with close ties to the Latino community, is one of the most effective activists against child sex trafficking as it occurs in San Diego County, California.

San Diego is where the infamous child rape camps, discussed on this web site, are located. John Monti's work calls into question why, after 100's of thousands of dollars in anti-trafficking funds were given to law enforcement in the region, child and youth sex trafficking remains largely uncontested.

- Chuck Goolsby

Jan. 22, 2008

LibertadLatina

"What has gotten [the] San Diego Minutemen] the most mainstream mileage is its scary claim that the migrants of McGonigle run a child prostitution ring in one corner of the canyon..."

- Casey Sánchez

Southern Poverty Law Center

Aug.23, 2007

LibertadLatina note:

We differ strongly with Casey Sánchez' dismissive conclusion that child sex trafficking is a non-existent problem in McGonigle canyon.

The San Diego child sex trafficking crisis is an extension of the vast network of child prostitution that sees 900 or more children and youth, some as young as age seven, forced into prostitution in Tijuana, just blocks from the the San Diego County line.

Added November 2, 2005

The Oprah Winfrey Show

November 2, 2005

The OPRAH Show presented a special report on the sale of children into sexual slavery globally and within the U.S.

This report has been posted in Web format Online at:

Human Trafficking: The Preventable Disaster.

Featuring:

Investigation by CNN's Christiane Amanpour

Discussion with Puerto Rican Pop Star and Trafficked Children's Advocate Ricky Martin

Write letters to Congress!

Thank you, Oprah Winfrey!

Dear Oprah Winfrey,

Thank you for doing an excellent job during your November 2, 2005 show. Together with CNN Chief Foreign Correspondent Christiane Amanpour and Puerto Rican pop star and children's advocate Ricky Martin, you did much to raise awareness about the issue of trafficking.

Among other issues discussed, the sex trafficking of children from in Tijuana, Mexico, and across the international border into San Diego County, California was also discussed. The 'reed fields' - the open-air brothels in the San Luis Rey dry riverbed that were once the heart of the 'San Diego Child Rape Camps' - were shown and discussed during a taped segment interviewing San Diego Deputy Sheriff Rick Castro.

Most importantly, Oprah, you encouraged the American public to write to each of these congressional representatives (one congressperson and two senators), to insist that the U.S. government make trafficking a higher priority than it is now.

I am especially concerned that, when grass-roots activists such as the members of the non-profit group 'Los Cristeros' - who have staked-out trafficking operations, have their information apparently ignored, even when they have brought clearly credible reports of child brothel operations to San Diego County Sheriff's Department and the local FBI office for action. Why were the child sex slaves involved not rescued? I don't understand.

Why, in late 2005, are children still being smuggled in from Mexico, forced as slaves to provide sex for thousands of men in San Diego County, California? Why?

Thanks to your efforts, the United States is coming closer to the day when these child rape camps, and similar criminal operations around the United States, will be shut down.

Keep up the great work, Oprah! We support your efforts 100%!

Sincerely,

- Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

November 2, 2005

Added June 8, 2005

Slate.com

Reiterates its 2004 Criticism of the Anti-Slavery Movement, 16 Months After First Attacking Reporter Peter Landesman's Groundbreaking Article on Mexico to U.S. Child Sex Trafficking in the New York Times: The Girls Next Door.

Activists Respond.

"Where are these people [slavery victims in the U.S.]? If in fact the numbers are accurate, there may be over 250,000 or more here, trapped, sick and confused."

LibertadLatina Note: The Girls Next Door directly addressed the issue of the mass kidnapping of underage girl children from Mexico for exploitation as enslaved prostitutes in San Diego, California.

Added May 23, 2005

California Anti-Trafficking Group Los Cristeros Post TV Network News Report Showing Hidden Camera Footage of Child Prostitution in Tijuana (Often Catering to U.S. Tourists) and in San Diego, California.

May 18, 2005

San Diego Child Rape Camps Crisis: Guillermo Romero Flores, 45, and Guadalupe Ventura, 28, Were Convicted in San Diego Federal Court in Relation to a 2001 Raid of a Brothel Operating in Reeds on the Banks of the San Luis Rey River.

The Two Face a Maximum of 10 Years in Prison at a Sentencing Hearing in August.

April 5, 2005

New Study Finds 5,000 Children are at Risk of Being Forced into Prostitution in Mexican Border City of Tijuana, Near San Diego, California. Child Sex Trafficking is Growing Rapidly.

(This Large Group of Children is At Risk of Being Kidnapped into the Child Rape Camps of San Diego, California.)

April 5, 2005

Three Carreto Family Suspects Plead Guilty to All 27 Counts in New York City Trafficking Trial.

April 4, 2005

New York - Carreto Gang Trial Begins: Homes in Queens, New York Were Prisons for Latin Sex Slaves.

Young Prostitutes in Tijuana's Red Zone.

© Warga News

04/03/2005

New York Daily News Article Describes the Kidnapping and Enslavement of Girls From Age 8 Who are 'Broken In' On Tijuana, Mexico Streets Before Being Sent to Brothels in New York City.

Brooklyn Federal Case Against the Notorious Carreto Family Sex Slavery Gang to Begin March 4, 2005.

04/03/2005

Mexican Women Set to Testify Against Carreto Family Traffickers in Brooklyn Court.

Added 03/31/ 2005

Grassroots Advocacy Group Los Cristeros 'Again' Demand Police Action (As Do We) For Child Sex Slaves Kidnapped from Mexico and Held in Del Mar (San Diego County, California) Outdoor Brothel Sitting Near $600,000 Homes. Los Cristeros Request F.B.I. Assistance to Rescue Minor Girl Slaves from Known Brothels Long Ago Reported to Local Sheriffs.

Added 02/23/ 2004

Mexican Authorities Arrest New_York Slavery Ring.

March 31, 2005

Grassroots Advocacy Group Los Cristeros 'Again' Demand Police Action (As Do We at LibertadLatina) For Child Sex Slaves Kidnapped from Mexico and Held in Del Mar (in San Diego County, California) Brothels Sitting Near $600,000 Homes.

Joaquin Santiago of Los Cristeros:

[About efforts to get local law enforcement to React to Brothels where children kidnapped from Mexico are repeatedly raped for profit].

Excerpt:

We had the date, time, and place of this prostibulo, yet no one arrived to help the girls. And, it is still in operation. Moreover, the pimps had been trafficking these girls on that same date and time for some time. I'm sure there was surveillance in place, but I guess if you are an undocumented Mexican girl you are a low priority. Call the F.B.I. and ask if the Hostage Rescue Team is busy with anything more pressing than this, because this is a "critical incident." Since nothing came of [providing law enforcement with] this information I feel it is in the interest of exposing the problem to show where it is happening so the girls can be given a chance to get their freedom back and the afflicted communities can remove this cancer.

March 30, 2005

San Diego California Child Rape Camps Crisis: CNN Reports on the San Diego, California Sex Slavery Crisis and the Recently Formed Task Force Created to Combat Trafficking.

March 30, 2005

San Diego California Child Rape Camps Crisis: Law Enforcement Task Force to Prosecute Sex-Trade, Slavery Cases: "750,000 Women Have Been Trafficked Into the U.S. In the Last Decade."

Added 03/12/ 2005

San Diego, California Child Rape Camps-Town Hall Meeting; Regional Police Dept.'s Awarded $448,000 in 2004 by U.S. DOJ to Fight Traffickers.

[San Diego County] Sheriff Bill Kolender and other law enforcement officials are creating a regional task force to prosecute those who buy or sell people for sexual exploitation or forced labor.

The problem is poorly documented in San Diego County because many officers are not adequately trained to spot it, authorities said yesterday in announcing the formation of the Human Trafficking Task Force.

There have been roughly a dozen cases of such trafficking prosecuted since 2003, but hundreds of such crimes, Deputy Rick Castro said. He has focused on such activity in North County since 1996.

"I personally let more than 100 victims go, from 1996 through 1998, without recognizing what I had," Castro said...

March 8, 2005 - International Women's Day

LibertadLatina.org comments in our 2005, 4th Anniversary and International Women's Day Statement: Defending 'Maria' from Impunity - about the ongoing child rape crisis in San Diego County.

March 8, 2005 LibertadLatina.org

Excerpt 1:

If the well known and unfortunate White American child kidnap and murder victims such as Polly Klass, Megan Kanca and Carlie Brucia (may they rest in peace) had been known to have been trapped in a child rape camp in San Diego, California, or in a residential brothel in Queens, New York run by sex traffickers, helicopters and hundreds of police and volunteers would have quickly rescued them. Yet in San Diego County, California, 12 year old kidnapped 'little brown Maria' is trapped in a brothel. It is known to activists and others that she will not be rescued by law enforcement. Why?

