Thursday, December 18, 2003, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Latin American/Caribbean Roundtable & Women in Development Workgroup “Trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean”

We are pleased to have a panel of experts to present on Human Trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Results of recent studies conducted will be shared as well as case studies to illustrate current trends.  The recent reporting process and the US evaluations carried out through the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking will also be discussed.

• Laura Langberg, a Specialist on Trafficking in Women and Children at OAS
• Berta Fernandez, Project Development Officer for the Caribbean at the International Organization for Migration
• Philip Linderman, Senior Reporting Officer at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking will facilitate a discussion on human trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean.

- International Organization for Migration

Chuck Goolsby of LibertadLatina.org thanks the organizers of this event and its presenters for holding this timely discussion.  

During this event Chuck Goolsby spoke up during the question and answer period and talked about many of the often-ignored aspects of the Latin American sexual exploitation issue.  Specifically, the work represented on this web site, LibertadLatina.org, was explained.  

The continuum of exploitation that affects Latin American women and girls was discussed in both the context of Latin America and importantly, in regard to Latin American forms of anti-female sexual exploitation that have now become commonplace within Latin American immigrant communities in the United States and specifically in the Washington, DC region.

Among the points presented by Chuck Goolsby during this ad-hoc presentation were the following facts:

• That Latin American women and girls, and especially those from 'non-elite backgrounds' face impunity in sexual violence in Latin America and the United States.

• That the efforts of the assembled experts in human trafficking in Latin America should provide basic education to the general public, the non-governmental (NGO) community and government officials... on the degree to which Latin American women and girls face sexual violence with impunity on a scale not-often understood within the United States.

• That Latin American immigrant women and girls who work in the low-wage workplaces of the Washington, DC region and across the United States face rape and sexual coercion with impunity on the job.

• That Latin American immigrant women and girls who are victims of sexual violence in the Washington, DC region and across the United States often face indifference and hostility from local law enforcement officials.

• That society, and the assembled organizations, need to address the fact that so many thousands of girl children are forced into prostitution to survive, including an estimated:

  	500,000 to 2 Million children in Brazil
  	500,000 children in Peru
  	500,000 children in the northeast states of Argentina

• That 35,000 women and girls per year are trafficked from Colombia to Holland, Spain and especially Japan for purposes of sexual exploitation.

• That in San Diego, California, hundreds of girls between the ages of 7 and 18 have been kidnapped or subjected to false romantic entrapment in Mexico, and were then taken to San Diego, California.  Once in San Diego, these underage girls were forced into prostitution and were (and are today being) raped by dozens of men per day in over 25 suburban-house and agricultural-camp based brothels.

• That a Latina doctor, with funding from the U.S. federal government, was tasked with supplying condoms to the minor girl victims of these criminal 'child rape camps' in San Diego, and was threatened by her U.S. federal government contacts with legal repercussions against her if she broke her contractual obligation of confidentiality and publicly tried to organize assistance for the victims of the San Diego child rape camps.

• That although federal and local law enforcement officials knew about the San Diego child rape camps, a raid was organized only 10 years after these horrors first came into the view of law enforcement.

• That the combined FBI, INS and San Diego sheriff's raid netted 50 male traffickers and 'customers' (johns), and that they were all eventually freed because the child victims refused to testify against their tormentors.

• That of the several minor Mexican girls rescued, all but one of them was sent back to Mexico, and that these deported girls never received any victim services after their rescues, nor any follow-up. 

• That the crisis in the San Diego child rape camps continues to exist today.

• That a study by an NGO in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, found that 8% of secondary school-girls had been raped by their teachers in school.

• That this continent-wide climate of hostility against women creates the push-factors that force women to migrate from Latin America, seeking a (hopefully) better life in the United States and elsewhere.  [As often as not, they end up being trafficked into forced prostitution.]

• That Chuck Goolsby has encountered, through first-hand intervention, and second and third-hand accounts, during the last 15 years, a total of over 65 cases of sexual exploitation faced by local Latin American immigrant women and girls in the Washington, DC region [most especially in Montgomery County, Maryland].

• That in a recent, August, 2003 victim intervention by Chuck Goolsby in the city of Gaithersburg, Maryland, local police were insensitive to the victim, and that three men had [literally] jumped out of the bushes and attempted to kidnap and rape the Salvadoran Latina indigenous woman who was their intended victim. [The police refused to arrest any of the three assailants until Chuck Goolsby showed them his LibertadLatina.org business card.]

