Mexico Is Second Highest Ranking Country in Human Trafficking in the Americas Rosa Santana - Proceso
go to original August 10, 2014

MÉRIDA, Yucatán - The legal advisor of the group United Against Trafficking, María Teresa Paredes Hernández, affirmed that every 24 hours 380 people go missing in Mexico, 80% of them channeled into the forced prostitution or forced labor trades, or even organized crime.

According to Paredes, Mexico ranks second for human trafficking in the Americas, both in the trafficking of nationals and the trafficking of immigrants. During her participation in the first session of the Interagency Technical Council to Prevent, Combat and Punish the Trafficking of Persons in Yucatán, held as part of the World Day Against Human Trafficking, she emphasized that it “is a crime that we do not wish to see, that we do not wish to hear about, and it is more than sex trafficking. It is forced labor.”

The greatest number of potential trafficking victims are concentrated in the most impoverished communities, she said, and she explained that many people from ghost towns are contracted for domestic work, “even to do work in the houses of diplomats.”

Paredes reported: “We have even had cases in politicians’ homes where they don’t let them leave and don't pay them after they get there.”

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Translated by Chris Brown

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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