In one Mexican farm alone, Bioparques de Occidente in Jalisco (BO), more than 250 workers were rescued from slavery circumstances.
Recently, the Los Angeles Times issued a series of capsules by investigative reporter Richard Marosi and photojournalist Don Bartettli, titled Product of Mexico. In the course of 18th months of investigation the reporters visited 30 different mega-farms in nine different Mexican states, observing forced labor conditions first-hand and interviewing hundreds of workers and their family members.
In the case of BO, the police arrested five men under the charge of human trafficking. Two were BO employees and the other three worked for Placido Garcia, the labor contractor who managed the camp.
So far, the BO employees have been exonerated. Garcia is still being sought by authorities.
Nevertheless, the authorities and other organisations have strong suspicious of the occurrence of human trafficking practices in BO as well as within other mega-farms in Mexico. The investigation is still open, especially because this is not an isolated case.
Breeding ground
A paper published in the Journal of Comparative Economics mentions that human trafficking is the sad but obvious consequence of migration pressure in a world of closed borders, which has created a breeding ground for criminal organisations and exploitative employers.
Mexico is currently in the middle of an economic crisis: growth expectations are low, unemployment is high, and poverty is about 53% of the population. The last figure alone means that, based on data issued by the National Social Development and Political Evaluation Council (Coneval) and OXFAM, there are more than 50 million people living in poverty.
The crisis has seen an increase in the flow of migrants from Mexican countryside to urban settlements in both Mexico and the United States. It is added the thousands coming to Mexico from Central and South America looking to cross the country in order to reach the United States.
Economic and geographical circumstances make Mexico an ideal terrain for traffickers. Nonetheless, there are other factors that exacerbate the problem.
Trafficking people over drugs
Mexico has been harmed by the flourishing and expansion of drug cartels and other criminal organizations, which has resulted in the conformation of large criminal networks that allow the illegal transport of many types of merchandise, including persons. Drug cartels are moving into the human trafficking business for two reasons:
- It is easier to move persons from one place to another than drugs, it is a matter of mobility;
- Human trafficking earns an estimated $42 million annually.
According to Mexican national newspaper Excelsior, 70,000 people become victims of human trafficking every year in Mexico; the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) mentions estimations that vary from 50,000 to 500,000 victims; and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean reported an estimated 1.2 million people.
Though these numbers show a serious problem faced by Mexican people, they also reveal something else: vagueness. The imprecision of the numbers is important: 50,000 to 500,000.
Why is the range so wide?
Mexico passed a law against human trafficking in 2007. However, convictions are still rare.
Saul Arellano, analyst at the CEIDAS think tank, says the law is a step in the right direction, but it would have to be matched by stronger efforts in terms of law enforcement and organisational efficiency.
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) says officials are not accurately prepared to identify and prosecute human trafficking cases. The documentary Pimp City mentions that collaboration between one office and another is ineffective and inefficient given that in many cases exist confusion about their faculties and regarding the concept of human trafficking.
Widespread impunity
On the other hand, a study by Oxfam mentions that the bigger problem for the country is widespread impunity. According to activists such as Rosi Orozco, the few traffickers arrested mention that policemen, judges, and even attorneys are their clients and partners. The complicity of corrupt regional officials with human trafficking practices is very frequent and continues to be a serious problem.
In a few words, the law seems insufficient yet as well as the organisational framework and the officials in Mexico are either underprepared or colluded. This situation results in the lack of accurate and precise data as well as inefficient intelligence strategies to identify not only criminal networks but also victims.
This institutional crisis combined with the security and economic crises reveal a systemic flaw that exacerbates the problem dramatically. It could be said that one thing leads to another. Mexico still has fertile terrain where the law is insufficient to trap criminal organisations that trade humans with total impunity.
About the Author
