The Status of Human Trafficking in Latin Americaby Patricia Bibes

1

The Status of Human Trafficking in Latin Americaby Patricia Bibes

I.INTRODUCTION

While much attention has been paid to trafficking in drugs and smuggling of illegal aliens, trafficking of women and children for slavery purposes still remains an issue with which the average citizen is less familiar. The fact is that trafficking of women has accelerated over the last ten years, as Dona Hughes, director of Women Studies Program at the university of Rhode Island, points out.[1] Moreover, human trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity in the world after drugs and arms trafficking, bringing in about US$7 billion in profits every year.[2] Globalization has posed new economic and social challenges for women who have become more vulnerable to the inequities of the world. This vulnerability has, in turn, increased migration of women around the world in the hope of finding work to sustain themselves and their families. This economic necessity has placed women at greater risk of being the target of transnational organized crime, given that the latter usually feeds on human misery and economic crisis. Children, especially street children who have been subjected to abuse, have also become victims since they fall to the same type of predators. The result has been an increase in prostitution and other slave-like conditions for women and children in search of work.

Geographically speaking, Eastern Europe and Asia have generated the greater number of women who fall victims to trafficking to the United States (U.S.). In spite of being highly educated, Russian and Ukrainian women have been victimized by organized criminal networks that capitalize on the financial crisis that is affecting their countries. Further, Thailand and the Philippines have traditionally been hubs for organized crime. Both of these locations have attracted men from all over the world as these cities have played a central role in the sex-tourism industry. Latin America on the other hand, has remained in the back burner because there has been a smaller number of documented incidents in the U.S. as well as limited information on the subject, especially in South America. However, with the current economic and political crisis in South America, the trafficking of persons could soon take on increased momentum. Today, there are an increased number of economic refugees desperate to leave their country evidencing the worse economic recession the region has seen in over a decade. The countries that have been hit the worse are Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela and Paraguay. For example, in Argentina there is a mass emigration that is currently taking place. In Colombia during the past twelve months 120,000 people have fled to the U.S. on six-month tourist visas.[3] In Peru, the embassies have recorded a 53% increase[4] in the request for tourist visas. Moreover, in March a boat carrying 250 Ecuadorians was caught off the California coast[5]. This data evidences the largest exodus from South America since the 1980s. Globalization has hit Latin America hard. After a decade of free market reforms and tightening of the public and private sectors, people in economic necessity are willing to emigrate and look for job alternatives such as prostitution.

This paper will focus on the issue of trafficking of women and children in Latin America specifically. The main objective of the paper is to provide additional information on recent trends in the region that show an increase in slave-like conditions for women and children and in trafficking from and within Latin America. In fact, there is already evidence of growth of the child-sex industry in many parts of Central America given that the more traditional destinations such as Thailand and the Philippines are being increasingly regulated. This is the result of highlighted awareness in that part of the world and hence stricter laws and increased enforcement. Consequently, criminal networks are being formed in new areas that are under-regulated, corrupt and have weak judicial systems. This paper will also demonstrate how the dynamics of Latin American trafficking show some similarities and differences with trafficking in other parts of the world. A number of interviews were conducted with selected individuals in order to obtain information. These include an interview with Ms. Sara Torres, Specialist on Sexual Rights of Women and Consultant at INADI ( National Institute Against Discrimination ) at the Ministry of Interior in Argentina, Mr. Luis R.Cortes, Senior Intelligence Analyst at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and Mr. Orlando Henriques, Attaché at the Embassy of Brazil in Washington, D.C., and in charge of human rights issues.

