| | |  Editorials | Issues | December 2009 
Modern-Day Slavery in Mexico and the United States - 4
 Megan McAdams - Council on Hemispheric Affairs
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December 22, 2009
 |  | Mexican women and children are also forced from their homes due to economic issues and sent to work in the sex industry in Mexican tourist centers and border towns. |  | | |
Victims in Transit are Vulnerable to Traffickers
Mexico also acts as an intermediary location between the individual’s country of origin and the nation where he or she will be enslaved. Statistics representing Mexico as a transit country for traffickers are particularly lacking, as many individuals enter Mexico illegally and only briefly pass through the country. According to the U.S. State Department, “victims from South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Asia, are trafficked into Mexico for sexual or labor exploitation, or transit the country en route to the United States.” The Human Trafficking Assessment Tool reports that, of the estimated 500,000 Central Americans that travel through Mexico hoping to reach the U.S., 20,000 to 50,000 of these immigrants fall victim to human traffickers. The overwhelming majority of these victims are trafficked to the U.S., and a small minority of individuals are trafficked into Canada.
Unaccompanied Immigrants Captured and Forced to Work in Mexico
The U.S. State Department reports a new trend that immigrants from Central and South America, traveling towards the U.S., are captured and exploited in Mexico. Guatemalans, living in a country wrought by political instability, violence, and crime, are often desperate to improve their economic situations and provide for their families. Devastatingly, human traffickers play upon their victims’ desperation. Luis C. de Baca observed that, “though [human traffickers] deal in misery, what they’re pitching is hope: hope for a better life, hope for a better opportunity.”
With such a hope of improving her opportunities, a young Guatemalan woman left home to travel through Mexico in search of the fabled “American Dream.” On December 2nd, the Mexican newspaper El Universal related the story of Nancy, a young Guatemalan woman, who left her native Guatemala with her brother hoping to travel through Mexico and then into the United States. The pair boarded a northbound train secretly but members of a gang called Los Zetitas viciously attacked them. The group of armed men, known for participating in drug and human trafficking, is only one of many such organizations operating in Mexico along the migratory route. The men grabbed Nancy and threw her into a car that soon departed, leaving her frantic brother behind. Nancy spent the next two and a half months working in a brothel along the U.S.-Mexico border before she was able to contact her brother, who soon organized her rescue. According to the article, her story is shared by nearly 20,000 Central Americans currently forced to work in the sex industry throughout Mexico.
Mexican Child Sex Tourism
Mexican women and children are also forced from their homes due to economic issues and sent to work in the sex industry in Mexican tourist centers and border towns. ECPAT, an organization whose acronym stands for “End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes reports that the country has “long been regarded as a popular sex tourism location.” The State Department report also emphasizes that a “significant” amount of women and children are trafficked from within Mexico and forced into the sex industry. Each year, nearly 20,000 Mexican children are trafficked and forced into sex work in tourist centers like Acapulco and Cancún, and the border towns of Juárez and Tijuana. These cities become magnets for sex tourists and, especially pedophiles, that prey on minors who have been trafficked to border areas.
ECPAT enumerates three possible categories for child sex tourists. Those that do not travel to a country to initiate sexual relations but take advantage of the children when they arrive are called situational abusers. According to ECPAT, “the situational offender is an indiscriminate sex tourist who is presented with the opportunity to interact sexually with a person under 18.” The majority of child sex tourists are of this type. The second type, the preferential child sex tourist, displays an “active sexual preference for children” but is also attracted to adults. This type of individual typically seeks out adolescent children. Finally, pedophiles are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children exclusively.
Pedophiles and preferential child sex tourists represent the minority of child sex abuse cases. U.S. citizens are driving the demand for the trafficking of children by making trips, whether with a specific purpose or chanced interest, to brothels for the explicit purpose of exploiting children. ECPAT reports that 36 percent of U.S. child sex tourist cases involved crimes committed in Mexico. Mexico must address the trafficking of these child victims so that they are not available to situational abusers. The U.S. must also work to prevent these criminal acts by investigating the child sex tourism websites and networks that draw preferential child sex tourists and pedophiles.
An example of a child sex tourist case can be found in a November 25 article in the Arizona Daily Star. The paper reported that a former school superintendent pled guilty to charges that he planned a child sex tour of Mexico. The man, who indicated he was interested in a 13 or 14 year-old boy, arranged his trip with undercover agents. Officials arrested him as he crossed into Mexico and he now faces between five to nine years in a federal prison. According to Mario Fuentes, director of Mexico’s Centre for Studies and Research in Social Development and Assistance, “As long as the political will to combat trafficking is lacking, and until further legal changes are adopted, nothing is going to change.” Without stricter legislation and enforcement, the U.S.-Mexico border cities will continue to be a safe haven for American tourists to sexually exploit girls and boys.
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