The San Diego rape camps have been known to federal and local law enforcement for over ten years. Ten years after learning about the camps, federal, state and local law enforcement conducted a raid of the worst open-air child rape camps. The raid resulted in no convictions of the 40 men apprehended. The 47 enslaved underage girl victims remained silent because they had been threatened with harm to themselves, to their families and to their children, who are sometimes held hostage by traffickers. U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement today know exactly where the traffickers are pimping underage girls who have been kidnapped from Mexico. Yet we see no visible efforts to rescue victims.

Therefore, We the People must stand and act in their defense. Only We the People can pressure our governments to shut down the child rape camps of San Diego County and across the Americas and the World. LibertadLatina would like to see the public join together to hold governments accountable for these child rape camps. We look forward to seeing real results from the $2 million in federal grants sent in 2004 to San Diego based advocacy agencies and law enforcement. The victims are waiting!

San Diego is part of a growing ‘zone of impunity’ that is emerging in the U.S.-Mexican border region. Centuries of anti-Indigenous and anti-Latina sexual exploitation is now enabling ruthless traffickers.

Excerpt 2:

Within the United States, anti-immigrant hostility, Spanish/English language barriers, machismo, official indifference and a lack of political will appear to be 'binding the hands' of those concerned law enforcement officials who would like to shut down the rape camps and sex slavery brothels that now exist across the United States. Even in instances where officials know where sex slavery exists, the 'rules of engagement' and the politics of police work sometimes cause police not to act to rescue victims. Activist organizations such as Polaris Project are starting to educate local police departments about best practices in how to respond effectively to human slavery cases. The U.S. Department of Justice is now funding regional anti-trafficking task forces across the United States. Non-profit agencies are being well funded to assist victims. The United States, the United Nations and the Organization of American States are now funding initiatives to fight trafficking in Latin America.

Yet San Diego's child rape camps continue to exist. Under-staffed local law enforcement is fighting a loosing battle with Tijuana, Mexico based traffickers. Gangs continue to kidnap and enslave young girls with impunity because they know that U.S. law enforcement won't or can’t act to shut down the child rape camps and save lives! Across Latin America institutional sexism (and classism and racism), official corruption and the huge profits available from sex trafficking allow these criminals to operate in safety. Leadership from the grassroots will be critical to change these realities. Governments will not act unless they are pushed to do so. We the People must unite and demand effective action now!

Latest San Diego News - Added February 28, 2005

Convicted Sex Trafficker Luciano Salazar Released From Prison on a Technicality

Anti-trafficking activists have reported that the one and only member of the infamous Salazar Brothers Child Sex trafficking gang ever to be jailed - Luciano Salazar-Juarez, was released early on a technicality from a two year prison sentence in January, 2005.

LibertadLatina.org has not seen this reported release mentioned in the press, but we believe the report to be credible.

On June 19, 2003, Luciano Salazar-Juarez pleaded guilty to conspiracy, harboring aliens and transporting undocumented immigrants. Salazar-Juarez arranged for the smuggling of Guillermina Hernandez-Ramos into the United States. He rented an apartment for her and another immigrant woman for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. Both women drowned while attempting to drive through a flooded road near a known farm labor prostitution site. On October 8, 2003 Luciano Salazar-Juarez was sentenced to 2 years in jail for his crimes.

Salazar-Juarez is apparently living in Tijuana, Mexico, the staging area for transporting trafficking victims across the border into San Diego County, California.

See the below articles in regard to Luciano Salazar:

[The San Diego, California community of] Vista named in 'sex slave' repor0 01-24-2004

VISTA ---- An article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine that portrays this North County city as a hub for crime rings that force young girls into prostitution is probably accurate, local and county officials said this week.

Prostitution Smuggler Gets Two Years in Jail - 10-08-2003

Mexican man pleads guilty to smuggling, harboring women as prostitutes - 6/2003

Man Admits Guilt To Smuggling Prostitutes

Luciano Salizar Pleads Guilty - 06-20-2003

The groundbreaking January 2003 article in El Universal newspaper (in English and Spanish) that first told the story of Luciano Salazar's involvement with his brother's child sex slavery operation - 01-09-2003.

San Diego, California

BSCC News and Events

DIF Tijuana (Mexico's Social Services Agency) and the Bilateral Safety Corridor
invites you to its third conference
Parallel Worlds: Tijuana and San Diego
Child Sexual Tourism and Other Forms of Trafficking
August 26 and 27 in San Diego, CA

For more information, contact Marisa Ugarte at
mubava@msn.com or 619-260-0105

Speakers
Mohamed Mattar, Protection Project
Norma Hotaling, Director of Sage
Chris Tenorio, US Department of Justice
Donna Hughes, University of Rhode Island

http://www.bsccoalition.org/BSCC/

Comments of conference participants:

I... want to send my thanks and congratulations to Marisa Ugarte
and the BSCC for the San Diego conference earlier this week. A
bilateral or multilateral approach to trafficking is incredibly
important. Cooperation between countries (in this case Mexico, USA, & Costa Rica) is crucial in stopping trafficking and assisting victims. Marisa's networking and organizing skills are what made the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition (and the conference) happen. As she's told me and others, in one case it took more than 20 governmental, social service, legal, healthcare, and human rights agencies to get one adolescent away from her pimp/trafficker and out of prostitution. Her knowledge about what it takes to get young people out of prostitution, and her passionate commitment to broadening the effectiveness all agencies doing this work - are awesome.

- Dr. Melissa Farley, Director, Prostitution Research, San Francisco Women's Center

And...

I am sending big congratulations to Marissa Ugarte and the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition for a successful conference last week in San Diego, California. "Parallel Worlds: Tijuana and San Diego" brought together government officials, service providers, researchers, and activists from the U.S., Mexico, and Central America to talk about the problems of trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation and sex tourism.

One of the most compelling presentations was the investigative news report from a local TV channel on the trafficking and prostitution of girls in what is known as the "strawberry fields." From hidden locations they were able to film the pimps bringing the girls into the fields and the men arriving at the parking lot, then being taken into the hills to use (rape) the girls. They caught on film the exchange of money between men and pimps and even the acts of prostitution. They filmed the grass dens and pathways constructed by the pimps in what amounts to an open-air brothel.

The presentations were all very high quality and often on the cutting edge of the movement against trafficking.

- Dr. Donna M. Hughes holds the Carlson Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

1st Annual Candlelight Vigil:
September 28 in San Diego, CA

http://www.bsccoalition.org/BSCC/

SAN DIEGO - Mexican man pleads guilty to smuggling, harboring women as prostitutes - Associated Press - 6/2003

(Two News Stories)

A Mexican man who is linked to a suspected prostitution ring operating at migrant worker camps pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of smuggling and harboring women who worked as prostitutes in northern San Diego County.

Luciano Salazar Juarez pleaded guilty to one count of immigrant smuggling and two counts of harboring illegal immigrants. The charges carry maximum sentences of five and 10 years each, respectively, but prosecutors will recommend an 18-month term when he is sentenced in September, according to his lawyer, Tom Mix. Since he was in the United States illegally, Salazar will be deported after serving his term.

The charges state that Salazar, 36, recruited women from Mexico to engage in prostitution in the United States and that he conspired to do so with his brother, Julio Salazar Juarez, who is a fugitive and believed to be in Mexico.

Salazar said little during a hearing in U.S. District Court on Thursday. He stood stiffly with his hands clasped behind his back as he faced Judge Irma Gonzalez, nodding his head to signal "yes," as the charges were read against him.

The investigation stemmed from a December accident in which three women drowned as they attempted to drive across a rain-swollen river while trying to reach a migrant camp in Carlsbad.

San Diego - Sexual Slavery - 2002 - A law enforcement team.. burst open a criminal ring smuggling young Mexican girls into northern San Diego County... forcing them to work as prostitutes, serving hundreds of men who were being shuttled to a remote camp on a given day.

...More than 40 people were arrested, and 16 young women and teens who had been held as sex slaves were rescued...

...``Because of the high intimidation factor, we were unable to get the evidence we needed to charge [the suspects]."

...The case in Oceanside came to light after a 15-year-old girl fled to a private home and sought help. The girl, identified only by her first name, Reina, was recruited from a central Mexican village with promises of a good job.

...But then her captors took her infant son away from her and threatened to harm him unless she prostituted herself.

Humanitarian Sexploitation: The World's Sex Slaves Need Liberation, not Condoms - An editorial piece in The Weekly Standard by Dr. Donna Hughes - 02/24/2003

"An anonymous American doctor who worked for a community health clinic that provided health care to migrant workers said, "The first time I went to the camps I didn't vomit only because I had nothing in my stomach. It was truly grotesque and unimaginable." Over time, the girls got younger; a number were 9 and 10 years old. One time, the doctor counted 35 men using a girl in one hour. When the police raided the brothels, they found dozens of empty boxes of condoms, each box having held a thousand condoms. Calculate how many rapes that represents."

Dr. Donna M. Hughes holds the Carlson Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

The Joint Committee of the Mexican Senate and Lower House has voted unanimously to ask President Calderón to revise his federal regulations governing the nation’s first anti-trafficking law.

