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Mexico - Sex Traffickers Victimize 10,000 Women Every Year


MONTERREY, Mexico – Every year, rings engaging in human trafficking entrap or abduct 10,000 women in the southern and central states of Mexico for sexual exploitation in the northern part of the country, according to a study presented on Monday.

The investigation, the work of the state University of Nuevo Leon and funded by the National Science and Technology Council, focuses on the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women in northern Mexico, the study coordinator Arum Kumar told Efe.

The investigators found, for example, that in Monterrey, capital of Nuevo Leon and a leading business hub, most sexually exploited women are brought by gangs from other regions under the false pretense of getting them jobs.

“We’re finding that those who entrap the women take photos to their villages showing that Monterrey is a first-world city, they show women pictures of the metropolitan municipality of San Pedro Garza and tell them that they can work there for a salary of between $50 and $100 a day,” Kumar said.

Once the women get to the city of their destination and find they are being duped into working in brothels, most of them decide to return home – at which time they are threatened and submitted to all kinds of physical, sexual and psychological violence to make them stay.

Monterrey, the biggest city in northern Mexico, is one of the most frequented destinations of sexual tourism thanks to its proximity to the United States, the study found.

“It is estimated that out of every 10 women trafficked from the states of Michoacan, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Veracruz and Chiapas, three are taken to the United States and seven are exploited within the country,” the expert said.

Most women forced to work as prostitutes in Monterrey come from the central states of Puebla, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas.

Kumar cited recent investigations showing that close to 5,000 women are trafficked yearly to the United States and Canada.

At present “Mexico is the leading destination for sexual tourism in all Latin America and has become known as the Bangkok of Latin America,” he said.

Kumar added that trafficking in women represents a serious problem of violence against females that Mexican authorities and society in general have to face and fight.

People trafficking is considered by the United Nations as the third most lucrative illegal business in the world after drug and arms trafficking, with the gangs involved taking in revenues reported at around $6 billion annually. EFE





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