A través de una red de trata de personas, cualquier interno de los centros de readaptación social de México tiene la posibilidad de escoger y “comprar” mujeres. “Esta red que existe en los centros penitenciarios, es un acto terrible al que se enfrentan las mujeres, quienes son llevadas hacia los penales varoniles, donde las escogen para violarlas y venderlas como objetos”, reveló la diputada federal panista Rosi Orozco.

Orozco, quien es presidenta de la Comisión de la Lucha contra la Trata de Personas en San Lázaro, aseguró que estas mujeres reciben un trato discriminatorio, lo cual muestra la violación a los derechos humanos y la falta de equidad de género que se vive...

Women are sold in prostitution in Mexico's prisons

A human trafficking network has set itself up to allow any prisoner in Mexico's prisons and jails to select and "buy" women. "The network, which exists in the nations penal institutions, puts the women involved in a terrible situation. They are taken to men's prisons, where they are chosen to be sold as objects and raped," stated Deputy Rosi Orozco, who is the president of the Special Commission to Fight Human Trafficking in the Chamber of Deputies [the lower house of Congress].

Deputy Orozco emphasized that the women who are prostituted under these conditions face discriminatory treatment, which demonstrates a lack of gender equality and a  violation of their human rights.

One factor that aggravates these problems is the level of overpopulation in the prison system, noted Deputy Arturo Santana, who is a member of the Public Security Commission in the Chamber of Deputies...

The Justice Commission in the Chamber of Deputies has reacted to the problem by passing a non binding resolution that calls upon the appropriate authorities to implement measures to control sex trafficking. Their resolution asks that the National Penitentiary System, local jails, the Council of the Judiciary, the Attorney General's Office, the Superior Court of Justice, the Mexico City Human Rights Commission and the Secretariat of Public Security all take action to prevent the exploitation of women.

The resolution asks that the Secretary of Public Safety create an environment conducive to the social rehabilitation of inmates while also taking action to effectively monitor conditions in the nation's prisons. It calls upon the secretaries of National Defense and the Federal Public Security Secretariat to act to permanently strengthen the presence of the Federal Police [at prisons], and to engage in aerial surveillance in the municipalities of Práxedis, Guadalupe and Valley de Juarez, in Chihuahua state.

San Antonio - On Friday, a jury in state district court sentenced Juan Moreno, 45, to life in prison after convicting him on human trafficking charges. He held a 13-year-old runaway girl captive and forced her to have sex with several men.

Human trafficking, according to Assistant District Attorney Kirsta Melton, is "when a child is, in some way, obtained and then forced into prostitution or forced to engage in any other kind of forced labor or services."

State laws against human trafficking have been strengthened recently and now carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. The state laws are primarily used in domestic cases.

Federal laws against human trafficking, in most cases, deal with international cases.

"Best estimates suggest that there are over 100,000 children being trafficked here in the United States," Melton said. "What we do not realize is that there are huge numbers of our very own children who are being trafficked right here."

Prosecution at both the federal and state levels is vital, she said.

"We've got to take the resources and expertise that we have and apply it to the crisis," Melton said.

Melton said that there are other cases currently being prepared for prosecution in Bexar County. Among them are cases against Moreno's younger brother and two other men accused of raping the teenage runaway.

On December 3, New Jersey State Police arrested Elias Santos, 32, and charged him with first degree aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

According to NJ State Police spokesman Sgt. First Class Stephen Jones, the incident took place two days before Thanksgiving, in the girl’s home in Upper Freehold.

The victim is under the age of 10.

Santos, who works at a Christmas tree farm, admitted to police that he is in the country illegally from Guatemala...

...The International Indigenous Working Group on HIV/AIDS (IIWGHA) is a worldwide network of representatives of native groups that seeks to incorporate “first peoples” into the international efforts to address and combat the spread of HIV. Over half of the members of the IIWGHA represent Central or South American indigenous peoples. As they prepare to release their strategic plan of action in the next few months, it is clearly time to address the social marginalization that has heightened the risk of infection in indigenous populations.