The current regulations have no minimum standards, nor do they integrate the work of key federal agencies

Mexico City – Mexico City congressional deputy Maricela Contreras, president of the Commission on Equality and Gender of the Chamber of Deputies, has declared that a re-writing of the published Federal Regulations that enable the 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons is urgently needed, given that there is an indifference and unwillingness on the part of the federal government to stop this crime wave, [of human trafficking - in defiance of the will of Congress].

...Contreras, who had called for the declaration, stated that "the published rules were delivered late [after a 9 month delay following the law’s passage, and after four warning to President Calderón from Congress -LL], they are 'plain,' and they contain omissions. The rules don’t provide any tools to combat or prevent trafficking, much less any provisions for the care of the victims, who are mostly girls and women. For these reasons, President Calderón should have the rules revised, because in their current state, they aren’t worth anything."

Full English Translation

CIMAC Noticias

May 22, 2009

See also:

¡Héroes!

Lea nuestra sección sobre la lucha de varios congresistas y defensoras de los derechos humanos para lograr obligar que el Presidente Felipe Calderón publica un reglamiento fuerte respladar a la nueva ley: Prevenir y Sancionar la Trata de Personas, de 2008, que hasta ahora es sigue siendo una ley sin fuerzas.

Read our special section about the brave work of advocates and congressional leaders in Mexico to break-through the barriers of impunity and achieve truly effective federal regulations that will enforce the original congress-ional intent of Mexico's 2008 Law to Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons.

LibertadLatina

Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico, Canada

Pedophile ring suspect caught in Mexico

A Canadian suspected of heading a North American pedophilia ring has been arrested in Mexico in possession of four million photographs and videos of children shown naked or striking suggestive poses.

The suspect, Arthur Lelland Sayer, "was caught red-handed at his home in Tijuana, Baja California (close to the US border) with a large number of photos and videos that were stored on over a dozen hard drives", Mexico City's public prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday.

A Mexican police investigation is ongoing to dismantle a major child pornography network and to "find evidence that it is active in the three North American countries: Mexico, the United States and Canada."

The crime ring was discovered by the "cyber police" of Mexico's Public Safety Ministry, which arrested the Canadian on Sunday along with agents from FEVIMTRA, a special unit that combats human trafficking.

Agence France-Presse (AFP)June 27, 2009

Added: June 28, 2009

Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service, says that sex tourism and pedophile networks are "inevitable."

"El turismo sexual es inevitable" - Cecilia Romero del Instituto Nacional de Migración de México

Photo: El Universal

LibertadLatina Commentary

President Calderón, the Human Rights Crisis at Mexico's Southern Border is Unacceptable

Our current series of articles covering the human rights emergency facing women and girl migrants at Mexico's southern border responds directly to the recent comments of Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's national immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM). Director Romero stated in a press interview with El Universal, a major Mexico City daily paper, that human trafficking is "inevitable", and that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

We strongly disagree with Director Romero and others in the leadership of Mexico's National Action Party, who habitually dismiss critical women's rights issues, including the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, as being the inevitable, and 'normal' results of male human behavior.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The citizens of Mexico, Mexico's Congress and the international community need to hold the government of President Felipe Calderón accountable for his allowing unending mass gender atrocities to occur on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize.

In this hell-on-earth, an estimated 450 to 600 migrant women are sexually assaulted each day, according to the International Organization for Migration. Police response is almost non-existent. At times, police are complicit in this criminal violence.

Mexico's southern border is also the largest zone on earth for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), according to Save the Children.

As Father Luis Nieto states in the below article about Salvadoran mothers who must come to Mexico's border to grieve for their raped and murdered daughters, "We cannot keep quiet, we cannot be complicit in this."

We strongly agree with that sentiment. Silence is also violence.

The federal government of Mexico is not ignorant of this ongoing catastrophe. The United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, Save the Children, elements of the Catholic Church, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and many members of Congress have, for the last several years, demanded action to end these atrocities.

Although INM director Cecilia Romero promised in February of 2007 that she would "entirely eliminate this terrible situation," no visible action has been taken to do so as of June of 2009, 16 months after Romero made that promise.

With the current economic slowdown and the expansion of global criminal sex trafficking operations, the rapes, kidnappings and sexual enslavement of innocent migrants on that border is increasing with no end in sight.

As the United States Congress prepares to send over $400 million dollars in largely military aid to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative to combat the drug cartels, we insist that human rights conditions be placed on those and other U.S. foreign aid funds that are headed to Mexico.

Mexico must close down the mass rape, kidnapping, murder and child sex trafficking gauntlet that exists with total impunity on its southern border.

We also want to see the estimated 4,000 mostly Mayan indigenous children kidnapped from this region and sold to brothels in Tokyo, and also the uncounted thousands of other indigenous child victims who have been sold to brothels in New York and Madrid rescued, repatriated and then truly cared for.

Do you need money, President Calderón, to get these things done? Or is a misogynist, 'socially conservative' ideology that is resurgent in Mexico, and that has as its strongest voice the PAN political party, the real problem here?

Esta barbarie no será perdonado por Dios!

This barbarity will not be pardoned by God!

If Mexico does not have control over this part of its own territory, or if, as appears to actually be the case, the PAN's socially conservative agenda won't allow it to defend innocent and vulnerable women and children in crisis, consistent with their apathetic reaction to the femicide murders in Ciudad Juarez, then perhaps an international force organized by the Organization of American States, or by the United Nations needs to step-up to the plate, offer to help Mexico, and take control of the situation.

This crisis in Mexico is the best example in the Americas of why a new Global Plan of Action, as proposed by Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica and diplomats gathered at the United Nations on May 13, 2009, is needed to get around this impasse.

Somehow, the fact that the government of Mexico is a signatory to the Palermo Protocol, and the fact that Mexico passed its 2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report evaluation with a relatively positive Level 2 Rating (as we also acknowledge State's strong critique of corruption in Mexico), misses the point.

New and out-of-the box strategies are needed to oblige Mexico to fulfill its international obligations to end this mass gender atrocity once and for all.

It is not an impossible task.

The status quo today is... unacceptable!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 28, 2009

Added: June 28, 2009

Mexico

Salvadoran mothers gather to pray and leave offerings and crosses for their family members who were abused, kidnapped and murdered in the 'mugging and rape guantlet' at Mexico's southern border region known as 'La Arrocera' - the Rice Cooker.

Madres salvadoreñas depositan ofrendas en "La Arrocera"

El 80 porciento de los abusos cometidos contra los inmigrantes se cometen en esta zona de Huixtla, Chiapas

Huixtla, Chiapas - Los parientes de indocumentados fallecidos y desaparecidos visitaron "La Arrocera" , un pequeño tramo de escasos cuatro kilómetros que los indocumentados utilizan para evadir la caseta migratoria El hueyate, en Huixtla...

Salvadoran mothers leave offerings for their murdered children at "The Rice Cooker"

80 percent of abuses against migrants occur in this area near the city of Huixtla, Chiapas

Huixtla, Chiapas - relatives of deceased and missing undocumented migrants visited "La Arrocera," a four kilometer long rural trail that north-bound Central and South American migrants use to bypass the Hueyate immigration station in the city of Huixtla, Chiapas.

Under strict security arrangements and with the support of Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH), members of the Committee of Families of Deceased and Missing Migrants toured the area of "the Rice Cooker" near Huixtla, a municipality in the state of Chiapas, where dozens of men and women have been assaulted, raped and murdered.

"The Rice Cooker" is a [rural] migrant trail where 80 percent of the assaults and homicides in the region are committed, according to testimony gathered by the Catholic Church and human rights organizations.

Even police will not enter this zone unless they have several officers armed with high-powered weapons.

Father Luis Angel Nieto prayed for eternal rest for all of those migrants who lost their lives here in their attempt to reach "the American Dream."

For the second time during the trip, Father Luis Nieto demanded that the Mexican authorities combat these crimes, that for several years have sewn pain and fear.

"We cannot keep quiet, we cannot be complicit in this," he said.

After prayer, the Salvadorans planted dozens of crosses in memory of those who lost their lives here and who were never identified.

During the emotional ceremony, the mothers and fathers could not contain their tears. The sadness and pain invaded their faces. Most knew the true meaning of "the Rice Cooker".

Juan de Dios Garcia Davish

Feb. 11, 2009

Calderon’s “two-faced” policy combines police, the military, gangs, and Los Zetas [ex-military, who are now 'hit men' for the drug cartels] to fulfill US mandate to deter Central American migration

...Wall of Violence

“Migrants don’t have rights in Mexico,” says Father Heyman Vazquez Medina, founder of El Hogar de la Misericordia. “It’s ok to beat them, extort money from them, rob them, sexually abuse them, murder them, and nothing happens.

Central American migrants’ legal security guarantees appear to be repeatedly and permanently violated by individuals and groups of people who rely on the protection, consent, tolerance, or acquiescence of the State and who have the power of weapons, money, police protection, corruption, and impunity. They have put a price on the head of each migrant.”