II.OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM IN LATIN AMERICA

The problem of trafficking of women has reached global proportions in recent years. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report states that two million women and children from Asia, the former USSR and Latin America, are tricked each year by traffickers who offer them jobs abroad.[6] The same report states that of those two million women and children about 50,000 per year are brought to the U.S. for prostitution. While most of these individuals come from Asia and Eastern Europe, about 10,000 originate from Latin America each year.[7] But this figure hardly reflects the reality of what is happening today in Latin America. For example, it is estimated that about forty million children are being prostituted in Latin America as a result of poor economic conditions.[8] The sex-tourism industry is booming in the region due to increased poverty and lack of regulation and control measures. In Nicaragua, a government study conducted in 1999 stated that 82% of children who prostituted themselves had done so within the last year.[9] In addition, 47% of these children had chosen this path out of economic necessity and 96% engaged in prostitution to sustain their drug dependency (50% are dependent on glue).[10] These figures are quite representative of the general scenario in Central America. Further, in Guatemala, the local police estimates that about 2,000 girls and boys are being sexually exploited in 600 brothels in the capital alone.[11]Costa Rica, which is currently Central America’s leading tourist destination with one million foreign visitors in 1999, is believed to have the biggest child prostitution problem in the region.[12] While there are no statistics that show the number of men that travel to Costa Rica for sex with young prostitutes, local authorities estimate them to be about 5,000 each year.[13] Moreover, the National Institute for children estimates that about 3,000 children[14] are involved in prostitution in the country’s capital. Children are not only prostituted but also sold for adoption. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), illegal adoptions from third world countries are also on the rise with Guatemala currently being the main Latin American provider of babies to Western nations.[15]

On the women’s rights side, data indicates that the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Brazil supply most of the Latin American female prostitutes around the world, especially Europe. They usually apply for tourist or artist visas and end up working as prostitutes. For instance, the Swiss federal police stated that of all the artist visas awarded to “dancers” the main recipients were the Dominican Republic with 23% of the visas followed by Russia with 17% and Brazil with 14%.[16] While most Latin American women who work as prostitutes turn to Europe, the U.S. is also a recipient country, especially for Central American women.

Latin American women and children that are trafficked to the U.S. come primarily from Mexico. However, other trafficking countries that have been recorded in recent years include Brazil and Honduras.[17] The point of entry is generally through the Mexican border since alien smuggling on the southwest border is a common phenomenon nowadays with 1,431,612 recorded apprehensions in FY2000.[18] Of these apprehensions, 19,625 were from Central American countries, especially from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.[19] It is not known what percentage of these illegal alien smuggling occurrences is specifically targeted for prostitution. However, it is estimated that traffickers often obtain entry visas to get into Mexico as an intermediary point before they reach the U.S. Other points of entry include sophisticated networks through the Bahamas, Cuba and southern Florida. In 1998, smuggling fees for entry from Latin America to the U.S. through Cuba ran about US$20,000.[20] However, the easiest way for these women to enter the U.S. is to overstay a tourist or work visa if they obtain one. Once they reach the U.S. traffickers immediately send these women to work in the sex industry, sweatshop labor, domestic servitude, maid services or other forms of slave-like jobs.

1. WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SLAVERY: THE HUMAN COST

Most women who engage in prostitution do so through family, friends or through newspaper or Internet ads that promise jobs as secretaries, salesperson, waitresses and other jobs. However, these women soon find out that these jobs do not exist. They are subsequently taken prisoners and forced into prostitution or other forms of servitude in order to pay off the debts that they have incurred in order to get to their destination. Quite often they are sold to brothels for profit and cannot fight for themselves because they are illegal in the country and lack freedom of action. This type of criminal activity has proven to be quite profitable. According to Amy O’Neil Richard in “International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime,” a report written in 1999 for the Center for the Study of Intelligence, in recent cases traffickers have made US$1 million to US$8 million over a one- to six-year period.[21] Further, she states that in Latin America, profitability is just as lucrative as in other parts of the world. She cites the example of a Mexican crime family that forced deaf Mexicans to peddle trinkets, making an astonishing US$8 million in four and a half years. Other Mexicans made US$2.5 million in two and a half years by forcing women into prostitution, with an average client paying US$22 per 15 minutes.[22] Moreover, the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention states that trafficking of human cargo currently represents a US$5 to US$7 billion industry.[23]

The opportunity for such lucrative business has kept criminal networks very much involved in trafficking, which enables them to capitalize on this form of human slavery. Trafficking, as opposed to alien smuggling,[24] which is structured around short-term profits, relies on long-term exploitation for monetary gain. The victims, which have invested a significant amount of money to reach their destination and get set up, have to repay the traffickers over time, thereby creating a owner-slave type relationship. As a result, they are already indebted before they find out that the jobs that were promised to them never existed. Sometimes, girls are talked into marriage under false pretenses and end up being sold as prostitutes. Usually they are first approached by a friend or sister who is already in the destination country. Typically there is a combination of local and foreign traffickers. Women and girls are sold at the port upon arrival to another trafficker. The majority of women are given false documents thereby erasing their identity and preventing them from seeking legal action. Once taken, they are held in debt bondage for their travel expenses and put to work immediately. The documents are taken away and the women are left as slaves often enduring violence and forced drug consumption. In general, trafficking is intertwined with other related criminal activities such as extortion, racketeering, money laundering, bribery, and drug use. It can be part of an organized criminal organization as was exemplified by the Mexican crime family, or it can be the result of an individual decision as is so often the case of a parent selling a child’s sexual services for immediate profit.

