Of slaves and servants: The elusive network of occupied bodies

Organized crime networks dedicated to human trafficking have had plenty of time to perfect their system and to ally themselves with new actors such as drug traffickers. Indigenous women are mobilized, by small structures, from rural areas to the capital. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of women are transferred from other countries to Guatemala by large organizations for transit or stay. Sexual exploitation, in a country that is just beginning to recognize it as a crime, with high crime rates and poor respect for human rights, is in perfect territory.

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Her body is her body

There's a jukebox left over and a coffin is missing. In the nameless canteen everything is a little gloomy, a little dirty, a little sad. A bit like a funeral. One of the men squeezes a woman around the waist and they slowly wobble in front of the light-filled set from which the music is coming. They don't look at each other. In a chair against the wall, another woman sits next to an older man, separated by a table littered with empty gallons of beer. She makes an effort not to fall asleep, her eyelids closing for a long time until she scrunches up her face and pours more beer again. Only in the corner is there a festive atmosphere, more bottles on the table, while a burly individual, in a bodyguard vest, sits next to the woman in the most luxurious guipil.

It is possible to detect who is doing better in life because of the güipil, better economically. The embroideries on these indigenous Mayan blouses are richer, more careful, the finest fabric. The light here is dim and the dirty, peeling, yellowed walls are covered with posters of tall, busty, bikini-clad, blonde women promoting beer. Contrast the models in the photos with the Q'eqchies who serve the premises.

The woman who was dancing tight to the man disappears from the scene. This will happen all night: suddenly one of the four vanishes through the only exit she gives to the street and returns half an hour later, with one of the men. They return from the small hotels around the street.

It is Ninth Avenue in the center of Guatemala City. The dirty walls, bars on the windows, the vans emit jets of smoke and the streetlights illuminate less.

Only three streets away is the renovated, illuminated and pedestrian Sixth Avenue, with recently opened cafes, to which women from Verapaces, in the abandoned north of the country, probably never go. Three blocks away is also the National Palace of Culture, the seat of Government.

Some call Ninth Avenue “la Tijuanita”.

They are wary at first, they try to hide their surprise that two women intrude into that space tacitly dedicated to men. It is they, the men, who pay double for a beer. And it is they, the women, "the files", who keep a part of that price. The “ficheras”, that name given to the waitresses who earn commission for getting customers drunk and whose task almost always involves getting drunk by their side. They get to drink up to 24 beers in one night, they will confess later. The woman who is about to fall asleep, from her place, makes a “cheers” gesture, between blinking and blinking, she wrinkles her face and laughs out loud. The man next to her continues to drink quietly. And the one who danced before, now passes with us. We ask: “Who is the owner here?”

She surreptitiously points to the ones who seem happiest and says: “la señora”.

The man in the vest, the one who is next to “the owner” of the luxurious güipil, approaches the table of the strangers, our table, and raises his voice and feigns a kind of foreign accent, so that according to him we understand him

–Good evening, ladies. Welcome to my local-, and immediately their conversation tries to find out what the hell we do there. We talked about a walk –lie–, about a love of jukeboxes –true–, about a disappointment in love –half true–, about the desire to get drunk –for professional reasons–. The man is convinced. She inflates and assures that this is her business, she is only in charge of taking care of it. He sits at our table. He says that he has a BMW and that he went to university, he confuses the name and is unable to say what he studied, criminology, or something like that. It claims to be kaibil – the elite army force, admired by many and feared by many more.

–Don't you have any security issues here? –We asked with the tone with which in other countries people ask about the weather.

–No. And do you know why? –She says lowering her voice– My dick peels me! Because I work in the Presidency.

Hanging from his neck, hidden under his shirt, is a name tag. She proudly displays it. In it his photograph and the logo of the Government. We managed to register his name. But it quickly saves it again, which makes it impossible to see in which institution.

–One time the police came and they were trying to blackmail me. So I called the ORP (the office of police responsibility). I have a friend with them. "Look, you, look...". And ten minutes later they were here.

It is impossible, at the moment, to know how much is boasting and how much is true.

–I come here with the state car. I don't go in. I'm just going to pick up the money.

–Haven't the girls had any problems? That a customer gets violent or makes trouble?

–That's their problem –he answers without thinking. It's worth dicks to me. Let them see how they are saved. Your body is your body. Your body is your body.

Their bodies continue to get drunk. Their bodies disappear between the curtains to reappear in a hotel room with a stranger, for less than one hundred quetzales (US$12). Hotels where it is not so rare to find bodies of unidentified murdered women. Your body is your body.

He keeps talking. He is also the owner of a private security company.

Suddenly, he receives a call, gets up in a hurry and says goodbye seriously and with much less kindness than he introduced himself.

Only the women remain, a table with young men juggling coming of age and adolescence, a lone man with close-cropped hair, and another table with a young man in a baseball cap who aggressively insists on serving everyone to dance

We invite the sleepy woman to come over to our table. She is tiny, almost dwarf. She puts Calle 13 on the jukebox, which breaks with several hours of rancheras, ballads and bachata and now seems more awake. She explains that she got here because one of her classmates called her. She used to work as a domestic servant, but she barely had enough to live on and she has three children in her town, she has to send money. She assures that she only “files”, she does not leave with the clients. She's a single mother. But he doesn't like this place. They treat her badly, she admits, looking askance at the compañera with the most makeup, the one who danced the most, the one who disappears most frequently and who appears to be the right hand of the manager. They don't give you food here. In another place where he was, they did give him.

She sleeps in the back room, hidden behind the bar by a curtain. (Someone will explain later that it is probably a space with mattresses and mats on the floor where they all sleep crowded together - who explains it to us, a sex worker who leads an organization, assures that in the Tijuanita area, on Ninth, it works the same in all He will also tell us that the Q1,100 that they claim to earn as a base salary is a lie, that they are around Q800 (US$100 per month), less than the legal minimum wage of Q2,040 (US$260). Salary is based on tokens and yes, for "occupy" with clients. In El Salvador they say "occupy" to "use"; the dictionary says: "occupy: Take possession or seize a territory. Fill a space or place".

