Michelle Moquin's "A day in the life of…"

So in my commitment to learn more about the plight of women in South America, I decided to focus my first research on Mexico as promised. What I learned in just a few minutes was shocking.

Mexico City:  Indiscriminate kidnappings and nearly daily Beheadings. Gangs that mock and kill government agents. Wha’at??  Have you heard such atrocities?  Our neighboring Mexico is becoming one of the world’s biggest security risks according to the US Government and some experts…..and the US Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico in with Pakistan as being at risk of a ‘rapid and sudden collapse’. 

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,” the command said in the report published Nov. 25.   

It is reported that soldiers and police are outgunned and outnumbered, and drug cartels have responded with unprecedented violence. Mob murders doubled from 2007, taking more than 5,300 lives last year. The border cities of Juarez and Tijuana wake up each morning to find streets littered with mutilated, often headless bodies. This doesn’t sound like one or two when you use the word ‘littered’. Some victims are dumped outside schools. Most are just wrapped in a cheap blanket and tossed into an empty lot.  Many of the bodies go unclaimed because  the relatives are too afraid to say something. 

So it seems that what Alita was telling us is true – not that I doubted her words when she made a comment the other day. I read that businesses have closed because they can no longer afford to pay the monthly extortion fees to the drug thugs. The rich are leaving, heading to the US, and the poor have no where to go, and as Alita said ‘they pay whoever is in charge to live in relative peace.’ I am aware of the drug problems in Mexico, but I had no idea that the cartel had that much control over the livelihood of the people living there.

So what about the women? If the drug cartels have that much control and the government is that corrupt, my guess is the women are being abused too.  When I think of all of the other countries where war, corruption,  and drugs, are the daily activity and major means of making a living, and I think of how the women are being abused, logic tells me that the women in Mexico are too. Carmen wrote in a few days back saying,  ‘Our countries have been corrupted by rich white men who have destroyed the labor unions and forced the people to live in poverty so deep as to make harvesting drugs the only attractive means of making a living. Women here too are raped, forced into prostitution, bartered and sold as one would a car or dog.‘  

This is what I found out: Tijuana is riddled with prostitution. This we know. Sexual slavery is prevalent in Mexico especially in Tijuana where men can cross the border and have sex with girls as young as 8-years old.  This I didn’t know. What is wrong with these men?! Young girls are kidnapped  from their small towns in Mexico and Central America and brought to the notorious red light district ‘Zona Rosa’, just a few blocks from the main tourist drag in Tijuana.  After the young girls work their apprenticeships in Tijuana, they are smuggled through a dangerous corridor that leads them to the US and eventually they end up in places such as New York’s illegal brothels, where they live as sexual slaves.  In a report in 2005, as many as 17, 500 sex slaves are smuggled into the US each year, according to the federal stats. 

One group never made it that far and got busted. This ring of traffickers forced 50 girls to have sex with 300-500 men per day in a field of reeds just north of San Diego. The girls were given a piece of carpet or a towel to lay on, and an egg timer to keep track of their 10-minute sessions. Each man paid $20 for his window of time.  

Are you thoroughly sickened yet? I have more…

If being forced to have sex isn’t enough, these girls are also pimped ‘bareback’ – meaning no protected sex, for a premium price.  And if she’s a virgin? They call them ”cherries” – who are prized for their fresh appearance and their supposed lack of sexually transmitted diseases. But what about the men? Yeah, maybe the girls are disease free, but not for long…what about the ‘Johns’? Who cares what the young girls get as long as the pimps get their ‘premium’ price, and ‘Johns’ get off.  What price do the girls pay to get an incurable disease? Endless suffering or worse, death. 

Could it get any worse if they survive disease ? Oh yes….violence. It is prevalent too…and severe. 

The pimps beat the girls with coat hangers, cables, beer bottles and belts. Many of them are forced to have abortions when they become pregnant and others are given crystal meth and cocaine so they become addicts.

The pimps also threaten to hurt the girls’ loved ones.

“They say, ‘We’ll kill your family.’ If they have babies, they say, ‘We’ll kill your babies,’” said Deputy Sheriff Rick Castro of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department.

So it is quite probable that because the ‘rich white’ men have destroyed the labor unions in Mexico, harvesting drugs and prostitutes is the only attractive means of making a living. If men from the US, described as sex-hungrey tourists, didn’t cross the border to taste the young temptations or indulge in illegal brothels in NY, and the many other paces, would the demand for these young girls be so high that their men would resort to such actions? And what about their safety? Are the police doing anything about it? Nothing. During a recent trip to Zona Rosa, The News found dozens of cops standing by as hundreds of girls sold sex to strangers. The police looked the other way. 

On a side note, I stumbled upon one article on  Mexico’s Beauty Queen, Laura Zuniga. A few weeks ago she was  arrested in the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa with suspected gang members. They were driving in a truck filled with a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, 38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency. 

Zuniga, Miss Sinaloa, is a former preschool teacher, and when she won her crown this last July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. Does this woman sound like the type that would be mixed up with drug thugs? Why does this sound shady to me? She sounds like an intelligent woman with a promising future….was she just innocently hanging out with the wrong kind of crowd, or does she just have a thing for bad boys? 

Or perhaps worse….was she being kidnapped and told to keep her mouth shut when they were arrested?  She was with seven men and arrested shortly before midnight when the police pulled over one of two trucks that she was riding in. When questioned, she told the police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and columbia with the men to go shopping.  Hmm….at  midnight? Seven men and her? Again….this just doesn’t sound right to me. Who knows what these men were planning on doing with her. She may be linked to one of the drug cartels, but who knows what kind of hold he has over her.  Could she have been kidnapped, and blackmailed…go along or die? For all we know he was pimping her out at a ‘premium’ price. My gut tells me she’s innocent and she was forced to go along with whatever plan they had in mind.

So, how are these women enduring this? I have written about the plight of many women in this world, and like most, they suffer terribly. The victimized girls are reluctant to go to authorities because they feel a crippling sense of shame. Those that are living here illegally, don’t trust law enforcement because authorities in their hometowns either profit from the sex-slave trade or do nothing to prevent it. Yes there are women who go into prostitution but when you’re talking about women or children who are brought in under false pretenses (bogus ads),  that is not voluntary. 

Human trafficking.  The should call it ‘women trafficking’. I haven’t heard too many stories of men being held as sex slaves. The seductive lure of bogus ads that the women are drawn to and answering, are ads directed at women, not to men. 

This has got to change. As always it saddens and hurts me to the core that my fellow sisters around the world are suffering on a daily basis…and it is getting worse. On the one hand I feel that the world is getting more conscious, loving, and accepting….a sense of community and world citizenship…and on the other hand there is more hatred, racism, sexism, separateness, and barbaric actions, especially towards women. The extreme poles are pushing against each other. Who will prevail? 

Readers: What will you do? Comments? I’m listing a few private and government agencies that can help if you know someone who is a victim or you suspect this is happening in your area.

Note: I pulled these from an article that was a few years old. More agencies may now exist. 

Safe Horizon
(800) 621-HOPE

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(866) DHS-2ICE

Covenant House
(800) 999-9999 New York Association for New Americans
(888) 242-5838

Asociación Tepeyac of New York
(212) 633-7108

Latin American Integration Center
(718) 565-8500

New Immigrant Community Empowerment
(718) 205-8796

Urban Justice Center Sex Workers Project
(646) 602-5617

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Hi ZL:  Thanks for commenting. I need to listen to my own advice and be gentle with myself. Thanks for the reminder. :)

Peace out…..

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: Your Bad Ass Bitch Editor

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