Migrant shelter staffers say those who abuse migrants operate with absolute impunity... [Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, the southern coordinator of the Catholic Church’s Human Mobility Mission Migrants program] recalls one case where a woman was kidnapped from one of the shelters he oversees. Solalinde remained in contact with her family throughout the ordeal. When she finally turned up in the United States, she said that the group that kidnapped her forced her to make several [pornographic movies]. When they finally brought her to the US-Mexico border, they made her family pay thousands of dollars in ransom. Solalinde offered to fly her back south and pay all of her expenses if she filed a complaint with the government. The woman refused, saying she never wanted to set foot in Mexico ever again.

Even when migrants or human rights organizations do file complaints, they almost never result in arrests or convictions. Solalinde says that almost every time he calls the police because migrants have identified and located their attackers, he can’t find a police force that will arrest the suspects. They all say they don’t have jurisdiction in immigration affairs...

...[Mercedes Osuna of La Semilla del Sur, a Chiapas-based organization that works primarily on indigenous issues] explains that [after crossing into Mexico, to avoid a migration station on the highway north], undocumented migrants must walk a roundabout route through an area called la Arrocera. La Arrocera is teeming with violent criminals who mug [and rape and kidnap] migrants as they pass through. Osuna spoke with some migrants who recently passed through la Arrocera. They told her that in la Arrocera they saw uniformed Chiapas state police in marked vehicles pick up and drop off people who mugged migrants. In la Arrocera, the muggers are painfully thorough: migrants complained to Osuna of being stripped searched. The assailants even checked their victims’ anuses and vaginas for hidden valuables.

Police don’t just offer rides to assailants; they often are the assailants...

The “Wall of Violence” is fierce: El Hogar de la Misericordia [a migrant shelter] estimates that 80% of all migrants who pass through Chiapas state have been assaulted during their travels. Approximately 30% of the women who come to El Hogar de la Misericordia report being sexually assaulted in la Arrocera, Chiapas, which is only one of many stops along the migrants’ route. Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray [Friar] Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center, which monitors human rights on Mexico’s southern border, says, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.” ...

Kristen Bricker

My Word is My Weapon

Dec. 24, 2008

Added: June 27, 2009

Panama

A 'Genteleman's Club' in Panama

Photo: Panama Star

The Sexual Reality of the Country

Panama is not only seen as a tax haven, but also a sexual paradise for tourists where everything is available for the right price

Every country has a seedy side and Panama is no exception. Like many other places in the world the sex industry is thriving and attracting visitors.

For many tourists that is one of Panama’s attractions. The so called “gentlemen’s clubs” offer not only beautiful women willing to do anything for the right price, but also the promise of forbidden pleasures.

Technically speaking sexual tourism is a crime, however there are Internet sites where the would be traveler will not only have all the their traveling arrangement taken care of, but also they throw into the package a lovely companion of whatever sex and age depending on the client’s preference...

Prostitution is a big business and organized crime gangs regularly bring women from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and other countries to work in the sex industry.

They bring the girls under false pretences promising them work. In reality the human traffickers take away their passports and use them as prostitutes in nightclubs and bars.

They are scared and lonely, in a foreign country, with nowhere to run to. They are terrified of the human traders and too afraid to go to the police because they know they are going to be deported...

Perhaps the worst part of the sex industry is the commercial sexual exploitation of children through on-line pornography and actual prostitution.

The Public Ministry is currently investigating 40 cases involving commercial sexual exploitation of children and pornography...

Marijulia Pujol Lloyd

Panama Star

06-04-2009

Added: June 27, 2009

Mexico

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea (left) and Rubén Velázquez,

Senators Lázaro Mazón (left) and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca

PRD pide a INM explicación por red de lenocinio

Legisladores del PRD pidieron la comparecencia de Cecilia Romero Castillo, comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), por el caso de mujeres sin papeles de Centroamérica prostituidas...

Legislators call upon the Joint Committee of Congress to call immigration (INM) director Cecilia Romero in to appear and explain apparent involvement of INM agents in Yucatán sex trafficking network

Congressional lawmakers from the Party of the Democratic Revolution [one of Mexico’s three main political parties] have called for Cecilia Romero Castillo, commissioner of the National Institute for Migration (INM) to appear before Congress to explain the situation of a case in which undocumented Central American women where prostituted in [the state of Yucatán, with the alleged involvement of immigration agents in criminal activity].

Senators José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea, Rubén Velázquez, Lázaro Mazón and Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca presented an accord before the Standing [joint] Committee of Congress to "invite" to the commissioner of the INM to a meeting with legislative members of the First Committee.

PRD legislators want Romero to report on the performance of INM immigration officers in the areas of human rights, and especially in the state of Yucatán, “where a network dedicated to trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of women" [involving INM officers] has been discovered.

The PRD congressional members have also asked the Standing Committee of Congress to request that the Attorney General’s Special Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Trafficking in Persons (FEVIMTRA) investigate and take action against agents in the INM’s Yucatán office for their involvement in human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The Standing Committee was also asked to request from the National Commission on Human Rights that it open an investigation into the case, and assist the foreign national victims who have filed criminal complaints in the case.

Jorge Ramos and Ricardo Gomez

El Universal

Mexico City

June 17 2009

Added: June 27, 2009

Colombia

The 11 month police operation was code named for this well known Colombian novel

Así operaba la red de trata de personas más poderosa del país, desmantelada por la Policía

Un grupo de 20 investigadores de la Policía de Infancia y Adolescencia de Medellín adelantó toda la investigación, que se inició en julio del año pasado. Una joven de 18 años denunció su caso.

"Una amiga me dijo que le estaban ofreciendo un trabajo en Bogotá y que nos iban a pagar 300 o 400 mil pesos. Cuando nos presentamos nos subieron a un bus, pero para el Urabá. Luego nos recogieron en un taxi, nos quitaron los papeles y nos llevaron a una casa de citas. Allá un señor nos dijo que ya sabíamos a qué íbamos, hasta que la ley nos encontró como a los cinco días"...

Police dismantle the largest sex trafficking network discovered to date in Colombia

A group of 20 police investigators from the Children and Adolescents unit in the city of Medellin developed the entire investigation, which began in July of 2008. An 18-year-old youth originally reported to network to authorities.

"A friend told me that she had been offered a job in [the capital city of] Bogotá that would pay 300 to 400 pesos [between $140 and $185 US dollars]. When we reported for work we were told to board a bus, but it was bound for the city of Urabá. Then our employers picked us up in a taxi, they took our identification and took us to a brothel. There, a man told us that we knew what we were going to have to do. We were rescued by the police 5 days later.” ...

The authorities arrested 69 people, including 17 women. Police remain on the trail of another 28 suspects.

There were so many similar complaints from victims that investigators had concluded that they were not dealing with two or three people who induced women into prostitution, but a powerful network. One that trafficked women from Medellin not only to other cities in Antioquia department [state], but also to the capital, Bogota , and to Cucuta, Cartagena, Santa Marta and towns in the Magdalena Medio [the eastern-most region of Antioquia]. There are also indications that the network had contacts abroad to traffic women to Aruba and Venezuela...

"Send me another one like her and we will call the account even"

Police intercepted communications between members of the network. They were able to establish that eight people, which they called ‘The Commission,’ sold women for amounts ranging from 30,000 to a million Colombian pesos [between $14 and $467 US dollars].

One intercepted communicated from a customer of the network [a brothel owner] to a member of the ‘Commission stated: "You sent me a woman for 30,000 pesos, but she was very ugly. Send me another one like her and we’ll call the account even.” ...

After the operation, code named 'Candida Eréndida' [Innocent Eréndira, a novel by famed Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez], police distributed leaflets in the city of Medellin to warn the public not to be taken in by these networks.

Police continue to investigate the network’s links abroad.

Full English Translation

www.eltiempo.com

June 26, 2009

Added: June 26, 2009

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Niñez y prostitución en la frontera sur, el costo de llegar a EU

Leticia, una vida entre ebrios, maras y policías

Segunda y última parte

Suchiate, Chiapas. - Leticia, como miles de púberes y jóvenes en el submundo de la explotación sexual infantil en México, sobrevive entre ebrios, en esta zona de 700 kilómetros de frontera con Guatemala y Belice.

Tenía 12 años cuando llegó sola a Chiapas por primera vez, con la ilusión de continuar viaje y cruzar la frontera estadounidense en busca de un mejor futuro. Ahora, en su sexto intento, trabaja en una cantina de la zona. Apenas ha cumplido 14 años de edad...

The Cost of Reaching the U.S.; Children and Prostitution at Mexico’s Southern Border

Leticia at age 14: a life drinking, gangs and police

Second and last part

Suchiate, Chiapas state - Leticia, like many pre-teen and teenage youth living in the underworld of child sexual exploitation in Mexico, survives between bouts of heavy drinking here along Mexico’s 700 kilometer border with Guatemala and Belize.