Three sit at our table, including the administrator or “the owner”. Only the youngest, who will barely have reached the age of majority, stays behind the cabinet that serves as a bar and guards the refrigerators with beer. Now the customers drink alone, although they continue to buy beers for the girls and treat them to bottles that they bring to our stand. We exchange cigarettes, we collect coins for music. We laugh and toast.

Several liters later, they get serious and tell: they all come from small villages, they all have children there, they are all single mothers, they see no other possibility than to work in the nameless canteen, or in another similar place somewhere in the city –El Trébol, La Terminal, El Cerrito, Zone 6–.

The one with the expensive güipil boasts of being the owner of the place. "The patent is in my name," she says proudly. If at any time there is a search, a legal problem, or finally the authorities decide to enter Tijuanita and investigate if there is sexual exploitation there, she would be the one who would go to prison. The one who claims to be the owner, the one who collects the money in a state car, according to him, would be calm, his name has no trace there.

What happens if you have to deal with a violent guy, with a jerk you don't respect? Smile. "You don't have to be stupid! No need to think! You think about the ratatouille: the ratatouille is the ratatouille”. Money is money. You don't have to think.

The police arrive at the Ninth. Those supervisions that are carried out routinely on weekends. A convoy of about a dozen cars, their lights illuminating the rusty billboards. Policemen descend armed from the back of pickup trucks in a light drizzle. They tour the dens. “Those who sell drugs have already left,” say the women about those who are engaged in drug dealing on street corners and, one whispers, also in some canteens. "Nothing happens here," says another, "my cousin is a policeman." And indeed, two agents enter the canteen with no name, take a look and leave. And nothing happens.

One of the clients, the short-haired one, confesses: “I'm a policeman, but I don't say anything to them”, and shows a uniformed photograph. They murmur that you have to be careful, next to the policeman's table, the one who aggressively invites you to dance is the assailant from the block, everyone knows that he is the one who is in charge, gun in hand, of stealing cell phones in the area.

The little girl claims to have a boyfriend and informs us that he doesn't like her working there. So that the boss doesn't hear her, she lowers her voice and announces that she will leave the next day, she goes to another cantina in El Trébol, where they do get food. The manager who a few minutes ago was haughty and said that we must not be stupid and that we must not think, now also breaks down: she cries, her husband is in prison, she has to work for her children, who are in the care of their mother in Verapaz. "Tomorrow I'm going to see him in jail," she sobs, and tries to wipe away her tears. The little girl assures that the boss carries a gun – nothing unusual in Guatemala, a country of 14 million inhabitants, where it is estimated that more than a million firearms circulate, 800,000 without registration.

It's still raining. Let's go. We leave women behind the curtains, remembering their children has made them sad. They stay around the table. The cars and the rain silence the music from the other businesses, couples enter the small hotels. The traffic light blinks. In the nameless canteen the jukebox no longer sounds.

Blindly in the maze

It seems like a harmless scene and so everyday, normal. The women are not tied down and seem not to be forced to be there. There are no spectacular displays of armed men and force. The owner of the nameless canteen is a single man, at least that's what he says, and it's hard to relate him to networks or crime. But this individual is one of the crime micronetwork nodes. First, in Guatemala sexual exploitation is punishable –including pimping-. Second, from places like this, a network has been woven to attract women who are hooked and retained -by force or by necessity- for the benefit of third parties.

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, also called the Palermo Convention, defines that “organized criminal group shall mean a structured group of three or more persons that exists for a certain time and that acts in concert with the purpose of of committing one or more crimes...". In businesses scattered around the capital city and in urban areas throughout Guatemala, the system is replicated: recruiters who look for women in small towns -use deception, in some cases pay their relatives and in others, poorly documented, they take them by force-; those in charge of transportation, where the thread with the first collector is lost, until they take them to these places where they live in precarious conditions, where they meet the " caretakers", almost always women who are in charge of the administration. In other cases the system is more expeditious, the same women come to the premises, coming from rural areas, pushed by necessity; then it is probable that they themselves act as recruiters with the neighbors of their towns.

Days after the visit to the unnamed canteen, it was investigated whether the alleged owner worked for the state entity he claimed. There are three namesakes in the departments of the Presidency. However, the chances of a sneaky brothel owner being the same as a public official are high. One of the names matches its place of origin. The private security company does not appear registered, but that does not imply that it does not exist, there are 300 security companies operating without a license from the State.

Dozens, hundreds, of canteens with the name of cevichería, chicharronería, comedor, work in similar ways throughout Guatemala. In other areas of the city, with more luxurious facilities, they function as "night clubs", although for legal purposes they are the same. With different modalities, they are all committing a crime: sexual exploitation. The methods of coercion are varied.

And it is that the networks of trafficking and sexual exploitation are woven with invisible threads. The crime is difficult to detect, the experts say it, the prosecutors, the books, the observation says it, the same victims sometimes do not know that they are. Finding the dimensions of the crime is also complicated, perhaps impossible. Global alerts have emerged in recent years, championed by the United Nations, in which it is ensured that the phenomenon is gigantic, a network of slave traders is globalizing and thousands, millions? of people fall into it. The majority, women and minors, are transported between countries or in their own territory, with deceit, by force, manipulated.

Kevin Bales, author of The New Slavery in the Global Economy, points out as fundamental characteristics of modern slavery the absence of legal ownership over the slave, the low cost of acquisition, the high profitability obtained by the exploiter, and the character temporary abuse, since it renews the victims instead of profiting from them for decades. It is claimed that after drug and arms trafficking, human trafficking is the most lucrative illegal activity in the world.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) stated that US$32 billion (Q250 billion) are generated by the business each year. Bales affirms that there are 27 million slaves in the world – half of them in India. But they are all projections. Money has that ability to blend in with other, cleaner bills, in banking systems without too much control, especially if you look out of the corner of your eye to look for the trace and search without wanting to find it. Guatemala, for example, is one of the nine countries in the world in which the Treasury cannot verify if what citizens declare that they earn is the same as what they pay into their bank account.

