| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Mexico Town Has Tradition of Prostitution
 Kate Brumback & Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
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August 09, 2010
 |  | Pimping isn't a problem exclusive to this state, it happens everywhere in the world.
- Judith Soriana |  | | |
Tenancingo, Mexico — In this impoverished town in central Mexico, a sinister trade has taken root: entire extended families exploit desperation and lure hundreds of unsuspecting young Mexican women to the United States to force them into prostitution.
Those who know the pimps of Tlaxcala state — victims, prosecutors, social workers and researchers — say the men from Tenancingo have honed their methods over at least three generations.
They play on all that is good in their victims — love of family, love of husband, love of children — to force young women into near-bondage in the United States.
The town provided the perfect petri dish for forced prostitution. A heavily Indian area, it combines long traditions of forced marriage or “bride kidnapping,” with machismo, grinding poverty and an early wave of industrialization in the 1890s that later went bust, leaving a displaced population that would roam, looking for elusive work.
Added to that, says anthropologist Oscar Montiel — who has interviewed the pimps about their work — is a tradition of informal, sworn-to-silence male groups. He believes that, in the town of just over 10,000, there may be as many as 3,000 people directly involved the trade.
The Tenancingo pimps troll bus stations, parks, stores and high schools in poverty-stricken areas of Mexico, according to prosecutors who have raided their operations in Mexico City — often the “proving ground” where women are tried out as prostitutes before being moved to the U.S.
The pimps use a combination of threats, mistreatment, unkept promises of marriage and jobs, that send their victims on a slippery slope that usually ends in the filthy alleys near Mexico City’s La Merced marketplace or at a cheap apartment in metro Atlanta. There, the women are isolated and sometimes forced to service dozens of male clients a day.
Garcia, who has dealt extensively with the victims, says some pimps even show up with fake “parents” to convince women they are serious about commitment.
“The way they fish for their victims is very cruel, very Machiavellian, but very effective,” said Garcia. “When somebody is isolated, or unprotected, they are the perfect victim.”
A young victim who agreed to speak to The Associated Press fit that profile perfectly. She asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation from her pimp’s family.
Miguel Rugerio was charming and sweet when she met him in her impoverished hometown in the gulf coast state of Tabasco, she said.
He wooed her with sweet words and promises — good jobs in the U.S. for both of them with lots of money to send home to build a house in Mexico for their future. He wanted to meet her parents — a sure sign of a serious relationship in Mexico — and said he wanted to marry her.
She couldn’t believe her good fortune.
But after he got her to Tenancingo he quickly changed. When the girl, just 17 at the time, wanted to go home for her sister’s 15th birthday, he said no.
“I thought he was joking, and he said he wasn’t joking, that I couldn’t go home,” she said. “I told him I would escape, and he said he would find me and make a scene in my hometown.”
He got upset and locked her in a room. He finally said she could go home for a day for her sister’s party but that if she didn’t come right back, he’d hurt her family. When she returned to him after the party, he and his family started to mistreat her — abusing her, humiliating her and making her do all the housework.
A few weeks later, he brought her to Mexico City and forced her to work as a prostitute.
“He told me that if I didn’t do it, he was going to hurt my sister and my family,” she said. “I was very afraid of him.”
A typical scenario, prosecutors say, involves an elaborate sham of a marriage — sometimes with false papers and names — before the pimp feigns a sudden financial crisis that would put the couple out in the street. The pimp then casually mentions a friend whose wife “worked” them out of the problem, noting, “If you love me, you’d do that for me.”
Sometimes the tactics are more violent. Mostly, the pimps concentrate on isolating women, lying to them, and breaking down their self-esteem.
The victim who spoke to the AP described it this way: Her pimp, Rugerio, humiliated her, pulled her hair, withheld food and told her she had to practice sex acts on him so she would perform well with clients.
Rugerio told her he would send her to the U.S. and that he’d join her a bit later. After walking through the desert, she was sent to a nondescript apartment complex in suburban Atlanta, where she was met by two women and a man who, she was told, were related to Rugerio.
“I asked them what kind of work I would be doing,” the young victim said. “She took out a bag of condoms and then I knew.”
Her minders kept her in a small, sparsely furnished apartment, isolated from any other girls and mostly ignored her during the day. Around 4 p.m., a driver would come pick her up to take her to work. In the beginning, she had sex with between five and 10 men a night, but as time went on the number got as high as 40 or 50, mostly Latino men.
She thought about escaping many times, she said, but she was afraid because Rugerio had told her that if she left, the police would arrest her and toss her in jail. She also didn’t know anyone, didn’t have any money and didn’t know where to go.
Miraculously, one night, when she got into the car that came to take her to work, a woman from her hometown was inside. She said she had been prostituted by a relative of her pimp but that the driver had helped her escape and they would help her escape too. With the help of the driver, she got away and eventually wound up testifying against her former pimp.
The 28-year-old Rugerio was sentenced in February to five years in federal prison in the U.S. for helping smuggle young women from Mexico to Atlanta and forcing them into prostitution.
Brumback reported from Atlanta. |
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