samerica5

Female Prostitution in Latin America
In Mexico, a number of girls as young as fourteen were promised jobs in
housekeeping/child care but when they arrived to the U.S., they were told they had to work
in brothels serving migrant workers.46 Today, it is not uncommon to hear of Mexican
women being trafficked to Florida to sexually serve migrant workers. Further, while most of
the trafficking from Central American women appears to be headed for the U.S., as
evidenced by Mexican women who work as prostitutes, maids or housekeepers, South
American women sometimes head towards the U.S. but appear to be heading more often
towards Europe. Mr. Cortes from the INS pointed out in an interview that Colombian and
Brazilian women are often sexually exploited in Europe.47 Further, Mr. Enriques confirmed
this fact by stating that there is a regular movement of women between Brazil and Spain.
He does not believe that this flow constitutes a significant industry yet, but believes that it is
the result of a basic economic reality for these women since they can earn thousands of
dollars a month prostituting themselves in Spain compared to a few hundred dollars in
Brazil. Mr. Enriques pointed out that in the past, poor economic conditions had also driven
Brazilian women of Japanese descent to migrate to Japan. In fact, in the early nineties,
about 200,000 young Brazilian women of Japanese descent, between the ages of eighteen
to twenty-nine, had moved to Japan to find better jobs. Some of these women intended to
work as hostesses but ended up working as prostitutes, thereby evidencing a transnational
connection between prostitution rings in Brazil and Japan.
However, as of today, Brazil constitutes the second supplier of female prostitutes to the
world. A recent UN (United Nations) study pointed out that about 75,000 Brazilian women
currently work as prostitutes in Europe.48 Out of these 75,000 women 95%49 are
estimated to be living as slaves.   During November 2000, the United Nations Office of Drug
Control and Crime Prevention signed an agreement with the Brazilian government whereby
the Brazilian government commits to fight the trafficking of women and children in Brazil and
around the world. The main recipient countries for Brazilian female prostitution are:
Portugal, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, France, Canada and Israel. Portugal and Spain
are obvious destination choices because of language affinity. In Portugal, a UN report50
stated that 60% of the prostitutes are from Latin America, mostly from Brazil. In Spain for
example, Brazilian prostitutes work primarily in cosmopolitan cities such as Seville,
Barcelona and Madrid.   The Spanish government is concerned about the increase in
Brazilian prostitutes and is developing legislation to deport illegal aliens. Another important
recipient country outside of Europe is Surinam. In Brazil, the critical area of recruiting for
prostitutes is in the north of the country. The Interpol has been actively involved in the
prevention and detection of trafficking routes used by Brazilian women. At present, the
Brazilian government?s schedule includes programs to train the police and judges that
work in border regions.

Another main source country for prostitution of women is the Dominican Republic. In 1996,
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) published a report that stated that there
were about 50,000 women from the Dominican Republic that worked in the sex industry
overseas.51 Today, the country continues to supply the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and
Austria with women who work as prostitutes. These women, who claim that prostitution is
more accepted overseas than at home, engage in these practices to feed their families or
to buy property back in the Dominican Republic. On average they send
US$300-US$10,000 per year in remittances home.52

Finally, a country that is seeing a significant amount of women engaging in overseas
prostitution is Colombia. During 1999, about 35,000 women were taken to Europe and
Asia by traffickers in order to work as prostitutes.53 Because this figure represents a
sharp increase in trafficking for the country, the Colombian government has already taken
steps to reform the penal code, especially article 188, which penalizes facilitators and
collaborators of human trafficking with a prison sentence of six to eight years. Colombia is
the third Latin American country after the Dominican Republic and Brazil that traffics
women overseas. The usual destinations include the Netherlands, Spain and Hong Kong.
Since 1998 the Interpol and the Colombian Department of Security (DAS) has rescued 126
victims of trafficking.54 In most of these cases, the police found ties to drug trafficking,
which proves again how organized crime intertwines different criminal activities.