These slaves have different faces and masks. It is not necessary to have the victims chained so that they cannot free themselves. There are heavier and more perverse shackles: poverty, need, lack of opportunities, deceit, violence, blackmail and even emotional manipulation. How to detect and stop a crime that is like a fish bathed in butter in a lagoon of cloudy oil?

Places like the nameless canteen or the “night club”, in all of them there are crimes; someone is making money from the “use” of another person's body. It is punishable by law. In other words, the crime of trafficking includes that of sexual exploitation and that is where all those places are hidden that until very recently were not considered illegal. The very normality with which they continue to function, the complication of getting the victims to recognize themselves as such and assume that the employer who hires them and the "client" who pays to have sexual relations with them are committing crimes; that society itself does not understand why it is illegal for someone to use the body of another for their own benefit; they complicate the persecution much more and the networks are strengthened. Yes, in these places they can come and go, it would seem that they are there of their own free will, but the fact that this will has probably been broken by other circumstances unrelated to these spaces of jukeboxes and mirrors is unknown.

In Guatemala, in 2009, the National Commission for Adolescence and Childhood (an institution coordinated by state entities in which NGOs participate) estimated that some 15,000 children, adolescents, and young people were victims of trafficking in the country. But it is a figure whose statistical support is not clear –given the data from the Ministry of the Interior (Mingob) and the Public Ministry (MP)–. Activists who are in charge of protecting victims say that the matter is more serious and that security and justice institutions do not have a correct overview.

Leonel Dubón, director of the NGO Casa Alianza and founder of the Refugio de la Niñez home –which specializes in sheltering victims of sexual violence and trafficking–, has registered 120 cases of trafficking in the year and assures that there are regions of the country – Las Verapaces, especially – where cases of disappeared women are detected much more frequently than those registered by the authorities.

Alexander Colop, the lawyer who heads the trafficking prosecutor's office of the Public Ministry (MP), does not risk giving out data. The system used up to now in the MP does not differentiate between the different forms of trafficking –irregular adoption, sexual or labor exploitation–. Colop avoids making projections of the phenomenon, he is governed by the complaints and investigations that enter the MP. "You listen, you talk about stories, (but) not having studies can generate information that is not real," says the prosecutor. So far in 2012 -until August-, the MP has registered 446 complaints for this crime, while the Ministry of the Interior had recorded 80 as of July of this year. Colop acknowledges the deficiency in the control of statistics and assures that the MP is implementing a new system that allows accurate records to be kept.

The MP, the Mingob and the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH) present disparate reports. In 2009, with the Law against sexual violence, exploitation and human trafficking, the Secretariat against Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking (Svet) was established – an entity of the Vice Presidency. However, it was not until August of this year -three years after its formation- with the visit of Najat Maalla M'jid, the United Nations Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and use of children in pornography, that Svet delivered a report and signed an agreement with the International Organization for Migration to monitor – a task unfulfilled since 2009-. One of the rapporteur's conclusions was the impossibility of having an adequate diagnosis -in reference to child trafficking- "due to how contrasting the data from the different institutions are." M'ji found that government institutions have not defined their roles in terms of child trafficking and that this prevents an inspection of their obligations. His conclusion can be extrapolated to adult trafficking.

The law penalizes the “promotion, facilitation or favoring of prostitution”; that is to say, it prohibits pimping to extremes of rigor such as that of Sweden. However, there is a kind of tacit agreement between institutions –the police and the municipalities, for example–, in which if there are no complaints, sexual exploitation continues to function without there being too many actions that prosecute the crime ex officio.

There are many state institutions, secretariats, departments of the ministries, involved in prevention, protection and prosecution, but it seems that they work in isolation from each other and that they are more in charge of putting out fires , without uncovering the heads and roots.

Until a few months ago, despite the law, sex workers were required to carry a health card that labeled them as such and guaranteed that they did not suffer from any sexually transmitted disease. On the one hand, some sanitary protection was given to women, but it implied that the Ministry of Health indirectly certified women for the peace of mind of a client or employer, that if the law was complied with, they would be criminals.

A double standard in which the State on the one hand criminalizes, but on the other lets it be. And that, also, leaves in a dark and desolate street, in total vulnerability, women who by personal choice decide to provide sexual services.

The figures do not coincide between institutions whose responsibilities intersect with uninformed officials. Efforts evident in other spaces -the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of the Interior- in the end are isolated actions. With pending tasks in all aspects of human rights, blindly, with contradictions, the State tries to protect women. But the effort is not enough and the continuous tripping that the State gives to itself and that organized crime gives it continues to be merciless against the most vulnerable.

Life is not so happy

Carolina is tired. Carolina is missing teeth. She has blotchy skin and her hair is disheveled in a bun. He has caramel eyes. She has a baby strapped to her back. He was queuing at the health center for several hours. Today he finds refuge in this bright house with high ceilings and white walls.

In a large room, sex workers learn to make crafts and jewelry. They receive sexual health courses and do psychological and self-esteem therapies. The trainer is heard in one of the classrooms: “her body is her body”. Sex work is presented to them as an option that they must take and that they must be aware that no one has the right to exploit them. They make them see that they have other choices and that they must decide. Dozens of women pass through the Organization for Women in Improvement (OMES), many of them over the age of fifty and sixty. Yanira Tobar, the director of OMES, explains that from time to time an 84-year-old woman arrives who continues to prostitute herself in La Terminal.

Tobar is a sex worker. The key for her is "dignity", her own decision. But, she herself admits it: it is difficult to figure out when it is her own decision and when it is circumstances, poverty, manipulative dealers, or the system itself that forces them to practice the trade.

Carolina agrees to talk and face the photos. She prefers that her name be published than her "role". Her real name is a beautiful play on words, but very few people know it: she's spent too much time being Carolina.