Leticia was 12-years-old when she came alone to Chiapas for the first time, with the illusion of being able to reach and then cross the U.S. border in search of a better future. Now, after her sixth attempt, she works in a cantina (bar) in the area. She has just turned 14...

Unlike many of her fellow teen prostitutes, Leticia did not have to sell her virginity, a ‘service’ that customers are charged between $2,000 and $3,500 for. "I wanted to marry my boyfriend, but he abandoned me when he learned that I was pregnant. I had an abortion at two months out of disappointment," said Leticia, expressing with her child’s eyes a false maturity that shows even more her clearly her helpless...

Leticia says that many customers not only want to have sex, but they also want to photograph her or record her on videotape or on cell phones in exchange for an additional amount of money...

...The Chiapas State’s Attorney has, during 2009, dismantled three gangs dedicated to the sexual exploitation of minors in the cities of Tapachula, Tuxtla Gutierrez and Rayón. At least 14 detainees facing charges for procuring, criminal association and assault, among other charges.

The children and underage youth freed from these gangs had been forced to work in sexual slavery for more than 12 hours each day. They had to bring their enslavers $2,000 during that period. In exchange, they were given one plate of rice and beans to eat. These facts are just the tip of an ominous iceberg...

Full English Translation

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 25, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

We at LibertadLatina once again applaud the detailed, consistent and high quality reporting that CIMAC Noticias in Mexico has provided on the critical issues affecting women and girls in Mexico and across Latin America.

The global humanitarian organization Save the Children has identified Mexico's southern border with Guatemala and Belize as being the largest zone for the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in the entire world. We have long recognized this fact, and accurate reporting in the Spanish language press, from CIMAC and also mainstream Mexican newspapers has provided a window into this nightmare.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Tapachula, Chiapas has estimated that between 450 to 600 women and girl migrants who cross the border into southern Mexico are raped each and every day, with little or no law enforcement reaction in response.

In Tapachula, a prostitution 'mega-center' in Chiapas state, over 50% of the 20,000 females working in prostitution are underage girls and youth who have been forced by others or by economic necessity to accept a life of sexual exploitation. Some 50% of them are from the Mayan majority nation of Guatemala.

Chiapas, being a state located on this lawless border, is the only government entity in the world that is not actually a nation to have established a direct relationship with the United Nations to address human trafficking. This region's crisis is indeed an emergency that requires the focused attention from the world community.

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico has been less than enthusiastic about fighting human trafficking, given his year-long effort to foot drag on efforts to publish effective regulations to enable the nation's first anti-trafficking law.

Now, Cecilia Romero, head of Mexico's immigration service (the National Institute for Migration - INM), has stated that human trafficking is "inevitable", and added that, "the existence of the smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Women and children's rights and immigrant rights groups in Mexico have been under-standably outraged by these comments. We join with them in denouncing such a hands-off and dismissive approach to confronting the mass gender atrocity of sexual exploitation and violence with impunity that is now taking place across Mexico.

We remain especially concerned that Cecilia Romero, a former congressional deputy, senator and a long-time activist and official in the National Action Party (PAN) since 1982, is, through her statements about the 'inevitability' of sex trafficking, effectively justifying such criminal sexual exploitation and the lack of a Mexican federal response to that illegal enterprise. This policy position is consistent with many other statements and actions from the socially conservative PAN, that actively seek to diminish the independence and basic individual human rights of women.

It thus remains the responsibility of the international community to address these issues in collaboration, and in solidarity with the many elements of Mexican society who desire to be liberated from this Taliban-like mass movement to repress the basic humanity of women and girls.

Members of Congress, and activists in organizations such as the Teresa Ulloa's Mexico City based Latin America and Caribbean branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, as well as brave reporters like Lydia Cacho (who has been unjustly jailed and still faces death threats for her activism), and news agencies such as CIMAC Noticias (who's offices have been ransacked in the past for their reporting on sexual exploitation), all deserve the support of the international community, and they deserve our help.

We especially laud Teresa Ulloa and CIMAC Noticias for standing up to denounce the exploitation of indigenous women and girls, who are the primary target of many traffickers and rapists.

Let's give the advocates for women and girl's human rights in Mexico the help that they need now, while there is still time to avert an even more well organized war against women and girls than the one that is happening today!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 26/27, 2009

Mexico City - Mexico's head of migration [Cecilia Romero Castillo] on Tuesday pledged to improve the agency's detention centers in response to criticism that Mexico fails to give Central American immigrants the same respect it demands for its own citizens in the United States....

The Mexican government has acknowledged that many officials are bribed by human smugglers. Migrants face abuse from corrupt police as well as
violent gangs who wait on the southern border to rob and assault them.

The government-funded National Human Rights Commission, U.N. human rights officials and other non-governmental organiza-tions say they have documented abuses.

The migration depart-ment's plan aims "to entirely eliminate this terrible situation," Romero told a news conference. [Yet as of June, 2009 they have failed to act on this promise - LL.]

Answering U.S. concerns, President Felipe Calderon also has promised to strengthen security on Mexico's southern border to stop the tide of illegal migrants - the majority of whom use Mexico as a way station to the United States...

In January [2007], Mexico detained more than 10,000 illegal migrants, and
expects that number to increase to 205,000 by the end of [2007],
according to a report by the migration department....

Lisa J. Adams

The Associated Press

Feb. 28, 2007

Added: June 25, 2009

Mexico, Guatemala

Photo: CIMAC Noticias

Leticia, de 14 años, sobrevive en la explotación sexual

24 mil niñas y niños prostituidos u obligados a la pornografía

Primera de dos partes

Suchiate, Chiapas - Leticia es una niña centroamericana de 14 años, sin documentos, a quien prostituyen en una cantina de este municipio fronterizo con Guatemala.

Han pasado casi dos años desde que dejó su país natal para migrar rumbo a Estados Unidos. A pesar de las duras condiciones en que vive para lograr su objetivo, no deja de intentarlo. Sabe que la deportación es casi segura, según sus propias palabras, pero ni eso la detiene en su idea de cruzar la frontera, alternativa que encontró ante la miseria y el incierto futuro en su lugar de origen...

Leticia, Age 14, Survives in Sexual Exploitation

24,000 boys and girls forced into prostitution or pornography across Mexico

First of two parts

Suchiate, Chiapas state – Leticia is a 14-year-old undocumented Central American girl who is being prostituted in a Cantina (bar) in this town on the Guatemalan border.

It has been almost two years since Leticia left her native country to migrate to the United States. Despite the harsh conditions she has had to live through in order to achieve that goal, she will not give up. She knows that her deportation from Mexico is almost certain, as she herself says. But she will not be detained in her effort to reach the U.S. border, seeking to find an alternative to the misery and uncertain future that she faced in her homeland.

Leticia’s situation is no different than that of hundreds of children who have been trapped by this border region’s commercial sex networks, who have offered their victims “a way to make fast money.”

They are victims of exploitation of the international networks of traffickers who grab them either before or after they cross the border at the Suchiate River or along clandestine smuggling paths that exist all along the border with Guatemala. Advocacy organizations who fight on their behalf refer to them as “sex slaves...”

The director of the Movimiento Ciudadano de la Frontera Sur (Southern Frontier Citizen’s Movement), Juan José González, notes that the phenomenon of prostitution in the region has increased alarmingly. These are not isolated cases, he says.

On the streets, and in bars, clubs, schools and outside of shopping centers in cities such as Suchiate, Tapachula, Cacahoatán, Tuxtla Chico and Huixtla, it is common to find women [and girls] of different ages engaged in prostitution...

For now, while Leticia continues to be a victim of sexual exploitation, the director of Mexico’s National Institute for Migration (INM), Cecilia Romero, has recently told the newspaper El Universal that the existence of smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that affect thousands of migrants are only "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Full English Translation

Manuel de la Cruz

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 24, 2009

Added: June 24, 2009

The United States, Mexico

Joaquín Aguilar Méndez, right, a former altar boy, has sued the Rev. Nicolás Aguilar, shown in photo at left. (From a web site that takes an opposing position in the case of Nicolás Aguilar - in Spanish).

Arquidiócesis de Puebla y Los Ángeles toleran pederastia

México DF.- Integrantes de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos por Sacerdotes (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés) interpusieron una demanda contra las arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles, California, y de Tehuacán, Puebla, querella que involucra a los cardenales Roger Mahony y Norberto Rivera, respectivamente, informa la Agencia NotieSe.

El ciudadano, identificado como Juan Doe (“Juan Nadie”), abusado sexualmente en 1988 por el sacerdote mexicano Nicolás Aguilar, acusa a esas instancias eclesiales y al Departamento de Educación de California de negligencia en la protección a su persona, puesto que Aguilar trabajó como profesor después de ser transferido de Tehuacán a Los Ángeles por el entonces obispo local, Norberto Rivera...