Indigenous Community Marginalization and Health

...The legacy of colonization has left indigenous communities in Latin America significantly marginalized. Most of these groups were forced off of their ancestral lands, which has contributed to critical health issues caused by persistent poverty. With the expenses brought on by poor general health in the community, the “increased burden of care” means that individuals are rarely capable of financially coping with debilitating diseases like HIV/AIDS, much less of engaging in preventative strategies like condom use. The strong correlation between poverty and HIV infection has been analyzed in innumerable contexts, demonstrating that poverty results in less education, poor/inadequate healthcare, and a higher susceptibility to sexual exploitation. Geographical isolation compounds these challenges.

...As the UN report puts it, “Because the spread of HIV in any community involves complex questions of culture, sexuality and social relations, and because indigenous cultures, by definition, are different from prevailing or mainstream cultures, the development of strategies to reduce the impact of HIV on indigenous populations requires real and active engagement with those communities.”

In most Latin American governments, this concept is not well understood or effectively implemented.

Louisa Reynolds reported her findings on HIV in Guatemalan indigenous communities in the Latinamerica Press in July of 2009. This article, which provided one of the earlier-cited anecdotes, began in the city of Almolonga, in the Guatemalan department of Quetzaltenango. Almolonga registered 14 new cases of HIV in the first seven months of 2009. Reynolds reported that, although the mayor recognized the crisis and attempted a campaign for condom use, the town’s evangelical churches vetoed his efforts. Quetzaltenango had 206.71 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with a total of 1551 HIV positive citizens at the time of the article’s publication, a number which can only continue to grow without active efforts to impede it. The age group most affected was teens and young adults ages 15 to 25.

...Reynolds quoted another Guatemalan mayor, Saturnino Figueroa of San Jaun Ixcoy in Huehuetenango: After people migrate, they come back with sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, which has already caused a number of deaths. A young man comes back from the United States infected with the disease and has sex with a number of women. All the women in the community want this man to marry them because they think he will give them material goods. Then, these women have sex with other men and that’s when it becomes a threat to the population. It’s an issue that few people are willing to talk about because it involves a person’s honor and people prefer to remain silent.

Unfortunately, this dynamic of increased HIV susceptibility from patterns of migration pervades the indigenous communities....

The United Nations reported that, though in 2000 only 4.6 percent of HIV/AIDS cases in Mexico came from rural locations, in the decade since, the disease has begun to leave the cities and permeate indigenous, rural areas. A team led by Daniel Hernández-Rosete performed 91 interviews with Purépecha and Zapotec indigenous communities, focusing on the health of indigenous women in the context of the Mexican concubinage institution. Under this cultural practice, some women are “stolen” (robadas) from their families at very young ages to be “concubines” (similar to the English concept of common-law wives) for men. Though many Mexicans accept this practice, it often creates dynamics of hyper-masculinity, machismo, and power domination in concubine relationships. The 91 interviews included 24 women in concubinage and 29 indigenous migrants.

...Many transient workers insist on having unprotected sex with their concubines upon return, in an attempt to keep the women dependent on, and therefore faithful to, the men through pregnancy. The heavily machismo culture prevents many women from resisting, even those who suspected their partners of engaging in sexual behavior abroad and acknowledged the danger this posed to their children’s health as well as their own. In addition, though the concubinage system carries less stigma than the word evokes in English, concubines still have a diminished social support structure. Over time, this system has caused these women to become “wrapped in a spiral of isolation, economic dependency, and domestic violence that places them in situations that diminish their ability to prevent and treat HIV/STIs.”

Though HIV/AIDS in indigenous communities mainly revolves around a simple lack of attention, the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) has alleged that the indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, have been actively repressed by a corrupt government. The article claimed that an organization called Frente Común Contra el SIDA discovered that the state AIDS council, COESIDA, was treating indigenous patients improperly (or not at all) and under-reporting rural AIDS cases. It quoted the journals of late AIDS activist Bill Wolf, who pointed to a suspicious relationship between COESIDA’s director and current and past governors. Wolf also claimed that during the disruptive 2006 strikes in Oaxaca, the government forced him to sign an agreement “to cease activities concerning HIV/AIDS.” Wolf also alleged that, even more reprehensibly, the government attacked a Frente-run condom supplier in a mafia-like scenario. Though some of the details of the allegations seem unverifiable to say the least, the simple truth remains that governments are not doing enough to address HIV/AIDS in their indigenous communities...

