Tourism fueling child sex in Mexico

ACAPULCO, MEXICO - On a sweltering afternoon in this glitzy tourist resort, Alex Fernandez laughed and joked with a group of his fellow homeless teenagers until the subject of prostitution came up. Then his smile disappeared, and the face of the skinny 14-year-old turned to a cold, unblinking stare as he described how grown men, sometimes Mexicans and sometimes foreign tourists, regularly take him to hotels and pay to have sex with him.

"Yes, they buy me. The business gets me food. It gets me clothes," said Fernandez, sitting in the shade of a basketball stand to escape the blazing sun. "No one else helps me. What do you want me to do?"

Despite a concerted effort to crack down on pedophiles in both Mexico and the United States, child prostitution continues unabated in Mexican tourist resorts such as Acapulco and Cancun as well as border cities such as Ciudad Juarez. Investigators estimate the number of Mexican children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation — including prostitution, pornography and human trafficking — has increased to 20,000 from 16,000 in the past five years. Many of those who pay for sex with the boys and girls are American, Canadian and European tourists.

Mexican authorities and child-protection advocates say a weak justice system, police corruption and a lack of facilities to help homeless children have hindered attempts in Mexico to curb the problem.

The United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, has urged Mexican authorities to strive for more concrete results in the fight against the trade.

"Mexican authorities used to be in denial about the problem. Now they are starting to address it," said Teresa Kilbane, the fund's Mexico projects director. "But the authorities still fail to give out solid figures on things like the number of pedophiles actually arrested or convicted."

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, a journalist and children's rights advocate, found that out after publishing Demons of Eden, a book that claimed links between a child-sex ring and certain government officials, politicians, drug traffickers and businessmen.

A Puebla-based businessman sued her for criminal libel and on Dec. 16, Cacho was arrested in Cancun, accused of ignoring repeated summonses from a judge.

Cacho, whose plight has won the support of Reporters Without Borders and other groups, could get four years in prison if convicted.

Meanwhile, child sexual exploitation continues throughout Mexico. Investigators say some of the worst abuses occur in the famous seaside resort of Acapulco. In strip clubs, cantinas, hotels and private houses around the beautiful bay, about 1,000 children are victims of the illicit trade, according to UNICEF.

Hundreds of homeless youths such as Fernandez hang out on the beaches, outside the discos and in the central plaza in the heart of the resort where they are picked up by pedophiles. Men pay between $10 and $50 for intercourse or oral sex with the children, said Elizabeth Moreno, who heads a city government program to combat child prostitution.

In many cases the children are sold by pimps, who are often older homeless people with histories of being sexually exploited themselves, Moreno said.

Under the law, Mexican prosecutors need someone to file a detailed accusation against a specific suspect before they can take action. "Even if we see suspects we can't act. We just pass the information on" to prosecutors, Moreno said. "Sometimes, nothing seems to be done with it."

In April 2003, federal police arrested 13 Canadians and Americans, including one Texan, who they say formed a network that organized sex tourism and child pornography in Acapulco. In August 2004, two of the suspects committed suicide in the city's prison. Soon after, the other 11 were released when a federal judge said there was insufficient evidence against them.

Miguel Lopez, head of child protection for the Guerrero state government in Acapulco, said the defense attorneys allegedly bribed key child witnesses so they wouldn't testify.

The suspects should have been sent to the United States for trial, he said. "They would have nailed them there," Lopez said.

The U.S. government has stepped up its efforts to catch sex offenders, with President Bush signing the landmark Protect Act in 2003.

The law clarifies and strengthens cases against American citizens who have sex with a minor outside the United States or have planned to go abroad to have sex with a minor, said Los Angeles Assistant Attorney Richard Lee.

"The law means we can arrest these people even before they get on the plane and do the damage," Lee said.

The 2003 act also increased the maximum sentence for child-sex tourism to 30 years from 10 for first-time offenders and to a life sentence for those with previous convictions.