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico City

June 23, 2009

Charges of cross-border church abuses continue

Mexico City - A victims’ group said Thursday that it was filing a new lawsuit in Los Angeles, California, against Mexican and U.S. church officials accused of sheltering a suspected pedophile priest.

The lawsuit accuses Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera of conspiring with Roman Catholic officials in the United States to shelter Nicolas Aguilar, a Mexican priest wanted in California for 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child.

This is the third lawsuit filed by the group, Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, against the Catholic Church for allegedly protecting Aguilar. Two previous lawsuits filed in Los Angeles against the Mexican cardinal by Mexican citizens were dismissed in 2007.

This time, however, the unnamed plaintiff is a U.S. citizen.

“In this case it was a North American boy molested in North American territory,” said Jose Bonilla, a lawyer for SNAP.

Bonilla said he was “practically 100 percent sure” that the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, would have his day in court. “But it’s going to be a long process,” he said.

In addition to Cardinal Rivera, the lawsuit charges the archdiocese of Tehuacan in the Mexican state of Puebla, where Rivera worked at the time, the archdiocese of Los Angeles and the California Department of Education with failing to protect the plaintiff from Rev. Aguilar.

Foreign Correspondency

June 18, 2009

Added: June 24, 2009

Colombia

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation)

Insuficientes, Nuevas Sanciones Sobre Turismo Sexual Y Pornografía Infantil En Colombia

Bogotá.- La muerte de Yesid Torres, de apenas 15 años, conmovió a los habitantes de Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, donde la explotación sexual va en aumento. El menor de edad falleció a consecuencia de una sobredosis de cocaína que consumió en el apartamento del italiano Paolo Pravisani, pederasta de 72 años, quien lo había contratado para proveerle servicios sexuales, informó la agencia Semlac…

New Sanctions on Child Pornography and Sexual Tourism in Colombia are Insufficient

Bogota .- The death of Yesid Torres, a boy who had just turned 15, shocked the people of the city of Cartagena de Indias, where sexual exploitation is increasing. The youth died from an overdose of cocaine consumed in the apartment of Italian Paolo Pravisani, a 72 year old pedophile who had contracted Torres to provide sexual services.

In response to increasing levels of sexual exploitation, Colombian lawmakers passed a law on June 10, 2009 that applies new penalties, including a 20 year prison term for those who engage in producing child pornography. The law also makes child sex tourism a crime.

The legislation provides for prison sentences of 4 to 8 years for persons who promote child sex tourism, without the possibility of parole. The length of the sentence may be increased by half when the victim is under 12 years of age.

Stella Cardenas, director of Fundacion Renacer (the Rebirth Foundation), notes that although the penalty for promoting child sex tourism under the new law is higher than the 3 year sentence available under the old law, the length of sentence is still too low. She adds that the law fails to address cases of aggressors who sexually exploit youth between the ages of 14 and 18 who have consented to engage in [commercial] sex, often due to economic hardship.

CIMAC Noticias

News for Women

Mexico city

June 23, 2009

Véase también:

Luz Stella Cardenas

Luz Stella es la directora y fundadora de la Fundación Renacer, una organización que trabaja con niños y niñas víctimas de explotación sexual y ha atendido a lo largo de su historia a más de quince mil niños de Bogotá, Cartagena y Barranquilla. Desde 1988, su propósito fundamental ha sido combatir la explotación sexual infantil y acompañar a las personas explotadas sexualmente en su recuperación y realización personal...

Somos Más

Feb. 08, 2006

See also:

About Stella Cárdenas

Stella Cárdenas is building new institutional protections against child prostitution and pornography in Colombia by persuading the government to extend the mandate of its ministry charged with protection of children, the Ministry of Family Welfare... Stella and her Fundación Renacer ("Rebirth Foundation") contributed substantially to the passage of Law 360. This law, passed in 1997, for the first time assigned penalties–fines or jail sentences–for anyone who draws children into prostitution...

Ashoka International

2001

Added: June 23, 2009

Mexico

Mexico's immigration commissioner Cecilia Romero

El turismo sexual es inevitable: INM

Para la comisionada del Instituto Nacional de Migración, Cecilia Romero, el turismo sexual, tráfico de personas, comercio de mujeres, redes de pederastia, plagio y violencia contra miles de migrantes son “males de la humanidad” que México no puede erradicar...

Mexico’s Immigration Chief: Sex Tourism is Inevitable

According to Cecilia Romero, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (immigration service), sex tourism, human trafficking, female commercial sex work, pedophile networks, and the kidnappings and violence that victimize thousands of migrants [crossing Mexico to get to the U.S.] are "evils of mankind" that Mexico cannot eradicate.

Even if such practices have triggered: 1) harsh reports [about Mexico] from the U.S. Department of State and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH); 2) complaints by foreign victims about their forced prostitution and sex trafficking; and 3) complaints from [undocumented] Cuban migrants who have been extorted for thousands of dollars in their quest to get to Florida, Romero concludes that all of these problems have existed since the origins of migration...

[Commenting on strong criticism of the INM and repeated calls for her resignation,] Romero argues that the National Migration Institute has implemented a 'purification' effort which has caused a number of problems to emerge into the public spotlight.

The immigration director noted that since her team arrived as part of President Felipe Calderón’s government, she has accomplished much, but she is also aware that those achievements will never be enough [to solve the problems that exist].

Romero said that the vast majority of complaints that have been submitted [about official corruption] originate from within the INM itself. So far about 300 immigration officers have been reprimanded or removed. "This shows that we are making progress, although I will never be satisfied in our war against organized crime."

Romero adds that when there is discussion about immigrants, the finger is always pointed at the INM. But, she says, the criminal networks have state police, corrections officers and also immigration agents on their payrolls. We are investigating and pursuing them. Romero insists that her agency is taking action to get to the bottom of the problem of corruption.

Jose Gerardo Mejia

El Universal

June 20 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

We appreciate the fact that Cecilia Romero, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, is a rare federal agency director who is willing to be honest in expressing the Felipe Calderón Administration's lack of interest in treating the mass gender atrocity of adult and child sexual exploitation in that nation as a serious crisis requiring an urgent response.

According to the traditional beliefs of Roman feudalism that still prevail in Mexico, such behavior is, as Director Romero says, simply "inevitable."

The hidden follow-on to that statement is: "If it is inevitable, why do anything to fight it?"

So a nation like Mexico ends up doing only the minimum necessary to placate the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Office with the objective of receiving a reasonably good rating in the annual TIP report.

In other words, Romero is saying: Victims, don't hold your breath as you wait for help. That help is not forthcoming from President Calderón's federal government.

That is not a good enough answer!

Commissioner Romero's statement is consistent with the lack of action that the Mexican public sees from its federal government in regard to addressing modern human slavery and other forms of violence against women.

We are especially concerned that this policy position, stating that mass sexual violence and slavery is inevitable, is consistent with other positions taken on women's human rights issues by President Calderón's National Action Party (PAN), such as stating that the women who have been kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered by the hundreds in Ciudad Juarez caused their own deaths because they wore immodest clothing and walked in bad parts of town.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 23/24, 2009

See also:

LibertadLatina

Analysis of the political actions and policies of Mexico's National Action Party (PAN) in regard to their detrimental impact on women's basic human rights

Added: June 23, 2009

Colombia

El turismo sexual aumenta cada día más en el país

Bogotá - Las cifras sobre turismo sexual en Colombia son alarmantes. Vender el cuerpo a clientes que llegan de todas partes del mundo, se ha convertido en uno de los mejores negocios en el país, siendo Cali una de las primeras ciudades en la lista...

Sex tourism is increasing on a daily basis

Bogota - The figures on sexual tourism in Colombia are alarming. To sell your body to customers who arrive from all over the world has become one of the best businesses in the nation, with Cali being the city at the top of the list.

According to a report of the Rebirth Foundation (Foundation Renacer), in the past two years the phenomenon has grown 53% in Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca department [state]. Minors form the majority of those involved in the business.

The most appealing magnets for foreign tourists who come to our nation are the bodies of girls between 12 and 14 years [who are sold to them in prostitution]. This business generates huge profits for the mafia. Although 202 cases have been documented during the past 24 months, these incidents have been reported neither to the police for minors nor to the SIJIN (the Judicial Investigations and Intelligence Service).

elpaisvallenato.com

June 21, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

Colombia may indeed be a leader in efforts to combat modern human trafficking. In the U.S. State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Colombia received a 'Tier 1' rating, the highest possible, to reward their efforts against human trafficking.

Yet Colombia's government and certain social elements contribute to a large number of human rights abuses, especially those that victimize Afro-Colombians in Indigenous peoples, who face wanton murder, rape and displacement by the military and right wing paramilitary forces hell bent on stealing their land and conducting their own perverted version of 'social cleansing.' Leftist guerillas are not innocent either.

These abuses, including the forced conscription of underage girls and accompanying sexual abuse perpetrated by illegal armed groups on both sides of the conflict contribute to an environment where mass human trafficking is made possible.

