Mexico's lost daughters: how young women are sold into the sex trade by drug gangs

[redqueen]

Lupita is in her 30s and works as a laundry maid in several houses in Mexico City. She can still remember the first time she saw a girl taken from her home village. "She was very pretty," says Lupita. "She had freckles. She was 11 years old."

Lupita was 20 when five men drove into the small community near Dos Bocas, outside the port of Veracruz. "When they got out of the van all we could see were the machine guns in their hands. They wanted to know where the pretty one was, the girl with freckles. We all knew who that was. They took her and she was still holding her doll under her arm when they lifted her into the van like a bag of apples. This was more than 12 years ago. We never heard from her again."

The girl's name was Ruth, Lupita tells me. "She was the first one they stole. Then we heard it had happened in other villages." The men who visited the villages worked for the local drug cartels, snatching girls to be trafficked for sex. "There was nowhere in our village to hide," explains Lupita. "Where do you hide? So we dug holes in the ground and if we heard there were narcos around, we'd tell the girls to go to their holes and be very quiet for an hour or so until the men left." She remembers how one mother would leave paper and a crayon in the hole for her daughter. "This worked for a while until even the narcos began to know about the holes." Two years later, Lupita left the village and came to Mexico City looking for work.

...

They go on and on. According to government figures, kidnapping in the country increased by 31% last year. Those statistics tend to refer to victims who have been kidnapped for ransom, as people are more likely to report the crime when money is demanded. But there is another kind of kidnapping that goes unreported. When a girl is robada – which literally means stolen – she is taken off the street, on her way to school, leaving the movies, or even stolen out of her own house. No ransom is asked for. Her body is all the criminals want. The drug cartels know they can sell a bag of drugs only once, but they can prostitute a young woman many times in a single day.

...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/08/mexico-young-women-sex-trade-drug-gangs

[JustAnotherGen]

1. n/t

We live in a sick sick world. Just sick. It gets to me sometimes rq.


ETA - this is why I cry . . .

"In Mexico in the 21st century the worst expression of discrimination against women is violence," said Robles. "In this modern Mexico there are still states where the punishment is greater for stealing a cow than stealing a woman."

[redqueen]

2. The part about the prison got to me.

And about the girls in Tijuana.

The world has to change.

[Squinch]

3. 10 years old...

[geek tragedy]

4. This is why demand reduction is the key.

Demand exceeding supply of women 'willing' to sell themselves leads to this--not just for girls, but for women who are similarly unwilling but lack meaningful choice.

[redqueen]

5. Exactly.

Hopefully the Nordic model will continue to be implemented in more and more countries.

[CrispyQ]

6. I can't even imagine this:

"We stopped taking our daughters to the market," one mother there told me. "It was too dangerous. You'd let go of your daughter's hand to pick up a papaya and in a second she was gone. This happened to my cousin. They took her daughter at the market. She felt a movement, a push, and she fell on the ground. They pushed her away and picked up the girl. She was only seven. When my cousin went to talk to the policeman that is supposed to guard the market he said only an idiot would take her daughter to the market. You can have another child, he said to her. You're still young."