She was born in San Vicente, in El Salvador. She never knew her father, her mother died when she was nine years old. He grew up with his grandparents until they died and he went to live with his aunt. At the age of 14, her aunt brought her to Guatemala, told her that she would work as a domestic employee in a house.

“I got there and the night my aunt took me, the lady of the house made me wash a pile full of dishes. To wash, she told me, and then I went to a little room and there were the clothes that she was going to wear. I told him: to sleep? And she told me: No, didn't your aunt tell you something about what you were going to do here? This is a brothel. Thank God, I studied third grade and understood the meaning of the words. I have not worked like this. You have not done it, but here you are going to start doing it. I'm scared, I don't know anything about it. You are going to start and then you are going to see how suddenly you will even like it. I showered and he gave me a towel. In the closet is a pair of shoes that you are going to wear, he had told me. When I opened the closet there was a man there, he was already a big man, I got scared. I came to get some shoes. You won't find shoes, he told me. Take off your towel, I'm going to be your first client. But if consumerism is out there. You come here to whore, he told me. I started to shake. He was already under the influence of liquor, he could feel his breath. If you don't want it for good, you're going to have it for bad. Go to bed, he told me, I always went to bed afraid. You have never had a husband. I have not had, I told him. He took out his erect penis and began to put Vaseline on himself, he began to manipulate me, he grabbed my back hard, he poked me with his fingers, don't make any more moves because nobody here is going to defend you. For fear that he would do something worse to me, I did nothing. I bled a lot, I was 14 years old, I had a lot of pain in my waist, I had a headache, maybe it was emotional, with a fever, I have symptoms like the flu or something, I told the lady, it's going to go away, I he said, and he threw me some pills”.

Carolina was locked up in that house for three years. Her owner tied her hands and feet and beat her. Her only outlet was, very occasionally, to go to the market with some other companion. They took her dressed as a boy. There were two other minors in the house, but "they were taken by some men, they paid for them and they took them who knows why." The woman who now holds a healthy and calm baby also had a baby in confinement, who was the father?: "Saber", one of the clients.

The owner of the house did not pay her, she evaded saying that the deal was with her aunt and that she owed her money for her clothes, her shoes and the makeup she used for work. Carolina suspects that the lady had agreements with the police, she gave them money and the agents also came to receive sexual services, even, says Carolina, there was a lesbian police officer who came there.

At the age of 17, she took her son and convinced the security officer of that house in zone 6 to let her out. He told her that he was going to buy tortillas. She threw herself fearfully into a city she did not know. Carolina continued working on the street, as a “walker”.

–I kept doing it on the street, on the street the treatment is different, but in the end it's the same because one continues to be a victim of clients, friends, and neighbors who say things about people with a happy life . They sexually abuse you and don't pay, they beat you. I feel that this life has nothing joyful.

Carolina continues with a bizarre biography that includes working in another place where the ones who mistreated her were her co-workers. She follows her coexistence with a man, with whom she had seven children, who was an alcoholic and beat her. “He gave me a decent life,” she says. The first son, the one born to an unknown father while she was locked up, was murdered in Mazatenango a few years ago, he had been a gang member, he had withdrawn from the gang, but they found him and killed him. "They say it was a mistake, but I'm sure it was him they were looking for."

Another little girl died at five months. She abandoned her husband because of his mistreatment and returned to the streets, where she became addicted to alcohol and drugs, fell in love with a man who lived on the street and there she had another child with him, the baby she now holds in her arms. Now he takes refuge with Yanira Tobar, fleeing from more mistreatment. A tragedy that was defined the day she was taken to that house, enslaved in zone 6, one of the areas where 20 years later clandestine houses are still hidden and where there are also a series of "night clubs", with the papers in rule, in which the authorities have found dozens of Central American women locked up.

Carolina's story, when she was sold and raped by a guy hiding in a closet, happened 27 years ago. When there was no legislation, when the subject was not discussed, when there was no United Nations rapporteur. When a crime was committed, but nobody saw it, or it was not considered a crime. Carolina, in fact, thought she was paying her aunt's debt, she didn't know she was a victim. "So far I'm thinking about it," he says.

Rodolfo Kepfer is a psychiatrist and has dedicated his career to researching the issue of violence. Kepfer is suspicious of the "new fashion" of trafficking and sexual exploitation. "It has always existed," he says, lamenting that the roots of the problem - of exploitation and violence - have never been combated. She recalls that in the 1970s many Salvadoran women worked in brothels –the rocoleras, some called them- and in the “levantes” –on the street– you could see a number of indigenous women recently arrived from rural areas. In the canteens the owners offered to the newcomers with complete tranquility.

Kepfer talks about the seventies, what happened to Carolina was in '85. Trafficking, exploitation and transfer of people, at least in Central American territory for decades. How many cases, how many women may have been exploited? How many women like Carolina were marked, continue in confinement or on the streets after being discarded? How many networks have been woven, strengthened, perfected?

Common, repeated history

Alexander Colop, recognized by various sources as a diligent and honest prosecutor, does not theorize, does not speculate on gender or legal doctrine. The man who has directed the prosecution and who has dismantled several networks and brought traffickers to trial, prefers to give examples. One of the cases that illustrates it perfectly is that of the "Nicaraguan woman."

Dinora is from León, Nicaragua, a single mother, a victim of domestic violence and rape by her stepfather. She had not left sixth grade. She has a job that is not enough for her to live on, when a person who lives near her arrives and with whom "she had some kind of relationship, I don't know if it was sentimental, but a pretty strong relationship," says Colop. The man tells her that he will get her a job as a waitress or cleaning houses.

