An Inhumane Trade

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.

While human rights activists struggle to educate young girls, to create a preventative policy that says men cannot enrich themselves based on the pain of women, the reality in Mexico is cartel business trumps human dignity. During the 10 days we are here, Lydia Cacho, internationally renowned investigative journalist who had just published a second book exposing high profile politicians’ roles in the sex trade had been forced to go into hiding because of death threats.

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.

 Every journalist worth her salt hopes to shed light in dark corners, raise consciousness to the level of action, give body to emotions, and in my case, tell truth with a camera. There are giants who came before us in this field and many who walk among us now. I hope that the example set in 2011 when cell phone photos started revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt inspires new journalists, whichever medium carries the message.