...Local experts have accused the Brazilian government of covering up an HIV/AIDS crisis in Amazonia. Neil McKenna raised this issue almost 20 years before this announcement in a 1993 article entitled “A Disaster Waiting to Happen.” In it, he referenced a number of alarming statistics, such as high rates of prostitution (among girls as young as 11 years old), and STI rates of 20 percent among garimperos. To conclude, McKenna quoted the founder of the Amazonia AIDS and Health Project, in regards to HIV/AIDS in the region: “The tribes of Amazonia are an endangered species: they’re facing extinction.”

Call to Action

Clearly, the international HIV/AIDS activist community needs more data on this issue in order to develop effective long-term policies. Yet, even from the limited available data, one thing is certain: if Latin American officials do not begin to address HIV/AIDS in indigenous communities swiftly, purposefully, and with the intention of incorporating culture-specific risk factors, the death toll in Indo-America could become catastrophic. Accordingly, this work concludes with an international call to action. It is to be hoped that NGOs, aid networks, governments, and individual activists will answer this call and address the plight of Latin America’s indigenous population before it is too late. There is simply no excuse to continue ignoring this problem.

Mexico City: Violence and murder grew across Latin America in 2010, with ruthless, ritualistic bloodshed by drug traffickers and criminal gangs making public safety the top concern in the region.

The execution in northeastern Mexico of 72 US-bound migrants in August, and 37 people killed in Brazil's recent crackdown on criminal gangs in Rio de Janeiro's biggest favela (slum) show the two faces of the regional violence.

"We live in a region where violent and slow, painful death have spilled across the borders," said the director of the Human Rights Institute at Central American University El Salvador, Benjamin Cuellar.

He noted that for the past 10 years, Latin America's murder rate has been twice that of any other continent…

In August, Organization of American States secretary-general Jose Manuel Insulza admitted that Latin America was experiencing an unprecedented crime wave, which "in a number of cities has become a real epidemic".

"Five years ago, we spoke separately of drug cartels, maras, armed gangs, kidnappers, smugglers and people traffickers. Now all this violence seems to converge in criminal organizations alone," he said after a Mexico City event.

"Lives for Sale" is a thought-provoking film that humanizes the plight of the immigrant in a heartfelt way. Hollywood films such as "Trade", "Babel", and "Fast Food Nation" explore related issues such as sex trafficking and the exploitation of immigrants.

The "Lives for Sale" documentary examines the reasons why immigrants such as Mexicans and Central Americans are willing to risk death at the hands of "coyote" smugglers and criminal gangs called "maras", or in the deserts of the southwestern United States. Rarely seen is the human tragedy of lives lost and ruined along the permeable border between the United States and the waves of immigrants seeking refuge and a better way of life.

As Mexico's ongoing war with narcotraffickers appears to go awry, and the governments of Central America reach the brink of ungovernability, the people of the United States need to look at the complexity of the issue of immigration and its ties to demands in the US for cheap labor, cheap sex, and cheap produce. That a black market in human beings can exist under the noses of a people known heretofore for the rule of law diminishes our humanity.

Speroforum editor Martin Barillas is a former US diplomat, who also worked as a democracy advocate and election observer in Latin America. He is also a freelance translator.

Culiacán.- Se calcula que en México hay alrededor de 50 mil niños raptados que son explotados sexualmente, sin embargo, no existe una cifra oficial que permita conocer la realidad, dijo el presidente de la Asociación de Niños robados y Desaparecidos, IAP, Guillermo Gutiérrez Romero. "No tenemos esa cifra. Desconocemos cuál es la radiografía nacional, para saber cuántos niños robados hay en México. Muchas veces los mismos estados niegan cierta información porque no conviene a sus intereses", aseveró.

Por la explotación infantil, indicó, México es considerado el Bangkok de América Latina, donde llegan miles y miles de pedófilos de todo el mundo. "Les ofrecen carteras donde vienen bebés, niñas y niños de 1 ó 2 años, incluso, para tener sexo con ellos", reveló...