Dinora travels to Guatemala City and is taken to Cow Boys III, in zone 6, the same area where the house where Carolina was locked up was located twenty years ago. The Cow Boys is located on Calle Martí, a very busy road where all the transport that comes from the Atlantic to the center of the city circulates. The Cow Boys III works facing the public as a "nightclub", with the papers in order -so that it works as an outlet for alcoholic beverages-. It is in this place that Dinora's identification is taken away and she is forced into prostitution. The Guatemalan prosecutor's office had been investigating the premises for some time, having received complaints from Nicaragua. A search is carried out, but Dinora is silent and does not declare, she says that it is by her will. The other girls do the same, are silent. The recruiter – the figure of the person who “hires” or “takes care” of the women – poses as one of the sex workers. Migration arrives and since there is no complaint, they are not considered victims and are expelled from the country. Victims and traffickers in the same trip.

They cross the border and there a taxi is waiting for them. Victims and traffickers return to Guatemala together. So they take them to a house in zone 5, they keep them locked up and they exploit them again. After a few months Dinora manages to escape, she approaches the police and asks them to return her to her country of origin, they transfer her to Migration and there they say that she must pay a fine because she exceeded the time of her residence in Guatemala - despite the fact that the four countries that make up the CA4 allow Central Americans to circulate freely through Guatemala and remain in the country for six months; and the Constitution says that they can receive nationality just by asking for it.

She contacts a client and he gives her money for the taxi and recommends that she go to the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH). There she meets Sandra Gularte, head of the Unit for the Prevention of Trafficking, who detects that Dinora is a victim – she went through the police and immigration without anyone having said anything. Sandra Gularte remembers her as "a brunette girl, with no hair, she wore like a cap, I never asked her why she didn't have hair, but in this you don't have to ask more than you have to know." Then Gularte transfers the case to the Public Ministry, where the investigations begin. They make the link between the clandestine house and the Cow Boys III that worked openly.

The Nicaraguan woman left a statement as advance evidence, psychological expert studies were carried out and she was returned to Nicaragua, where her identity is protected. Colop built a case that seemed solid, with statements from another victim, with documents found at the first place where Dinora had been, with evidence provided by authorities in Nicaragua. But, in a first debate, the defendants were acquitted, since they said that she had come to Guatemala voluntarily. It generated suspicion that someone declared that Dinora was a cohabitant of the man who brought her to the country.

It was questioned whether there were no signs of sexual exploitation in the house in zone 5. And no probative value was given to Dinora's statement. The debate restarted and the prosecution's accusation was questioned based on the report by the psychologist from the National Institute of Forensic Sciences (Inacif), in which the specialist explained that Dinora's was a "flat" statement in which there was no an emotional burden or signs of trauma in the victim – this was stated in the report, although in her oral statement the psychologist expanded that it is possible that the victim's shock made her react stoically.

Now, the prosecutor is preparing another debate in which he will expose "the doctrinal essence of the law." Sagastume and Colop are sure that she is a victim; testing it is difficult. Just as the victim must be convinced that they are a victim, prosecutors must look for even the smallest detail to prove it, judges are faced with cases in which ambiguity is one of the main weapons of criminals and, sometimes, they do not know how to recognize it. . And when organized crime transcends borders, it is even more difficult to catch.

***

Guatemala is a country of transit, stay and migration of people: women circulate, some stay and others leave. How many of these internal migrants, how many of the Central American migrants heading north, end up being victims?

The land of Guatemala, Central America in general, is fused with gunpowder. Matches of different shapes –civil wars, natural catastrophes, violence in the streets, more violence in the houses– that ignite explosions and push their inhabitants to flee. In fleeing, few leave notice of their destination, the tracks are erased by the one who comes running behind.

The 36-year internal war, the 1976 earthquake, the violence caused by a monster with dozens of heads, a small and macrocephalic State that forgets the interior of the country and a capital that attracts peasants from the rural areas, generates mobilizations within the country and abroad. Guatemala is a mined bridge through which many pass and where anything can happen.

Like Mexico. The National Institute of Migration of Mexico, estimated in 2010, 140 thousand "events" of irregular transit through Mexico; these events could be the same migrant trying several times. Most of these migrants are Central Americans who had to cross or left Guatemala. One in ten Guatemalans lives in the US; one in five Hondurans; one in three Salvadorans.

Claudia López, from the National Roundtable for Migrations (Menamig), explains that "in reality no one can know (how many people leave Guatemala annually) because what people who migrate undocumented do is find a way to leave without be seen –therefore counted-. In addition, among those who leave the territory, it is not possible to distinguish for sure what their destinations are, if they go to Mexico temporarily (temporary workers) if they go to the United States and how many manage to arrive. There is no data on how many Central Americans remain in Guatemala or Mexico without documents. There is also no information on how many might be victims of trafficking or exploitation.

In the case of internal migration there are not too many records either, according to the Institute of Economic and Social Research (Idíes), of the Rafael Landívar University, 57 percent of internal migration in Guatemala is women, the majority of cases to the capital or urban areas. Many women arrive to work in domestic services. A matter that is hardly talked about, but there are certainties that there are high levels of labor exploitation. Women who work in the houses in exchange for food, are prohibited from going out and are even victims of physical and sexual violence. There is another piece of information that would prevent making projections, if one tried to calculate the number of victims of trafficking based on reports of disappearances: in some cases it is the family itself, their father, their uncle, who sell these women to someone else. They remain in their own home or in that of someone close to them, being exploited at work or sexually.

The Dinora drama took place on the southern border. But the northern border is not spared from being the scene of similar stories, perhaps worse, because the route to the north becomes more difficult as the kilometers go by.

The troubled river

The Suchiate River is a liquid duty free. It doesn't smell like perfume, it smells like shit. Merchandise, migrants, and temporary workers move on two tractor tires supported by a structure of wooden planks, led by a rafter who pushes the contraption with a pole.

The Suchiate is a barrier and a step, it is the path and it is the stumbling block. The river is the border line between Mexico and Guatemala. In winter people die. Those on the rafts say that they have had to travel 20 kilometers downstream to look for the corpses in the sea, that "sometimes they appear, sometimes they don't."

At some point the neighbors were alarmed because on the Mexican side they began to build a wall. It's a dam, they say now, whenever the river rises in winter, Ciudad Hidalgo, the town on the Mexican shore, floods. That happened when the storm Stan, in 2005, devastated Central America and reached the train tracks that stopped in Ciudad Hidalgo. The train no longer reaches the town, the routes have changed.