The same year, the Department of Homeland Security launched so-called Operation Predator, an initiative to investigate and arrest all types of sex offenders in the U.S. So far, the operation has netted 6,500 people, including 13 men who planned to have sex with children abroad, said department spokesperson Jamie Zuieback.

"We are sending out a loud and clear message to predators that if you commit a sex crime here or anywhere else you will be caught and convicted," Zuieback said.

In a sting operation in February 2005, agents in California nabbed seven men who had signed up to go on a holiday to the Baja California town of Ensenada, where they were promised sex with boys as young as 9. The supposed vacation was set up by an FBI undercover agent who had infiltrated a pro-pedophilia group called the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

"We need to be tough in getting these guys off the street, so they are not out hurting children," said FBI Special Agent John Caruthers.

One of those arrested, Gregory Nusca of Dania Beach, Fla., pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Criminal cases are proceeding against the other six, who are incarcerated in San Diego and Los Angeles. South of the Rio Grande, Mexican lawmakers are battling to draft their own Protect-style act to overhaul their criminal code on sex offenders.

Under President Vicente Fox, Mexico's divided Congress has been gridlocked over major economic and judicial reforms. However, federal deputy Angelica de la Peña is confident that Congress can pass a reform law on sex offenders.

"This is not a politically divisive issue," said de la Peña, who is in the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party. "We all agree that abusing children should be stopped."

The bill proposes doubling maximum sentences for sex offenders to 18 years, making it easier for police to investigate and arrest pedophiles, and giving authorities the power to shut down brothels that have underage prostitutes. Under current law, the maximum penalty a brothel faces for employing children is a $3,000 fine.

Acapulco officials say they struggle to persuade children to stay away from prostitution.

Moreno, of the Acapulco city government, has helped remove 22 child prostitutes from strip clubs and brothels in the past year. They were taken to a refuge on the outskirts of the city, but all left within a few days, she said.

"A lot of them can't stand the discipline and they can't get their drugs in the refuge," Moreno said. "We can't put them under lock and key because that would be a violation of their human rights."

Gustavo Lopez, director of a government-funded Acapulco homeless hostel, estimates that 80 percent of the city's street kids are addicted to drugs, most commonly industrial solvents and crack cocaine. About half of them become victims of prostitution, he said.

The majority of the homeless children come from families where they were physically and often sexually abused, he said.

Many do not see themselves as being victims when they are paid for sex, he said.

"A lot of them see the business as a good way to make money," Lopez said. "They are used to being at the bottom of society and their self-confidence is already shattered."

Mexico's social services system is failing the children, said anthropologist Elena Azaola, who has written several books about child sex tourism.

"We have no institutions teaching these kids what rights they have," Azaola said. "The key to solving this tragic problem is to rehabilitate the children and give them some hope and opportunity in their lives."

Chronic_loser said:
I would like to see your "villages.. mostly vacant except for children and old people."

Hateful shriveled up xenophobic rants get the contempt they deserve....., except on FR immigration threads. Here they are "patriotic."
51 posted on 01/01/2006 8:50:29 AM PST by chronic_loser"

Ghost town

The Mexican state of Zacatecas, once a place rich in silver but now one of the poorest areas in the country, is illustrative.

US President Bush and Mexico President Fox
The Mexican migration issue is high on the agenda for Bush and Fox
More Zacatecans live now in Los Angeles than in the city of Zacatecas.

The State Governor, Ricardo Monreal, acknowledges that "their economic influence is huge and their political clout as a consequence of that is huge too".

"It is thanks to them that I became state governor," says Mr Monreal.

Remittances also have social and human implications.

In the village of Jomulquillo, a couple of hours from the city of Zacatecas, what hits you as soon as you arrive is the silence.

One of the few locals remaining there says that at the moment there are 80 people living in the village - 300 live in Los Angeles.

With the empty houses, the closed windows and locked doors, this feels like a ghost town.