With an estimated 70,000 victims of human trafficking being created annually, Colombia is right up there with Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Argentina as one of the major nations involved in the illegal trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation.

We recommend that an index of trafficking behavior in these nations that is separate from the annual TIP report be developed to assess the true story 'on the ground' in the nations of the Americas. Currently, the TIP rating system does not reflect the true intensity of the problem.

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 23, 2009

Added: June 21, 2009

Colombia - The United States

María is keeping her identity hidden, for fear of reprisals.

Photo: Helda Martínez/IPS

Trafficking Victims’ Ordeal Never Over

Bogota - A mixture of rage, impotence and terror is evident behind the sadness in María’s eyes. It’s been five months since she escaped from her captors in the United States, where she was taken under a false job contract, and she still can’t shake off her fear…

According to the available data, some 70,000 people fall victim to human trafficking every year in Colombia, which ranks third in the number of victims in Latin America, behind the Dominican Republic and Brazil.

…Statistics only partially reflect the magnitude of the crime, because many of the victims refuse to go to the police for fear traffickers will carry out their threats, or that they will be shunned by their community, or simply because they don’t realize just how severely their rights have been violated…

…People do fall for the bogus offers because they are in dire need of an opportunity for a better life. That was what happened to María, a 40-year old woman originally from the central province of Tolima, who was living on the outskirts of Bogotá when she was captured by members of a trafficking mafia.

She admitted to IPS that she’s still scared her captors will find her or come after her kids…

She’s also filled with rage. In November 2008 she and her family carefully examined the work contract before she decided to accept a job as a domestic in the home of a wealthy Colombian family in the United States…

But everything changed when she arrived at her destination somewhere in the U.S. … They took away her passport and other documents, then forced her to work all day long, from 5 a.m. through midnight, with only half a day’s rest on Sundays, and drastically reduced her meals, feeding her a meager vegetable diet…

[A] woman from El Salvador told María that what her "employers" were doing was illegal, explained how to unblock the telephone, and gave her an emergency number to phone the police for help.

But the police merely forced her captors to give back her passport and admonished them for how they were treating her.

That night, María’s kidnappers scared her with all sorts of threats against her and her family back in Colombia. They warned her that if she didn’t sign a paper exonerating them from all responsibility, they would report her to the police and accuse her of several offences, and she would be thrown in jail for years.

She was finally able to sneak out of the house while her kidnappers thought she was sleeping, and was driven to a shelter for human trafficking victims by the Salvadoran woman and her husband.

"There I started to get better. I spoke several times with my children and the rest of my family, and I came to realize that there are many people in the same difficult situation as me. Two other Colombian women were there with me, and another four had left the day I arrived," she said…

Inter press Service (IPS)

June 10, 2009

LibertadLatina Commentary

Ten years ago a Colombian woman caught in an almost identical situation of domestic labor slavery approached a hair dresser, asking for help to escape her employer - a wealthy Colombian diplomatic family living in the Washington, DC region. I made good her escape, and that of a friend who worked for another diplomatic family from Colombia.

The victim's employer yelled and screamed at her, made her work under constant verbal threats from 6 am until midnight, forced her to cook, clean, mow the lawn and shovel the snow for a family of five living in a big house on a large piece of land, and forbade her to leave the house alone. Only during one of her 'supervised' visits to a local hair salon was she able to contact a sympathetic person willing to help. That person contacted me.

This woman still lives in fear of her employer, but has gotten married and has brought her daughter to the U.S.

Many middle and upper class women across Latin America employ domestic workers. A very large number of these employers act in a fashion that reflects extreme cruelty, and is consistent with the manner in which wealthy women in the Roman Empire treated enslaved women in their homes.

We see the results of this attitude in the Roman Empire through the example of the poorly fed and frail servant girls, barely given enough food to survive, whose well-preserved bodies have been found in the ruins of the houses of wealthy Romans who lived in the city of Pompeii.

Many wealthy and middle class women continue to treat their 'hired help' in the same slave-like fashion in one offshoot of the Roman Empire known as modern Latin America. You just have to watch a Mexican soap opera on a Spanish language TV network anywhere in the world to confirm that ugly fact.

As a millionaire Greek business owner once explained to me, the fact that Mediterranean cultures enslaved each other 'back and forth' for millennia lead directly to the fact that there is no remorse for slavery in Latin America. He told me that when he arrived in the U.S. years ago, his biggest surprise was that white Americans felt remorse for the past enslavement of African Americans.

That remorse does not exist in the Mediter-ranean region. By extension (and Spain is one of these Mediter-ranean cultures), remorse for slavery does no exist among the elites in Latin America.

So how can the world depend upon the judgment, and trust the actions of such elites to pass anti-trafficking laws and enforce them, when tolerance for labor and sexual exploitation was and is built into the very foundation of Latin American societies?

This is why a new Global Plan of Action against slavery, proposed by a number of United Nations member countries, is needed, because... given the existence of the U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons report or not, international legal instruments, and the threat of U.S. economic sanctions will not break through the Roman wall of impunity that enslaves Latin America's oppressed populations, and especially the poor, the indigenous and the African descendent, without engaging in out of the box thinking and action to end this crisis.

In other words, the modern anti-trafficking movement, and the actions of many international and U.S. bodies assume that all nations want to collaborate to end sex and labor trafficking. That sentiment is true among some sectors of society in Latin America. But powerful economic and political forces thrive through the exploitation of the victims of modern human slavery, while ancient cultural and religious traditions justify such inhumanity.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission recently announced that some 1,600 mostly Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S., mostly women and girls, are kidnapped each month into slavery. It is known that sexual slavery predominates in Mexico much more so than labor slavery. In the case of domestic servitude, involving tens of thousands of underage Indigenous girls in Mexico, sex and labor slavery, co-exist).

This is happening to the benefit of the elites and paid-off corrupt officials in Mexico, while at the same time the publication of serious federal regulations that are urgently required to enact the nation's first anti-trafficking law was intentionally delayed by President Felipe Calderón for 11 months. When the rules were finally published, after four stern warnings from Congress, they were watered down to make the law ineffective.

Many members of Mexico's Congress of the Republic have admonished President Calderón for not caring about the plight of trafficking victims. Together with non-governmental organizations, these legislators have organized an effort to insist that President Calderón withdraw his current anti-trafficking regulations and allow them to be re-written to put the teeth back in them to reflect the original intent of Congress in passing the law. It is obvious that President Calderón finally published the regulations so that Mexico would receive a positive rating (Tier 2) in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.

Meanwhile, 20,000 migrants, mostly women and children, are kidnapped into slavery in Mexico each year while corrupt and apathetic law enforce-ment and government officials not only don't lift a finger to help these victims, but, as the 2009 TIP report acknowledges, they are sometimes direct participants in these kidnappings.

In addition, 4,000 Indigenous Mexican children remain enslaved in prostitution in Japan, while neither Mexico nor Japan do anything to find and rescue them.

Eight year old Mexican girls have been reported as being trafficking "into the brothels of the basements of New York" both currently and since at least the mid 1990s, if not earlier.

Yet these realities are not reflected in the 2009 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, which was also true under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The overall TIP report assessment of Mexico is accurate, but the nuances, detailing the intentional resistance by the Calderón administration against actually caring about and acting to defend trafficking victims and those at risk, is not reflected in the report.

The misogynist policies of the far right members of Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) are also not reflected in the 2009 TIP report. It is not in their best interest to clamp-down on modern human slavery, a position reflected in their efforts to foot-drag on building effective anti-trafficking efforts at the federal level.

Truth be told, Mexico's economy would be seriously 'harmed' if all forms of labor and sexual slavery ended. That does not justify extending the life of such exploitation for even one second.

We applaud Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Trafficking in Persons Office Director Louis C. De Baca, the first Latino head of the office, for the release of an expanded and well thought out Trafficking in Persons report, the first delivered by a Democratic administration.

But the case of Mexico, as well as the case of the major criminal enterprise that is the trafficking of mostly Afro-Latina women from the Dominican Republic to Argentina (while anti-trafficking analysis largely ignores this issue) are two areas that greatly concern us.

We look forward to seeing serious emphasis placed on addressing sex and labor trafficking in Latina America, especially where indigenous and African descendent populations are targeted, because in both types of slavery, these peoples comprise a very large segment of those who are at risk.

If this basic task of putting greater focus on the Latin American issue is accepted by the U.S. State Department, we should expect to see new initiatives in the Trafficking in Persons Office that go beyond the limited work that is being done today to address this emergency.

Latin America's exploding human trafficking crisis was virtually ignored during the past decade by the U.S. Government, except where foes of the U.S., including Cuba and Venezuela were concerned.

The real bad guys make their money in Mexico, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Argentina. The Mexican trafficking mafias enslave 500,000 sex trafficking victims, according to Teresa Ulloa, director of the Latina American and Caribbean office of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Children. Yet the U.S. State Department declares, following the estimates developed by the United Nations funded International Labor Organization (ILO), that only 1.5 million sex slaves exist in the entire world.

