Guest Column
Scandal blurs bigger problem
- By Fred Rosen
- The Herald Mexico/El Universal
- Contact Fred Rosen at: frosen@cablevision.net.mx
- The Herald Mexico article at: http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/web_columnas_sup.detalle?var=28998
There is a danger, as the unlikely convergence of militant feminists and the Archbishop of Puebla has already suggested, that the scandal of personal power and cronyism that is likely to cost the governor of Puebla his job may be obscuring the greater disgrace of child sexual exploitation that gave rise to the sordid Mario Marín affair in the first place.
Readers will recall the outlines of the story that is scandalizing the country: Textile magnate Kamel Nacif ("The Denim King") brings defamation charges against investigative journalist Lydia Cacho because his name is mentioned in "Los demonios de Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho´s exposé of a child pornography ring in Cancún, run by an entrepreneurial pedophile (and friend of Nacif) named Jean Succar.
Puebla´s governor, Mario Marín, obliges Nacif (who has several textile plants in the state) by arranging to have Cacho arrested in Quintana Roo and brought to Puebla to be imprisoned while awaiting formal arraignment. That´s the public scandal: the powerful protecting the powerful. Bad enough, but behind it is something much more hideous.
Cacho had documented the sexual slavery of dozens of children in Cancún. Through intensive interviewing, in many cases with adults who recounted their experiences as children, she uncovered the Succar-run operation: children, mostly in their early teens but some as young as 5 years old, coerced into having sex - while being videotaped - for the amusement of (presumably) adult men in a worldwide market.
A FORM OF SLAVERY
The connection between a consumer of kiddy porn and the network of relationships that produced it is hardly a relationship between consenting adults. It is a relationship between an adult consumer and children who have been coerced, abused and frequently bought, sold and/or stolen. It is no overstatement to call the industry of child prostitution a form of slavery, which my dictionary defines as "a condition in which one person is under the absolute control of another, almost always for the purpose of securing the labor of the slave."
This is a condition by no means limited to Mexico. The United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery reports that the widespread "recruitment, clandestine transport and exploitation of women as prostitutes, and the organized prostitution of children of both sexes in a number of countries is well documented." The group goes on to contend that there are "no clear distinctions between different forms of slavery. The same families and groups of people are often the victims of several kinds of modern slavery - for example, bonded labor, forced labor, child labor or child prostitution - with extreme poverty as a common linking factor."
In fact, as poverty has grown in Mexico, so have the number of children sold or enticed into one form or another of prostitution. The child prostitution industry involves bonded labor, forced labor and child labor, wrapped in a neat, profitable package. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that year after year, millions of adult men pay to have sex with "young women" in Latin America. The "young women" in question seldom collect the payment, any more than the knitters and sewers of the Denim King´s maquiladoras collect the payments for the designer jeans they manufacture.
Sexual exploitation has become a profitable enterprise, ranging from the child pornography of Jean Succar to various kinds of sexual tourism, in which northern customers seek out southern providers, or simply book packaged tours with the sex provided. In Mexico City alone, according to Teresa Ulloa, who heads a group called the Regional Coalition against the Traffic of Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean, some 200,000 people suffer from some form of sexual exploitation. "One percent," she told reporter Gabriel Zaragoza of La Jornada, "do so willingly, the rest through brute force, trickery, coercion, abuse of authority or a condition of vulnerability." An estimated 25 percent of the victims, she added, are men or boys.
"Chattel slavery" exists when slaves become commodities, not only forced to work, but able to be bought and sold like any other merchandise.
This is frequently the case in child prostitution. In the country as a whole, says Ulloa, there is a flourishing trade in which young girls "are brought from areas of poverty and extreme poverty to the great urban centers . or tourist centers or cities along the northern and southern borders." Indeed, she says, there are a million women and girls involved in some form of sexual exploitation: prostitution, pornography or sexual tourism.
Yes, Mexico´s (hopefully) fading system of authoritarian cronyism is scandalous. But the organized, entrepreneurial abuse of children is a great deal more so.
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