A Quarter Million Women Victims of Human Trafficking in Mexico City Sanjuana Martinez - La Jornada
go to original March 12, 2013

Mexico has become the top provider of sex slaves to the Americas, according to the United Nations. Al Jazeera's Mariana Sanchez reports. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

It’s 10 in the morning and they’re about to report to their posts in the streets by La Merced Market [a huge market in the center of Mexico City]. They wait for their clients in tight clothing and high heels, wearing exaggerated makeup to look older.

People pass quickly by. Some see them, others ignore them. Sexual exploitation has become a normal part of the routine here. They are watched by pimps, supervised.

They can be found in La Merced, but also in Garibaldi, Sullivan, Insurgentes Avenue, the Paseo de la Reforma, the Calzada de Tlalpan, the Plaza de la Soledad, the alleys of St. Thomas and Manzanares, the Zona Rosa, the corridor of Buenavista and other places in the boroughs of Cuauhtémoc, Venustiano Carranza, Iztapalapa, Álvaro Obregón, Xochimilco, Cuajimalpa, Coyoacán and Miguel Hidalgo, and in Polanco, la Roma, the Historic Center and la Condesa.

They’re just a few of the over 250,000 girls and women working as prostitutes in Mexico City, 88% of whom aren’t originally from the city. 89% of them started working as prostitutes at age 12 and 99% are being exploited by pimping rings.

So says the Report on Structural and Social Causes of Human Trafficking in Mexico City, which will be presented by Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (Catwlac).

Read the whole story at at Mexico Voices

Translated by Kevin Chao

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