So if both Teresa Ulloa and the ILO are to be believed, then Mexico has 1/3 of the world's sex slaves? Something is wrong with these numbers.

In addition, Save the Children has recognized that the southern Mexican border region is the largest area for the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the entire world. That fact is also missing from the 2009 TIP report.

We do not need another 8 years of obfuscation about the true and horrific magnitude of modern human slavery in Latin America.

We also do not need a diminished focus on this emergency because the forces that favor the legalization of prostitution are strongly represented in liberal Democratic circles. Their work is largely academic, and it does not account for the mass victimization of children and underage youth, especially in Latin America, who cannot possibly be seen as consenting, willing participants in the sex trade.

As well, we do not need to limit action against human trafficking to only a focus on further adoption of the Palermo Protocol, an approach which was defined during a gathering of diplomats at the United Nations on May 13, 2009 as being ineffective.

As we have stated before... We are encouraged by the brave efforts of United Nations diplomats and Ecuadorian Minister of Justice and Human Rights (Attorney General) Néstor Arbito Chica to promote a Global Plan of Action to get around the very clear fact that the Palermo Protocol, and regional efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) are insufficient to successfully fight this aggressive criminal war against a whole generation of Latin American and especially Indigenous women and girls.

We look forward to seeing the United States take a leading role to step-up efforts to bring this crisis under control. We also look forward to seeing the U.S. State Department demonstrate leadership in addressing the hard issues in Latin America without seeing the rules changed behind closed doors in favor of quieting criticism of U.S. allies in the region, something that was quite blatant during the last U.S. Administration.

Those at risk, and those who are today enslaved in the region deserve our undivided attention and an honest approach to ending the condoned and officially sanctioned mass gender atrocity that is modern human slavery in Latin America.

The time of the Roman Empire is over!

Free my people now!

End impunity now!

Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina

June 21/22, 2009

Afirma la experta Teresa Ulloa

Three to four thousand underage indigenous girls from the poor states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Mexico [state] have become victims of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) in Japan.

Puebla city, in Puebla state - Teresa Ulloa, Latin America and Caribbean Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW) announced her estimates of the numbers of indigenous children sex trafficked to Japan, and explained that traffickers trick the victims using offers of thousands of dollars for their parents in exchange for [obtaining permission] to take their daughters. The parents are told that their girls are going to the United States to work in fast food restaurant jobs.

Taking advantage of the condition of submission that Mexico's indigenous communities are forced to live in, the traffickers take their victims to Japan where they are prostituted and work as geishas, a role that Asian women no-longer want to play because today they have more decision-making power than in the past.

Ulloa said that before these victims from Japan are repatriated, the home conditions of these girls must be investigated to assure that they can be reintegrated without facing the risk of being sold or sexually exploited again.

Ulloa noted that in the year 2002 the CATW helped to repatriate two sisters, ages 8 and 10, who had been prostituted in a brothel in New York. They were subjected to exploitation again, 15 days later, because their family "had sold their daughters in exchange for two goats and two cases of beer."

During her interview with CIMAC Noticias, Ulloa declared: "the subject [of child protection] is not on the national agenda. Much attention is paid to drug trafficking, but the government hasn't even realized that the same drug trafficking networks are used for the [sex] trafficking of children, and that organized crime regards this activity to be one of their most important businesses." ...

Nadia Altamirano Díaz

CIMAC Noticias

Dec. 12, 2008

Expert: More than one million minors are sexually exploited in Central Mexico

Tlaxcala city, in Tlaxcala state - Around 1.5 million people in the central region of Mexico are engaged in prostitution, and some 75% of them are between 12 and 13 years of age, reported Teresa Ulloa, director of the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean...

During an international seminar in the city of Tlaxcala, Ulloa noted that, due to the conditions of marginalization in which they live, at least 50 million women and children in Latin America are at risk of being recruited for sexual exploitation.

La Jornada de Oriente

Sep. 26, 2007

Added: June 22, 2009

The United States - Latin America

The US Human Trafficking Report 2009: Whatever makes you think it's political?

The USA sometimes tries to make out the "equal partners" thing with the rest of the Americas and sometimes it doesn't. You get The Hawaiian making some lip service to the greater cause at the moment, but when push comes to shove and the bureaucrats are let loose, those old habits of arrogance, selective memory based on friendships and high-handedness towards "the brown people down there" shine on through.

Today the US State Department's ninth annual "Trafficking in Persons Report" was published, and here's how the region stacks up in the eyes of TheWorldPoliceman.™

Level One (complies with all, we luvs ya): Colombia

Level Two (not up to scratch but we see you're making an effort, try a bit harder, boyz): Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay.

Level Three (hmmm..not so good, kiddies. We're watching you so don't do anything stupid): Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Rep Dom, Venezuela

Level Four (bad bad bad naughty naughty sanctions sanctions): Cuba

But the biggest guilty party on human trafficking is left off the list completely. The country where many labor and sex slaves are sent by their paymasters and blind eyes are turned. Go on....take a wild guess as to which one.

The Democratic Underground

June 16, 2009

Added: June 21, 2009

The Americas

2009 TIP Ratings
	Tier 1
	Tier 2
	Tier 2 Watch List
	Tier 3

2009 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report - Nations of the Americas

A-C: Antigua and Barbuda (Tier 2), Argentina (Tier 2 Watch List), Bahamas (Tier 2), Barbados (Tier 2), Belize (Tier 2 Watch List), Bolivia (Tier 2), Brazil (Tier 2), Canada (Tier 1), Chile (Tier 2), Colombia (Tier 1), Costa Rica (Tier 2), Cuba (Tier 3)

D-K: Dominican Republic (Tier 2 Watch List), Ecuador (Tier 2), El Salvador (Tier 2), Guatemala (Tier 2 Watch List), Guyana (Tier 2 Watch List), Haiti (missing), Honduras (Tier 2), Jamaica (Tier 2)

L-P: Mexico (Tier 2), Nicaragua (Tier 2 Watch List), Panama (Tier 2), Paraguay (Tier 2), Peru (Tier 2)

Q-Z: ST. Vincent and the Grenadines (Tier 2 Watch List), Trinidad and Tobago (Tier 2), Uruguay (Tier 2), Venezuela (Tier 2 Watch List)

Letter from Ambassador Luis C. de Baca

Introduction

Major Forms of Trafficking in Persons

The Three P's: Punishment, Protection, Prevention

Financial Crisis and Human Trafficking

Topics of Special Interest

Victims' Stories

Global Law Enforcement Data

Commendable Intiatives Around the World

2009 TIP Report Heroes

Tier Placements

Maps

U.S. Government Domestic Anti-Trafficking Efforts

U.S. Department of State Office of Trafficking in Persons

June 16, 2009

Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala

Justicia parece no llegar en casos de niñas víctimas de violencia

El sistema de justicia parece no ser efectivo en los casos de tres niñas asesinadas recientemente en San Lucas Sacatepéquez y de una menor violada en Sololá, ya que se han registrado señales de negligencia en las investigaciones y parcialidad en el estudio de las pruebas, denunció la Fundación Sobrevivientes...

Justice Appears Distant in Cases of Girl Victims of Violence

The non-governmental organization La Fundación Sobrevivientes (the Survivor’s Foundation) has denounced the fact that Guatemala’s justice system does not appear to be working effectively in two criminal cases: 1) that of three girls killed recently in San Lucas Sacatepequez; and 2) the case of a minor girl raped in the city of Sololá. The Foundation states that there have been indications of negligence and bias in the evaluation of the evidence in these cases.

In the first case, a 13-year-old girl was raped on July 8, 2008 in Sololá. Judge Frank Armando Martínez allowed the accused assailant, Martín Tambríz, to be freed despite conclusive evidence of his guilt. Forensic evidence had showed a positive DNA match tying Tambríz to the rape. The Foundation plans to appeal the acquittal.

Lawyers for the Survivor’s Foundation also expressed concern about the case of three girls, ages 7, 8 and 12, who were “butchered” on May 29, 2009 in the hamlet Chicamán in San Lucas Sacatepequez. It was ascertained that one of the victim’s was raped. Three men suspected in the crime have been detained. The Foundation emphasizes that there are signs of negligence in the investigation conducted by the District Attorney of Sacatepéquez, a fact that will not contribute to solving these crimes.

The Survivor’s Foundation has asked that the case be moved to the capital, Guatemala City to insure that the investigation and preparations for prosecution are able to be observed, ensuring that due process is respected in the case.

CERIGUA

June 19, 2009

Added: June 20, 2009

Guatemala

Juana Méndez, right, and her translator explain in Court how one of the two police-men who raped her told her after the attack: "Why are you complaining? I will put two bullets into you and throw you over an embankment."

From the documentary film on the Juana Méndez case (in Spanish on YouTube)

Guatemala.- Una indígena guatemalteca es la primera mujer maya que logra que encarcelen a un policía por haberla violado

Nebaj - La in