• That the assault by these three men (who were from Mexico, and perhaps were from the Mexican state of Oaxaca) mirrored the attitudes of men in Oaxaca, where a form of kidnap and rape of women and girls called rapto is legal.

• That a Oaxaca women's group, with Mexican federal funding, had effectively lobbied the Oaxaca legislature to ban rapto and apply a 10 year prison sentence to convictions for rapto.  A short time after the law was passed the Oaxaca legislature reversed its decision, calling rapto "harmless."

• That the Spanish language Telemundo TV network (now a subsidiary of NBC) had, a number of months ago, showed [on its nightly news program] the case of an 18 year old high school girl who was pursued on a daily basis by a man in his forties who stalked her in his pickup truck after school every day on an isolated stretch of road.  This man wanted to practice rapto on the unwilling victim by kidnapping and raping her.  The news report related that one day, this man jumped out of his pickup truck on the isolated road and attempted, finally, to kidnap the 18 year old girl.  The girl shot the assailant to death, and now faced 20 years in jail, according to the Telemundo news report.  [The local police chief stated openly for the Telemundo reported, on tape, that rapto was simply a local tradition that didn't have much importance.]  [This 18 year old women is, in very real terms, a political prisoner in a Mexican state where rape is a legalized institution and a woman who defends herself is a 'criminal.']

Chuck Goolsby concluded his impromptu remarks by posing a question to the three expert presenters (see their names below), asking how (given the current severe situation for women and girls in Latin America and in Latin American immigrant communities in the United States) did they recommend that we work to arrive at a situation where these realities are adequately addressed.  Chuck Goolsby noted that these broader issues go beyond the narrow scope of sex-trafficking, and stated to the expert panel that the current U.S. government 'T' visa program for victims of severe cases of trafficking would only assist several dozen victims per year [out of 18,000 to 20,000 actual trafficking victims per year.]

In response, Laura Langberg, the anti-trafficking specialist for the Organization of American States, noted that all we can do is to continue to work with countries to improve the situation by building the legal infrastructure to stop  trafficking in the Americas.

(More can and must be done!)

Omitted from my remarks because of time constraints was any discussion of the specific targeting of poor indigenous women and girls by traffickers and other sexual exploiters/predators in the Americas.  A convergence of exploitation is coming about.  Ninety percent of child prostitutes in Canada are indigenous.  Indigenous women and girls in the U.S. face a rate of rape that is 3.5 times the U.S. national average and in 82% of rape cases, the assailant was White American.  Mexico's population is 90% indigenous or heavily mixed race Spanish/indigenous.  

Centuries of rape with impunity focused against indigenous women and girls in Latin America, culminating perhaps in the rape of almost all Mayan girls and women over the age of ten during their 1980's civil war, has created social conditions that allow indigenous women to become the focus of traffickers, many of whom are well fueled financially by their Colombian and Mexico drug cartel activity.  They and lesser trafficking organizations know that law enforcement and society will typically not defend poor women, and much less the poor indigenous and Latina women who are the female majority in Latin America.  

African and Afro-indigenous descended women and girls face similar circumstances, especially in the Dominican Republic and Colombia.  Members of these most vulnerable populations are rarely if ever represented in government and NGO agencies that address the issue of trafficking and exploitation, and their voice is rarely heard.

Recognition of the special dangers that this 'off-the-radar- screen' population face is critical to allow the anti- trafficking movement to focus its limited efforts accurately in support of exploited Latin American women and girls.  Providing the accurate and detailed information about these complex interrelationships between social issues and impunity is what LibertadLatina.org exists to do.

Poor indigenous, African-descended and most other poor women in Latin America have little-to-no voice, and, as in the case of the above-described conference, no presence 'at the table' of decision makers in government and in the non-profit world who are deciding their fate in very real terms.  LibertadLatina.org presented their points-of-view at the December 18th conference in Washington, DC.  It was a much needed statement of truth.  

For all of the exploited women and children of the Americas... we will not forget you, and we will work tirelessly to end the sexual exploitation with impunity that prevails today across the American continents.

Please join us in that effort.

- Chuck Goolsby

LibertadLatina.org

December 20, 2003