Soaps, toilet paper, double-liters of soda, pipes, cookies and Mexican candies; Second-hand clothes, fruits and vegetables from Guatemala cross on rafts less than a kilometer from where the bridge is, the immigration post and where taxes would be collected for the products. On the Guatemalan side there is a police pickup truck, on the Mexican side as well. Like ants, the men line up to help unload the products. Neither on the Guatemalan border nor on the Mexican border is there any kind of control over those who cross.

Sometimes, when you get to Suchiate, it is no longer possible to continue, the money runs out. They say that many women stay at one end of the border. Suchiate becomes a limbo where migrants remain waiting for a job, waiting for a stroke of luck, waiting for a guy who will pay something in exchange for sex.

–It happens a lot. Women come and run out of money, so they look for work in these places. From there, they kind of like it and they stay. –says the sweaty man who pedals a tricitaxi through the dirt streets of Tecún Umán, the Guatemalan town.

The rickshaw jerks his head toward the “breweries” with wooden walls, painted with beer advertisements. It is noon and they are already there. Waiting.

On the other side of the river, at the Mexican end, at noon, the cantinas are forbidden to open. They can only work when the sun goes down – it's because of the schools, someone will say, validating the hypocrisy. Only the breweries are open - where, in theory, sex is not negotiated - and they must close at 8 pm, when the others begin to open. "Drugged or uniformed or armed men are not accepted", reads on the facades. (They prefer to work in Mexico. "In Guatemala everyone is armed," they will say later). In Ciudad Hidalgo the brothels and breweries are next to the abandoned train line.

There are three women in Charlie's bar. A tall, strong and dark, Honduran. One of medium height, flirtatious and smart, Mexican; and another short and silent, Guatemalan. There are Charlie's three girls. Mariana, the Honduran is the administrator; they just “file”. They don't take care If she wanted to, Mariana says, pointing to the Guatemalan, she could make good money taking care of it, especially since clients always look for the new one and "this one is regular," she says, referring to the appearance and youth of the girl who crosses the Suchiate every day to earn commissions on the other side of the river.

Yanira Tobar has already commented in Guatemala City: sex workers lose their value as the years go by, at 30 or 35 they are old and useless. "We are like shoes," Tobar said, "we wear out."

Mariana, the Honduran woman, folds napkins with the noise of the fan in the background. She is interested in distinguishing that the store that she manages – the owner is also the owner of a grocery store on the corner – is not like the ones up the street, up the road. In those places there are hidden rooms around the street or in backyards and yes, he says "they have many Central American minors."

They say that there, in Tecún Umán, on the border, something is happening. But, so at first glance everything seems calm. At the National Civil Police station there is a blackboard with the positive and negative “events” of the year (positive, arrests; negative, crimes). Road accidents and fights predominate in the orderly columns, and three or four murders a year. The blackboard does not contemplate the crime of trafficking or sexual exploitation. The police agent, sitting in front of a computer, can't answer why. Yes, they do tours of the town, yes on weekends they do rounds on the street of the cantinas, but basically to make sure there are no fights between the customers.

********

The House of the Migrant in Tecún Umán is a solid, orderly building, painted blue, with trees and a mural that narrates the migrant's journey: a tree with its roots uprooted.

Brazilian priest Ademar Barilli is the director. Barilli is critical of the press, of the academics who, after a couple of days of surveys, write a book exposing the phenomenon of migration. Critical, above all, with politicians and governments that blatantly turn their backs on the situation of migrants, on what happens in the country so that they are forced to flee. He distrusts the "foritis" and "reunionitis" of the Government and of the organizations that spend millions of resources and time discussing the problems that he tries to appease from the house he founded fifteen years ago in Tecún Umán.

–In a way, there has always been trafficking. Now the situation is more dramatic with organized crime, the groups, I am not mentioning the Zetas, they are not all part of the Zetas. Now it is the fashion of the Zetas and the Alfa and the mareros. There has always been common crime, if they have more organization, it may be, they have gained experience. I have also gained experience, it is logical, like any profession. But all this has been made possible because migration has been criminalized. If Mexico gives a visa, everyone goes by plane and the violence ends. They would not need coyotes, traffickers. The same US policies have created and encouraged and enriched human trafficking, they are still guilty of all the violence that is generated.

Barilli affirms that almost all the Central Americans when they arrive in Nuevo Laredo have had to “do jobs” because they have run out of money. When I say work, you already know what it means. Dances, prostitution, serving everyone, because it's not just drug traffickers, it's everyone who looks for those places, (and women) need money.

They are victims, but the same system that criminalizes migrants prevents them from denouncing. Most of them have children and go to support their families. But as long as it is not fought in another way...

The key for Barilli is prevention. “We know that all migrants are potential victims of trafficking and that women are more vulnerable because of their status as women. The issue is to prevent them from falling. Why do we have to wait for them to kill them to help them? You don't worry until you have the problem inside!"

Barilli speaks from the border, from his encounter with the drama of migrants. From the blue house, he sees human beings go by who, despite the talks about prevention, might end up falling into a network.

And there is no better simile for these organizations than the “network”, that fabric that crosses borders, rivers, that takes its victims by plane, truck or pickup truck. That attracts poor women from the towns of Verapaces to a dilapidated canteen in the capital, or those seeking to reach the north, or Colombians or Russians who are offered modeling work in a Central American country. Networks that work through the Internet –with pornography and promoting places of exploitation-.

It's hard to spot the victims, they're in the shadows. But it is more complicated to define the perpetrators: They are the shadow.

The hands that weave the nets

The territory of trafficking and exploitation is vast and liquid; the penumbra between legality and illegality makes the networks more elusive. From the small canteens that operate under the innocent façade of a liquor store -whose lure is through local "recruiters" or the same victims who unknowingly become traffickers by recommending their place of work to a neighbor of the town. Even the "night clubs" with foreign women who, in most cases, arrive with the promise of a contract as models and hostesses and are forced to be there due to outstanding debts - plane tickets, plastic surgeries, lodging, threats-. Even the most underground places: clandestine houses that prohibit the exit of the victims. There is a diversity of market niches and these are used by a diversity of organizations.