Another form of trafficking of women is managed by the mail order bride industry. Women are advertised in local papers, magazines, catalogs and the Internet. With over two hundred mail order bride agencies in the U.S. in 1998, each one serving more than one thousand men per month paying $200 for each woman[25], this industry’s importance needs to be recognized. The number of agencies that deal with Latin American women has also proportionally increased with twenty agencies out of a total of 153 in March 1998 compared to twenty-four agencies out of a total of 202 in May 1998.[26] This type of service can often lead to fraud or abuse because many of these women are willing to take risks just to obtain U.S. residency.

Latin American trafficking has differences and similarities with trafficking in other areas of the world. For example, some peculiarities can be pointed out among trafficking in Asia, Europe and Latin America. In Asia, children are sold to trade by families and friends, or sold as servants. Some of these children do not know that they are being sold and others are even kidnapped from their homes. Quite often these children are trafficked across borders or from rural areas to urban areas. In Europe, trafficking is more consistently done from poor countries to wealthier countries, where they are marketed to organized pedophile rings and high-tech information services. In Latin America, children usually are already working in the streets and ultimately choose or are forced to enter the sex trade because they are economically vulnerable. The children believe they will benefit from protection from their pimps, but end up being controlled and abused by them.

However, many similarities can be found in the organization and operation of trafficking networks across borders. Ms. O’Neil’s study points out that Latin American trafficking appears to operate similarly to Asian trafficking, as they use independent contractors to move victims across the border using the same routes[27] as alien smugglers.[28] These groups are usually controlled by other Latino Americans who only deal with Latin women in brothels. The underlying abusive aspect of recruiting is also quite similar around the world. For instance, one of the basic premises of human trafficking, as well as other forms of organized crime, is that it feeds on and exploits human suffering and poverty caused by poor economic conditions and/or regional conflicts.

The economic crisis in Eastern Europe and Asia as well as the regional conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo have proved to be the target of transnational crime, which has set up many prostitution rings across the world. Latin America’s increasingly widening gap between classes has also left many women and children with fewer economic alternatives. The combination of the regional conflict in Colombia and the strong economic recession affecting the country has also triggered an outburst in migration and has placed Colombian women, especially the young and the elderly, in a vulnerable position. This propels them to escape to neighboring countries or even far away destinations in search of peace and economic security. In addition, the drug industry in Colombia has had important ripple effects through Latin America because it has not only perpetuated corruption and political chaos but also has placed many women and children in precarious conditions by presenting drug trafficking as the only way out of poverty. In fact, many children in Latin America find that the only way to survive is to deal drugs. These children are the first ones to fall prey to the sex industry. Further, prostitutes are usually kept on drugs since owners of brothels often run drug trafficking rings on a parallel manner. In general, the dynamics of trafficking appear to be consistent across regions.

One aspect of trafficking that is a particularly sensitive issue to most people is the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Increases in tourism in specific destinations are linked to an increase in sex tourism and trafficking of children. In general, poor economic conditions often lead parents into pushing their children into prostitution. Also, many children have left their homes because they have been previously abused by their families. A World Congress study reveals that 47% of the girls that are sexually exploited in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay were victims of abuse at home.[29] These children end up in the streets where they quickly fall victims to predators who get them hooked on drugs and prostitution. The same study pointed out that about 50% to 80% of the girls used drugs.[30] In Central America, these children provide sexual services to tourists, businessmen and even U.S. military personnel.[31] Moreover, street children are often recruited by gangs and drug cartels in many countries where minors are exempt from penal law and are therefore seen as good assets for narcotic dealers. These children become addicted to drugs and end up prostituting themselves in order to support their drug habit.