But the pain of families being separated is somewhat compensated by these remittances that, in the case of Zacatecas, not only help the relatives but also their villages of origin.[snip]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3582881.stm

ILLA JUAREZ, Mexico (CNN) -- It is an aspect of the immigration story that goes largely untold. As millions of Mexicans leave for a chance at a better life in the United States, they aren't just changing American society, but society in their homeland as well.

Take, for example, the town of Villa Juarez, in the state of San Luis Potosi, the geographic center of Mexico.

This largely agricultural community has 13,000 residents, most of whom have the same surname, "Izaguirre," though most are not directly related.

But the village is undergoing a transformation of sorts. It has lost five thousand residents in the last five years alone, most headed for the U.S. Most of those migrating are young men, leaving behind mainly women, children and the elderly.

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/09/24/hispanic.hometown/

In Quiringuicharo (key-ding-gwi-CHARO), two-story houses wear fresh coats of paint. But few cars move through the well-paved streets.

No chit-chat can be heard from the shops. No food vendors ply their trade.

The refurbished town square sits empty, no children run playfully down its walkways.

A cross atop a hill can be lighted, but no one has turned it on for months.

Quiringuicharo has a heartbeat, but it pulses 1,500 miles away - in and around several crowded Rolling Meadows apartment and condominium complexes.

About one-half to two-thirds of Quiringuicharo's 4,000 residents live in the United States.

Back near Quiringuicharo's red-brick central plaza, 46-year-old Irma Herrerra says the suburban complex is known by its Mexican name. "We call it the 'Ranchito Quiringuicharo.'"

She's never seen the suburb where her three brothers, her son, daughter and husband now live.

She chooses to stay in Quiringuicharo, a veritable ghost town.

"All of the houses are empty," she says. "They have all gone north."
Back in Mexico, Albert owns his own home.

It rises two stories with three spacious bedrooms.

Stairs spiral up to the roof where he would sometimes sit in the mornings to look out at the town and the hills beyond.

Now it stands empty.

Quringuicharo sits an hour and a half from Michoacan's capital city of Morelia and about one hour from Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. Michoacán is an agricultural state from which 17 percent of Illinois Mexicans emigrate.
http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/09/24/hispanic.hometown/
___________________
The Mexican government – PAN President Vicente Fox is as bad or worse than the formerly dominant PRI officials – refuses to implement the free-market reforms that will enable its people to find work at home. One news article a few months ago reported on the ghost towns of Mexico, places where 90 percent of the adult male population is gone, in America working and sending money home.

That’s not healthy.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenhut/greenhut8.html
_______

The amount of migration worries me - we leave our villages and we see other ways of life. We worry about the breakdown of our families... There are people here who haven't seen their wives or children for eight or ten years and that's not fair, that's not right."

While jobs in the United States bring money back home, the absence of men has lead to the breakdown of family life. In Oaxaca's neighbouring state of Veracruz, a fall in coffee and papaya prices recently forced the men to migrate. Lucretia is waiting in vain for her husband to come back: "The first time that he left he used to send us money but very little and now it's the same, he doesn't have a job. One day he works, the next he doesn't and also we don't hear from him... I was thinking of going to help him out so I also could earn some money, but it's not possible because I can't leave the children - and it is not easy because I think he's got another woman and he's going to stay there."

http://www.tve.org/lifeonline/index.cfm?aid=1018

Leaving ghost towns

The dramatic numbers, Mexican officials have said, led them to conclude that seeking immediate amnesty may not be the answer and could spark even more immigration to the United States.

The current exodus has transformed huge sections of the countryside in Mexico into a series of ghost towns with freshly painted homes but no one to inhabit them.

Victoria Almanza of Guerrero, who works as a maid in an upscale hotel in downtown Chicago, timidly points out the difficulties of crisscrossing the border because of a U.S. crackdown along the 2,000-mile-long region.

"It's not easy going home," she said. "We feel trapped here."

http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/pubs/agworkvisa/foxpushes071601.html

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