Fifty Thousand children kidnapped suffer [commercial] sexual exploitation

The city of Culiacán on the state of Sinaloa - It is estimated that 50,000 kidnapped children are being sexually exploited in Mexico, although no official statistics exist to allow us to understand the actual situation, declared Guillermo Gutiérrez Romero, the president of Mexico's National Foundation for Investigation of Kidnapped and Disappeared Children. Gutiérrez Romero, "We don't have any statistics. We don't know how many stolen children exist in Mexico." Gutiérrez Romero warned that, "On many occasions, the state governments themselves have refused to provide certain statistics, because to do so would not be in their own self interest."

Gutiérrez Romero observed that in regard to the [commercial] sexual exploitation of children [CSEC], Mexico is considered to be the Bangkok of Latin America, where thousands of pedophiles arrive from all over the world. "These pedophiles are offered venues where infants, babies of 1 to2-years-of-age are sold, to have sex with them," he declared.

Gutiérrez Romero reported that the majority of CSEC takes place in Mexico's large cities and in its tourist ports. For that reason, he said, these are the locations that pedophiles flock to. "What is known as child sex tourism is taking place in our tourist ports. A number of people choose these destinations to have sex with children."

Gutiérrez Romero cautioned that state governments that have tourist resort areas within their jurisdictions are loathe to announce publicly that the kidnapping of children takes place, because that news would diminish tourism.

Only 10% of child kidnapping victims are rescued, noted Gutiérrez Romero.

Gutiérrez Romero denounced the fact that the laws against stealing cattle in Mexico are more severe than the laws against the kidnapping of children.

Toluca, Méx.— De las 33 mil denuncias telefónicas que ha registrado el programa Llama y Vive que opera en Perú, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y el estado de México, 12 mil han estado relacionadas con el delito de trata de personas y de éstas se han derivado 180 denuncias penales, dijo ayer Ellis Juan, representante del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) en México.

En el marco del Foro Regional para la Prevención y Erradicación de la Trata de Personas, inaugurado por el gobernador mexiquense, Enrique Peña Nieto, el representante del BID precisó que el programa inició operaciones en Perú y desde hace un año la entidad mexiquense se incorporó al esquema que tiene como objetivo denunciar el ilícito que, según organismos internacionales, después del tráfico de droga y armas es el que genera más ganancias.

“Nos preocupa mucho todo el impacto que está teniendo el tráfico ilegal de personas de Centroamérica, hacia el norte —Estados Unidos—, que buscan mejores oportunidades de trabajo y, México es una región de paso”, comentó Ellis Juan.

Patricia Olamendi, experta mexicana en el tema y colaboradora del Comité Técnico del Mecanismo de Seguimiento de la Convención de Belem Do Pará, sostuvo que el delito de trata de personas, en su modalidad de prostitución y tráfico de migrantes, es ignorado por las autoridades federales y estatales, entre otras cosas, porque es aceptado por la sociedad...

Buenos Aires - La trata de mujeres con fines de prostitución tuvo un crecimiento alarmante en Argentina, donde en los últimos 18 meses desaparecieron 700 mujeres -entre ellas varias de otros países- que se sumaron a las llamadas rutas de la soja y del petróleo, reveló una ONG.

"La trata de personas en Argentina en los últimos 10 años tuvo un crecimiento sumamente preocupante", dijo a AFP Fabiana Túñez, de La Casa del Encuentro, una ONG que elabora la única estadística disponible sobre el secuestro de mujeres para el tráfico sexual...

700 women [and girls] were abducted for prostitution in Argentina during the past 18 months

Buenos Aires – The rate of trafficking in women for purposes of sexual exploitation has underdone an alarming increase in Argentina. During the past 18 months 700 women have disappeared, including a number of victims from countries beyond Argentina.

"The growth in human trafficking in Argentina during the past 10 years has been extremely worrying", said Fabiana Túñez of the non profit organization Casa del Encuentro, which produces the only statistics available on the abduction of women for sex trafficking in Argentina.

