In the quixotic evolution of journalism, we who live and
breathe to tell the stories that shape us, are infrequently granted a journey
beyond our comfort level. Commiserating via late night phone conversations
during the times when superficiality threatens suffocation or the medium
becomes the overwhelming message, we all share in the adrenaline when one sets
off exploring the depths of the inexplicable.
And so, as I rev up to revisit the issue of human sex
trafficking, I look back at the trip to Mexico a year ago
(2012) with excellent reporter Elizabeth Aguilera, courtesy of a grant from the
International Center for Journalists, to dive into the shadows.
I hoped to disappear into this city of 25 million people
but blond-with-camera worked against me.
In the waning light of evening, our taxi delivered us down a
narrow cobblestoned street where we crouched under a short overhang in an
increasing downpour outside the home of Congresswoman Rosi Orozco. When she
arrived moments later in a well-fortified black Explorer with bullet-proof
windows, we were smothered in embrace like long lost cousins, under the
skeptical gaze of three teenage girls a few steps apart, wearing too much makeup, playing with a
toddler.
These girls had lived a nightmare, and we had come
to hear their stories. Preyed upon by “Romeos” who romanced them
away from their sleepy little towns, they were sequestered, drugged, gang raped, then forced into prostitution: the human sex trade. With threats to their families, oftentimes starved or
beaten, they became beholden to their pimps. Entire towns flourished now in
Mexico, mansions built, on the money made by selling these girls, often 10-30
times a day, to “Johns,” in Mexico, the U.S., Asia, Europe, wherever they were
trafficked. The tiny township of
Tenancingo was the vortex of sex trafficking.
That’s where we were headed.
We left the congresswoman’s house about 10 pm, in the rain, and
stopped at a taco stand, where they were happy to make a vegetarian plate of
corn tortillas grilled with cheese, chilis, onions, mushrooms and salsa. Only a few miles away from this upscale neighborhood we walked past young girls
stationed outside an open marketplace, lining the sidewalk in the cold dark midnight,
shoulder to shoulder like dolls crowding a shelf. Pimps buzzed by on bicycles or stood smoking in the shadows across the street monitoring the activity
while police drove by protecting their cash crop from outsiders.
We met again with Congresswoman Rosi Orozco, in her role as presidenta
de la commission especial de lucha contra la trata de personas at federal offices downtown. One of her
colleagues Cuahtemoc Ibarra, federal assessor camara de diputados, shares
her brave pursuit of legislation to actually punish pimps and traffickers; a concept quite new to their criminal justice system.
The fruit at our hotel was perfect. Nectarines, papayas,
kiwi, banana, mango, even the apple exploded with flavor. And the coffee: perfect.
I wanted to carry fruit in my pockets to hand to these girls in tight clinging
dresses who probably hadn’t eaten in 12 hours, hiding behind pay phones or
pacing in front of liquor stores on otherwise desolate corners with rebar
reaching up through the sidewalk like dead spiders’ legs embalmed and
protruding from a hot concrete pour.
People like talking with Elizabeth. She’s a good reporter, a
great listener, and she never cracks. A distraught father who had searched for
his seduced and kidnapped daughter, successfully strong-arming her captors into
giving her back, brought us home and told of the ordeal, showed us the desperate dusty shrine to her childhood lost. Forced to drive
through the streets at midnight in one of the world’s most crowded cities so I
could take pictures from under a jacket in the red light district, Elizabeth
was nails.
Two hapless handlers were frightened near to death
when we confronted the Zona de Ninas. Ostensibly a Mercado called La Merced, the
girls are the real merchandise here. Closely watched, they stand nervously
plastered against a cyclone fence where men size them up on their way through
the tight aisles. As soon as I took out a camera, they scattered. Four guys
swooped in on us, on bikes, one stooped to take pictures of us on a cell phone
that he no doubt broadcast to other pimps nationwide. We meandered, stopped in
a store for sweets, pretended to be interested in the low prices of
pharmaceuticals.
Finally Elizabeth, Samuel and Olivia, our new
handler, surrounded me and told me to put the camera away because it was about
to be grabbed from any one of those guys on bikes. After pretending to photograph Elizabeth with souvenirs, I had to put the camera away. So when we passed an absolute wall of
girls, I wasn’t able to get a photo. I took three more steps and an absolutely gorgeous young girl
smiled at me with all her innocence. I smiled back. She was maybe 15. We always remember the images that get
away.
La Merced, a block from Mexico City's famed Zocalo square, has been considered one of the biggest areas of
sex exploitation in Latin America.
Many of the networks working there are Tlaxcaltecas. The Mexican District Attorney said 90% of the people detained
were originally from Tlaxcala.
Tenancingo has eyes. This is the epicenter of trafficking young girls. Yet no one knew anything about it; that's just a rumor they all said, especially the mayor. In Tenancingo,
where random mansions built with questionable funds rise up from among blocks
of humble one-story shanties, a research study says, 20% of the kids want to be
traffickers when they grow up: a man that is successful, a man with money, with
women, with houses, that society recognizes as powerful and moves about
untouchable by laws, like their uncles. Boys want to have many sisters.
We are very aware that we are not protected by any
laws either. That the men following our every step from the roofs of buildings
in the square, or with their foot on the bumper of our car when we are ready to
leave, are very much in control here. We move hotel rooms every night, tell the
taxi driver to drop us at the curb, then walk to a different hotel.
The beautiful girls who spoke with us, using their first
names only told of teenage dreams: becoming a hair dresser, a lawyer, a mom, a
teacher. Some could not have children for all the abuse their internal organs
had suffered. Some already had children. They lived collectively in a safe
house built by the outspoken senator and her lawyer friends. As we glanced
around the popular town squares, we wondered which of the couples walking
together or sitting on benches were allowed the vulnerable innocence of a true
first love, and which were the nascent negotiations of unspeakable heartbreak.
