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Mexican Human Trafficking Activist Honored by State Department

Lydia Cacho works to exposes abuses against children, women

Cancun, Mexico, may be a beautiful beach destination for tourists, but the city's dark side serves as the motivation for Lydia Cacho Ribeiro's crusade to fight trafficking of women and the international sex trade.

Cacho has been named as one of the State Department's eight "Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery" for 2007. She told USINFO May 18 that the U.S. government's recognition validates "what we are doing for trafficking victims; and I hope it helps the Mexican authorities to understand that trafficking of women is a global issue, and we have to deal with it as that."

The "Heroes" designation began with the Trafficking in Persons Report for 2004 under then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to recognize ordinary people who have done extraordinary work to combat modern-day slavery. Since then, the State Department has identified each year in its Trafficking in Persons Report individuals who have shown great courage in the face of adversity in fighting this worldwide problem.

Cacho said the Mexican government needs to do more to stop sexual violence, especially with studies showing that at least 12,000 girls every year in Mexico are sexually exploited and forced into prostitution. If the government does not do more to attack this problem, trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and women "will probably in 10 years become as big" in Mexico as drug trafficking, Cacho predicted.

The State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons report for 2006 cited Mexico as a source, transit and destination country for trafficked persons, mostly exploited for sex and labor, with children many of those victims. The 2006 report said the Mexican government "does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so."

Cacho's tireless work as a journalist, author and public advocate for victims of sexual predators stirred up so much official resistance that she has been jailed and threatened with rape and death.

In December 2005, she was arrested by Mexican police in Cancun and driven 21 hours to the city of Puebla where she was detained on defamation and libel charges. Following an international outcry, she was freed and the charges against her dropped.

The incident occurred after revelations in her book, The Demons of Eden: The Power That Protects Child Pornography, connected child-sex tourism rings in Cancun to high-ranking Mexican government officials.

Impeding her efforts in Mexico, said Cacho, is the belief that women should not be involved in the fight against human trafficking. Making the job doubly hard, she added, is that she seeks to expose the "true core of official corruption" in her country.

In Cancun, Cacho runs the Women's Assistance Center (Centro Integral de Atencion a la Mujer) for victimized children and women. The center is considered one of the safest and most comprehensive facilities in Mexico, helping victims of human trafficking and sexual violence.

USINFO reached Cacho in San Francisco, where she was participating in a May 18-19 conference at Stanford University examining the murders and disappearances of women in Mexico, Guatemala and Canada. Organizers said the conference was aimed at stopping such violence, pointing out that in the Mexican community of Ciudad Juarez opposite El Paso, Texas, more than 400 victims have been murdered in the last 14 years and a reported 600 other individuals have disappeared.

Besides her recognition from the U.S. government, Cacho won a 2007 award from the global human rights group Amnesty International for creating the Cancun shelter for abused children and women.

In accepting that award, Cacho recalled the words of her mother, who said: "Never negotiate your freedom. If you lose your freedom, you lose" everything.

For more on the Amnesty International award, see the group's Web site.

More information on the Cancun Women's Assistance Center is available (in Spanish) on the group's Web site.

The 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report is scheduled to be released on June 12.

For additional information, see 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Source: U.S. Department of State