Sandra Gularte, from the PDH, defines three types of traffickers: One is the sole trafficker who is a well-known person or the father, or a relative, who treats his daughter, sells her or has her on his own home, they exploit her at work or sexually. Not related to organized crime, but with similar consequences for the victim.

Small networks, of three or four people who buy or coerce women –they even fake love affairs to convince them–; They deceive them with offers of work as maids or waitresses and sell them in bars. These “medium” networks, as defined by Gularte, supply women to businesses with a “market for the lower and middle classes”, with Guatemalan victims, taken from a poor region to a less poor one. Like the Q'eqchí women in the nameless cantina.

While the large networks, according to the classification made by the representative of the Attorney General's Office, coordinate with networks from other countries and in a more specialized manner and with higher levels of influence –both within organized crime and in the apparatus of the State-. "Mobsters, politicians, soldiers, businessmen, industrialists, religious leaders, bankers, policemen, judges, hitmen and common men make up a huge chain on the international map of organized crime that has existed for centuries," says journalist Lydia Cacho in the investigation. "Slaves of power". For the machinery to work, the gears have to be oiled. And one of the main oils, without a doubt, turns out to be that of the officials who ignore the problem and, worse still, are part of it.

Gularte of the PDH assures: “Those who are caught are usually the sole traffickers and the traffickers from small networks, but justice does not reach all the traffickers from large networks. They are not touched, it is assumed that there are government officials related to the networks. A source that belongs to a civil organization for justice affirms: "The names and surnames of those who are behind it are known", but he does not dare to give names, although he claims to know them.

When questioning Alexander Colop, from the Prosecutor's Office, about the possibility of the participation of officials in the business, he says he has no case. He only remembers a trial in which it was rumored that the owner of a brothel had been a police commissioner, but it was not proven. Carlos Menocal, former Minister of the Interior during the government of Álvaro Colom (2010-2012), affirms that it is very difficult to reach the true owners of the networks, since the system protects through corporations and front men.

In order to have an official version of those currently in charge of government security and prevention, an interview was requested with the Minister of the Interior, Mauricio López Bonilla, but this was not granted.

What those who work against trafficking deduce is that the levels of impunity with which the businesses have operated, the lax immigration controls, the raids in places where only the “caretakers” are reached and not the owners , could have several explanations: the technical, professional and financial capacity of the prevention and justice system is not enough; the authorities do not recognize the dimensions of the crime. Or, even worse, the networks are shielded by economic and political powers that exceed their efforts. But besides the authorities, there is a ? constantly pointed out as the main responsible for the big business of trafficking and sexual exploitation: drug trafficking.

The great shadows of trafficking

The July page must be marked in red on the 2011 calendar. Two events isolated from each other, but which would reveal to the authorities the operation of two organized crime structures: On Saturday the 11th, the murder of the Argentine singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral and on Sunday the 12th, a farm in Ixcán, Quiché, in the northwest of Guatemala on the border with Mexico, where a crowded party of alleged drug traffickers was organized.

Cabral was assassinated when he was going to the airport with the organizer of his concerts in Guatemala, Henry Fariñas. At first it was suspected that it had been a direct attack on the singer-songwriter -Fariñas was injured-, but the investigations that were carried out with unusual speed in Guatemala revealed that the attack was actually against what at that time was considered a businessman event planner. But Fariñas not only organized concerts, but also used Club Elite, called a nightclub – but known as an exclusive prostitution center – to launder money from drug trafficking. The tragic coincidence allowed authorities to uncover an international network linking the owners of an “adult entertainment” business franchise to drug trafficking and money laundering.

Initially, Fariñas was linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Lydia Cacho wrote, on July 14, 2011, in SinEmbargo: "If the DEA decides to participate directly with the CICIG, the singer's death would have served to demonstrate one of the most powerful women's slavery networks in the region, whose Multimillion-dollar profits end up in Mexican and North American banks.”

The Fariñas case, a victim turned perpetrator, moved to Nicaragua where he was tried for drug trafficking, money laundering, falsification of identity and relation to international crime. Despite the affirmation of the Mexican journalist, until now the prosecution associates it with a "cartel" called Los Charros and no mention is made of any relationship with the Sinaloa cartel.

See InSight Crime's investigation into the Fariñas case.

David Martínez Amador, political scientist and columnist expert in organized crime, is suspicious of the fact that up to now no relationship between the Fariñas network and the Elite clubs has been found with the hypothesis that linked it to the Sinaloa cartel . “There is a temptation, a media error, for all social pathology to be blamed on the drug traffickers,” says Martínez. Although he acknowledges that “all drug trafficking attempts aim to legitimize capital. And because of the volume of money produced by the drug traffickers, from traditional groups, to launder capital they are not going to set up a whorehouse, they set up a club franchise”.

The researcher assures that only the big cartels have the possibility of setting prices and rates, they are the ones that organize a macro business. It is likely that Los Charros is a group organized for local distribution, but whose power would not be classified as a cartel. Perhaps Los Charros, with whom Fariñas was related, is dedicated to Central America and money laundering, related to a cartel. According to the Nicaraguan prosecutor's office, Fariñas' businesses have laundered US$3 million since 2005. Meanwhile, Alejandro Jiménez, alias “el Palidejo”, accused of masterminding the murder of Cabral and the attack against Fariñas, is on trial in Guatemala for murder and attempted murder. Jiménez is not accused of any of the charges that the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican prosecutors handle for him: drug trafficking and money laundering.

The murder of Cabral revealed information about the Central American transfer and the laundering system through “licit” businesses. But at the same time, it leaves a big question open: Why are neither of them, Fariñas and Jiménez, prosecuted for trafficking or sexual exploitation?

