More than a tourist destination

Tourists stand on a walkway extending from the Brazilian bank of the Iguazu River to observe the part of the Iguazu waterfalls, Foz do Iguacu, Jan. 6, 2006. The tri-border area near the falls is a hot spot for human trafficking. (Miro Kuzmanovic/Reuters)

PUERTO IGUAZU, Argentina — Maria Celia Wilson sensed something suspicious in the weeks before her daughter Paula disappeared. Phone calls were coming to the house from relatives whom she didn't know well, asking where Paula went to school and when she would get out of classes. 

Wilson believes that her daughter was abducted by people who wanted to exploit her for domestic or sexual slavery. The perpetrators, she says, were distant family members involved in a human trafficking ring.

Argentine society is just beginning to address trafficking in persons, with mixed success. Last year Argentina passed its first federal anti-trafficking legislation, and a popular soap opera, “Stolen Lives," depicted one family's attempt to rescue their daughter from her abduction into forced prostitution.

But experts and family members complain that many traffickers operate with impunity, and so it has largely fallen to civil society to take action.

To evade detection traffickers move their victims around frequently — sometimes along drug routes, since many perpetrators are also involved in the drug trade. Many of the trafficking routes start in the northeastern corner of Argentina, at the celebrated Iguazu falls at the triple border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The famous falls, bigger than Niagara, are adored by tourists for the 40 billion gallons of water that pour across them every day.

But there's a quieter stream flowing across the border: Argentine authorities receive a new report of a trafficked person every other day — and those are just the ones who are identified.

Human traffickers take advantage of a person's vulnerabilities, often lying and making false promises, said Monique Altschul, a former trafficking adviser to the International Organization of Migration. Wilson says that 18-year-old Paula had the psychological age of a 14-year-old when she disappeared.

Some traffickers tell victims “that they will work as nannies or on ships, and then they are taken to brothels and are not paid,” Altschul said. “They say that because they had to pay for the trip they are in debt, and they will never be able to repay the whole debt."

Argentina's new law, following U.N. conventions, recognizes that manipulation and deceit are as common and as criminal as brute force in these cases. But due to poor enforcement, Argentina still fails to meet the minimum anti-trafficking criteria devised by the U.S. State Department.

Viviana Camino, coordinator of the National Network to Stop Trafficking and Slavery, said that many law enforcement officials, especially at the local level, are themselves involved or complicit in the slave trade. Anecdotes abound of cops who run brothels using captured girls.

"There still has not been a real investigation into the network of complicity, which downplays the information about human trafficking," Camino said.

Victims' photos appear in newspapers, and Camino's National Network has a toll-free phone number for citizens to report sightings. Wilson says that she had to conduct her own search for her daughter, in tandem with organizations like that of Susana Trimarco. Trimarco, on whose story the soap opera “Stolen Lives” was based, was given the International Women of Courage Award by then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for her anti-trafficking work.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/argentina/090724/human-trafficking-border-area