Túñez stated, "In the past year and a half 700 women and girls have gone missing. They were kidnapped by human trafficking networks for prostitution. Of these victims, 70% are Argentinean. The rest are Paraguayans, Dominicans, Peruvians, Bolivians and Brazilians, in that order...”

"One thing that particularly concerns us is that recently, the age of the victims of prostitution networks has decreased. We are seeing children and adolescents ranging from ages 8 to 16," noted Túñez. Boys and adolescent males are also being targeted...

"Once they are in the hands of these mafias, the victims are subjected to 20 days of what traffickers call the ablande (the softening-up process). The victim is raped, tortured, their family is threatened, and they are given drugs to break them mentally. After this process, they are moved into the brothels,” revealed Túñez.

After stealing the victim’s identity documents, or after they are given counterfeit documents, the victims are hidden away in regions that they are not familiar with. They are forced to receive customers as frequently as once every 20 minutes.

"A pimp can buy a kidnapped woman for between $2,000 and $ 3,000, but there are also auctions of teenagers and girls - to see who wins the right to steal her virginity. Johns bid up to $7,000 for this,” reported Túñez.

The 'investment' is extremely profitable given that each slave will generate about $2,000 for her pimp each month, a figure that can increase fivefold in the case of a girl under age 12.

Trafficked women are kept at a given [brothel] location for only 20 to 25 days. When they are rotated, the brothels advertise a "change list" to draw their customers' attention...

Túñez denounced the fact that "the existence of human trafficking requires the complicity of the political and judicial powers, as well as the security forces." She added that there must also exist "social indifference, and men who are willing to pay for sex with women in slavery..."

See also: Full English Translation

Argentina tuvo un alarmante crecimiento en la trata de mujeres para explotación sexual en el último tiempo. Aunque no existe una estadística oficial, los datos recogidos por la ONG La casa del encuentro sugieren que el flagelo en el país ya atrae a las grandes redes internacionales dedicadas a la prostitución.

"En los últimos 18 meses secuestraron en Argentina a 700 mujeres para explotación sexual. De ellas, el 50% son menores de edad", aseguró a ámbito.com Fabiana Túñez, coordinadora general de la asociación. A estos escalofriantes números se le agregó el dato de que en los pasados dos años "han aumentado los casos de mujeres- niñas de entre 10 y 17 años"...

Sex traffickers in Brooklyn are targeting Caribbean teenage girls, many as young as 13 years, to lure them into prostitution.

Young women from Russia, Germany, China and Latin America are also on the radar screen of criminal youth gangs, including the Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings, who beat, threaten or otherwise force them into becoming prostitutes.

That alarm was raised by Charles Hynes, Brooklyn’s district attorney and top prosecutor, who has created the Brooklyn Sex Trafficking Unit, BKSTU, to investigate cases and bring perpetrators to court. He has also launched a public information campaign to heighten awareness about what he calls a “barbaric” crime. “It’s hundreds of kids and every one of these kids is being trafficked,” Hynes said. “People misunderstand trafficking. When you say trafficking they picture someone being spirited across the Canadian or Mexican border.”

Hynes explained that the profile of a victim was a teenage girl who had moved to the city with her parents from the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Latin America, probably as an undocumented immigrant, and would have been approached by a gang member.

She was then enticed by the young man who pretended to be interested in a relationship as a boyfriend but then forced her into prostitution...

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes knows too well that the U.S. is not immune to the problem of sex trafficking – it occurs in his own borough every day. And high at risk, Hynes says, are young immigrant girls. That's why he's working with the community and New York celebrity activists like Sarah Jessica Parker and Gabourey Sidibe to create a community safety net for trafficking victims.

According to Hynes, girls between the ages of 13 and 15 are frequently trafficked in Brooklyn, many of them from Latin American countries, as well as Europe and China. Lacking proper documentation and a good handle on language, these girls are easy prey for sex traffickers, many of whom, Hynes says, belong to gangs. The Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings, among other groups, specifically target young, undocumented immigrants, knowing their trademark tactics of threats, coercion and brutality will work like a charm in pushing the girls into prostitution...