*****

?That party the day after Cabral's murder in July 2011, with horse races, liquor, girls and music, did not end as the organizers expected. The MP and the Mingob had been hot on the heels of the unusual movements in the small town. The party was just beginning. A leak gave notice to the attendees, who fled as best they could – in vehicles and on foot, in the mountains – leaving behind them in the farm that turned out to be, according to the prosecutor's office, property of the Chinique municipality, the evidence: a home video, weapons and cash; that would later allow a series of captures and raids that provided valuable information to the authorities about the organization of the Zetas.

See InSight Crime's special investigation into Los Zetas in Guatemala.

It is possible that the revelry that only promised a great hangover has left wounds that have not yet been measured in the structure of the Zetas in Guatemala. A source close to the organization assures that the Mexican guests ran for their freedom and prevented the Guatemalans from escaping from the authorities. The informant assures that, at a certain moment, those who fled had to cross a river, by means of an artisan funicular, which would take them on the route to cross on the Mexican side; but the Mexican faction, weapons in hand, prevented the Guatemalans from getting into the basket that would take them away from the Guatemalan agents. That day and on the following days, they arrested 21 people, including four Mexican women.

Carlos Menocal was the Minister of the Interior in that convulsive July of 2011. The Cabral case was an unexpected event, but in the other case, together with the Public Ministry, he had been following the preparations for the party for a long time. After the arrests and raids, the former minister is convinced of the relationship between drug trafficking and human trafficking networks.

“In addition to dealing drugs, the drug lord moves young girls to prostitute them and introduce them into clandestine prostitution networks,” Menocal asserts. The “narco party” at the Ixcán farm is the clearest example: “The (Mexican) girls confess to the investigative authority that they were victims of forced recruitment; almost all of them were from Tamaulipas, they came in clandestine transfers and in many cases in collaboration with the police, they even transferred them in patrol cars”, affirms Menocal.

The former minister explains that the girls, who were released and repatriated to Mexico, did not collaborate in the identification of possible members of the organization, but they did “contribute to making it clear that the issue of trafficking is an issue that not only goes from south to north, but the drug trafficker himself brings girls from Mexico to Guatemala”. Of the eight posts that the former minister claims were dismantled in Guatemala, there were evidence of cases of trafficking in Cobán, Huehuetenango, Quetzaltenango and Quiché: “there is documented evidence of payroll payments to young women,” he affirms.

But even in these facts, with evidence, there are contradictions in how networks could work.

–I was in charge of hiring the prepaid companies- says Mariela, it is the fictitious name for this woman who worked for an administrative wing of the Zetas. The prepaid are the sex workers who agree in advance the meeting place and the price to offer their services.

Mariela explains that one of her assignments was to make contact with agencies to hire women, especially Colombians, who were brought to the private parties that were organized. She does not mention that there was any type of business directly related to trafficking or exploitation within the "company" as she calls this organization.

It is possible that the hierarchical structure of Los Zetas -with an administrative wing, which according to Mariela and other sources was under the command of William de Jesús Torres Solórzano, alias "Commander W" and who was arrested in Mexico in July of this year, and the operational wing, the most violent organized to gain territories, supposedly under the command of Z200 –whose identity has not been fully established- promotes the diversification of certain businesses without other branches of the command being informed.

?Menocal warns that there are several ramifications within the Zetas organization, at different levels of leadership: some are related to the transfer of arms, drugs and other branches to trafficking. It is possible that an administrative wing hires prepaid girls sporadically and does not make use of the organization's own networks. That is to say, it is the owner, but user of alternative businesses of specialized networks.

There are specialized and highly professional networks dedicated solely to trafficking, explains Martínez Amador. In fact, the researcher doubts that Guatemalan trafficking networks are directly related to traditional drug trafficking groups (families like the Mendozas or the Lorenzanas). He considers that at a certain moment they can be related for business reasons, but they are not necessarily part of the trafficking.

There are two cases that illustrate how specialized networks work. The one that created a well-oiled structure that deceived women from Colombia and kept them in Guatemala by force and with threats that if they fled they would murder their families in their country. Intelligence work between the two countries, and a piece of paper that one of the women managed to throw into the neighborhood asking for help, allowed the victims to be rescued and Guatemalan and Colombian traffickers to be arrested. And the “Jordanian network”, which, as Menocal explains, not only took Guatemalan women to Jordan –with false promises of domestic work, to later prostitute them in subhuman conditions-, but also did trafficking work in Guatemala. The "Jordanian network" revealed how the same organization can work with different modalities and in different territories. While they were taking women to Jordan, they also exploited women in exclusive brothels in zone 9 and 10, and ran some decadent businesses on Martí Street and the General Cemetery.

Another way of working among the networks, which makes it possible to evade the law more quickly, is that of networks dedicated exclusively to “recruiting” victims and then “distributing” them to various businesses. Following the clues is more complex.

And this is how the victims reveal themselves little by little –because they manage to escape, because they find a space for support, because some investigations prosper, because some raid is successful or because of some stroke of luck-. As soon as they outline and define who could be the owners of the networks, they just begin to give brief flashlights of the collusion between other organized crime networks and the possibility that there are officials, legal businessmen and drug traffickers involved. But another character remains to be portrayed: those who, consciously or not, end up being the executioners of the story: the clients.

***

And so, it ends up being a trapeze act in a seedy circus.

The audience: drunk, macho, applauds hysterically watching the show. With glassy eyes and pockets full of coins, tokens, credit cards. Expectant.

The networks: large, medium, small, violent or manipulative. Tense, well spun. Waiting.

Trapeze artists: They hold onto a flimsy bar with sweaty hands. They sway, each with a different story, but with chapters in their biographies that seem like copies of each other. With the leggings of possibilities patched up. The invisible and lethal revolver of need, of children to support, of absent parents, of domestic violence, of the lack of education points at them.

They jump. And they fall.

*Alejandra Gutiérrez Valdizán is a journalist for Plaza Pública. See the full Plaza Pública special, with multimedia, here.