Marisa B. Ugarte, Laura Zarate, and Melissa Farley
Journal of Trauma Practice (2003) 2 (3/4): 33-74
Also appears in:
Farley, Melissa (ed) (2003) Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress. Binghamton: Haworth Press.
In this article, researchers describe the historical background of sex trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Researchers summarize two case examples that illustrate the complexity of providing physical and emotional safety, as well as immigration protection to victims of trafficking into prostitution. Researchers emphasize the importance of understanding the varied cultural contexts in which sexual exploitation, rape, prostitution and trafficking occur.
INTRODUCTION
Prostitution and trafficking are sexual violence that result in economic profit for perpetrators. Other types of gender violence such as incest, rape and wife-beating are hidden and frequently denied but they are not sources of mass revenue. Described by survivors as "paid rape," prostitution provides buyers (johns, tricks, dates) constant sexual access to women and children. Prostitution and trafficking can take place in massage parlors, strip clubs, escort agencies, lap dance clubs, on the street, in a car or motel, or in a tent set up at the edge of a field being cultivated by migrant workers.
Women are trafficked (moved) by pimps to wherever there is a demand for prostitution, for example military bases, tourist destinations, conventions or migrant communities. The current U.S. trafficking law places the burden of proof on the victim to show evidence of force, fraud or coercion.1 Since pimps/traffickers move people to wherever they are sold for sex, we think a better definition of trafficking would include movement of people within a country as well as across international borders for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Trafficking is a direct result of cultural and economic forces which sweep a woman or child into prostitution including not only coercion, manipulation, deception, initial consent, family pressure--but also past or present family and community violence, economic deprivation, racism, and conditions of inequality between the sexes. This broader definition of trafficking is appropriate if governments seek to decrease sex businesses, taking into account the range of forces that channel people into prostitution.
SEX TRAFFICKING FROM MEXICO TO THE UNITED STATES
Mexico-to-United States immigration has been described as the longest-running labor migration in the world (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002). The 7.9 million Mexicans living in the United States comprise 27% of all foreign born persons (Chiquiar & Hanson, 2002). However, restrictions against illegal immigrants, combined with anti-immigrant hostility in the United States, have created an economy that consists of generally undesirable jobs. In addition to exploited labor, this illegal economy includes both prostitution and trafficking. Non-Latino U.S. men, as well as men from immigrant communities, are customers of prostitutes supplied by Mexican traffickers (Heinzl, 2003). Every day, thousands of male tourists enter Mexico from the United States to purchase women and girls in prostitution.
Of the 50,000 people annually trafficked to the United States, a third are Latin Americans (Richard, 2000). Women and youth seeking work in the U.S.A. must rely on labor traffickers (coyotes) to help them cross the border in search of work. Sex traffickers lure poor women and youth with false promises of jobs, sometimes kidnapping those they transport and selling them.
Mexico is both an origination and destination point for trafficking women and children, as well as being a stopover for transportation of people along several trafficking routes (for example, from Brazil or Guatemala to the United States) (Lederer, 2001). Although accurate numbers are impossible to obtain, one report noted that 16,000 girls in Mexico were sexually exploited through networks involving immigrants, military personnel, police, governmental officials, and businessmen (Azaola, 2001). There is great danger of sex trafficking occurring along the Mexican-U.S. border, where unemployment is high and thousands of U.S. citizens cross into Mexico daily for the purpose of buying Mexican youth in prostitution (British Broadcasting Report, 2002; Taino, 1998). Castillo, Gomez & Delgado (1999) estimate that there are 15,000 women in street prostitution in Tijuana with many more working in the city's more than 200 club/brothels.
THE SAN DIEGO TRAFFICKING CORRIDOR
According to health workers interviewed by the first author, trafficking of women and children for prostitution in San Diego is common but is rarely reported to U.S. or Mexican police. Although prostitution/trafficking are in fact human rights violations based on sex, race, and class, they have been prejudicially dismissed as "the problems of illegal immigrants." As a result, trafficking of people across the Mexico/U.S. border has become a lucrative business.
When women and children migrate illegally, they are at the mercy of traffickers. Many are raped or murdered in transit. If their families are known to have money, migrants may be held for ransom. Coyotes who transport people across the Mexico/U.S.A. border are aware that neither victims nor their families will report these crimes, since the victims themselves would risk felony charges for illegal entry into the United States.
Pimps often work in concert with coyotes. In a scenario of brutal exploitation, coyotes transport victims from Mexico to the United States for a reduced fee, sexually assaulting and prostituting the women as payment for passage. Instead of being reunited with families across the border, children may be considered saleable by coyotes and may never arrive at their intended destination. Children may be sold to gangs who prostitute them. Their families are then told that they died during the border crossing. Children who are unaccompanied or who have run away from abusive homes are at especially high risk for prostitution/trafficking.
Women and girls are often moved from the Mexico/California border to northern San Diego County, where they are placed in apartments controlled by women pimps hired by the traffickers. Brothels have been identified in communities from San Diego to as far north as Canada. Prostitutes are transported in a sex trafficking corridor that supplies them to the shifting locations of migrant labor communities (sometimes called camps) near Fresno, Barstow, Sacramento, and Seattle. In San Diego, a wide range of commercial sexual exploitation exists, including adult prostitution, child and youth sex tourism, mail order brides, pornography, peonage, and bondage.
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