Human Trafficking: Modern Slavery in Latin America and Spain

The day Marcela (not his real name)) leaving her native Brazil for northern Portugal, she had 500 euros, a week’s hotel reservation, a passport, and a promise of six months of childcare or house cleaning work. I was wrong: I came to Europe to be slavebe a prostitute.

“After a week of tourism in Portugal, they locked us up and told us the truth. We had an initial debt of €5,800 plus surcharges,” explains Marcela, a survivor of sexual exploitation and trafficking in Portugal and Spain.

Modern slavery is “nothing but the slavery of antiquity brought into the modern world,” according to Carolina Rudnick, president of the Chilean Libera Foundation Against Human Trafficking and Slavery, adding that it includes crimes such as forced labor, debt bondage , security or selling boys and girls.

Seventeen years later, Marcela is working in Spain as intermediary socio-linguistic in the Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Attention of Prostituted Women (APRAMP) and assures that the most important thing is “the process Recovery every woman or girl” which must always begin “from within and without”.

The United Nations (UN), in its latest global report on human trafficking 2020, an estimated 40 million people are in a situation slavery.

The example of Latin America: between famine and slavery

Rudnik explains that in Latin Americathere is not only “organized crime”, there is also “a large mass of illegal workers” who are easily captured by the exploiters.

“They are recruited through job offers. The migrant will say yes, even if it is less than the minimum wage and with humiliating living conditions, because between hunger and slavery a migrant will always choose slavery,” he says.

Illegal migration has turned the migrant “into a criminal in the eyes of society,” according to the director of Libera, who adds that because of this stigma, many of them “never dare to speak out” and only when they are abandoned do they manage to be discovered through NGOs. with whom they work in the fund.

Sexual exploitation in Spain

According to the UN, Spain tops the European “ranking” of prostitution and is the third country in the world and, as Rocío Mora, director of APRAMP, points out, “within sexual exploitation in the country, the most severe violence is carried out against women and girls”, since 64% of cases registered in 2021 began at a minor age.

“When a woman tells you that she provides about 40 “sexual services” a day, you understand that this is somewhat offensive. I always compare it to organ removal, why can’t I pay because you give me a lung, but we see that a woman is penetrated and that they do whatever they want with her body in exchange for money?

APRAMP is the first organization to open a school for post-survivors aboutwhich cater to 59 nationalities and are “surprised” by the massive influx of Colombian, Venezuelan and Honduran women, according to Mohr.

Slavery, profitable business

Slavery is a “super profitable business,” argues Karolina Rudnick with International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that speak to the labor market. about about $150 billion a year.

Marcela admits she made “a lot of money for the mob” but “made nothing” after spending a week with pimp he has earned €14,000 for himself and insists that “prostitution is not the oldest profession in the world, it is about looking the other way”.

“When there were police raids, we had to lie and say that we came with our own money. My pimps even threatened me that they would cut me into small pieces, put me in a suitcase and throw me into the Guadalquivir River (Seville), because a dozen more would come to me from behind, ”he notes. (EFE)

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