A man in a suit. A boy with a hat and shorts. A man in overalls. An older man. Two young people in jeans. Another with a tie and the briefcase still in his hand. One after the other, 18 men enter a shop with a red facade in less than a minute, the time in which a traffic light for pedestrians in the 12 de Octubre district of the Bolivian city of El High remains green. A guard guards the door, through which a row of wall-mounted urinals appears, at which the newcomers pause briefly. What is hidden behind the toilets cannot be seen, but is known: rooms in which pimps, mainly women, prostitute.
The picture is from Monday afternoon and the area, which is classified as red on a scale where the color purple describes the maximum level of danger in a prostitution area, is already full of whores. No matter where you look. “Although there are a lot more people there from Thursday to Sunday,” explains an employee of the Munasim Kullakita Foundation (“I love you, little sister” in Aymara), a Bolivian organization that works against human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of minors .
The woman, who we'll call “Queen” to protect her identity, draws attention to a teenager waiting on a corner and another group of boys lined up in front of a metal gate. “When there is news that a new girl is arriving, even more people gather,” said Queen, who has been working to save minors forced into prostitution in this neighborhood for years. “There are businesses and hotels everywhere with rooms that are rented out by the hour or minute,” he adds. This glass covered building. The other with the look of a Brooklyn loft. The public toilet, which only costs five Bolivianos to enter if accompanied [unos 0,7 euros]“. And in this district, which is anything but a tourist area, everyone has an “accommodation” sign hanging on them. “I managed to identify about 300 shelters and about 120 brothels on these streets alone,” says Queen.
Doña Lidia, mother of a missing woman, in one of the streets of the 12th district of El Alto, an area full of shelters often used for prostitution.MANUEL SEOANE
“When there is news that a new girl is arriving, even more people gather,” said Queen, who has worked in El Alto for years to rescue minors forced into prostitution.
Prostitution carried out voluntarily by an adult is not a crime in Bolivia, but the activity of someone who prostitutes a third person for profit is. Queen criticizes this concept of “voluntariness” because it ignores the vulnerability of the person exercising it and because in practice it serves to protect them. That's why organizations like yours focus on what is clearly illegal: the commercial sexual exploitation of minors. “In these cases, consent is never given,” he emphasizes.
“It is an unquantified phenomenon about which there is great ignorance, both about its dynamics and about the spaces in which it develops,” says Nancy Alé, coordinator of the Protejeres (Weaving Safe Networks) program for the prevention of sexual violence against minors. and which is being developed by the NGO Educo together with Munasim Kullakita and other organizations. It can “result in human trafficking, pimping, commercial sexual violence or pornography,” Alé adds.
In El Alto and La Paz, the walls of train stations, buses and the airport are covered with posters with the faces of missing people and screens alternating images and data of women whose families continue to search.
Illuminated sign posting missing persons reports at the La Paz bus station. Manuel Seoane
The lack of data makes diagnosing this type of violence difficult. According to the latest figures from the Bolivian Government Ministry, in 2022 there were 711 complaints of crimes related to human trafficking and related crimes (pornography, pimping, human trafficking and commercial sexual violence), in which 23% of the victims were minors. All the experts interviewed believe that these figures represent only the tip of the iceberg: for example, it is not known exactly how many girls and women are still missing or how many minors are being exploited without their families reporting it. According to preliminary data from the government ministry, in 2023 alone, the disappearances of 3,409 people were reported, “of which 485 remain missing,” as Carola Arraya, director general of the fight against human trafficking and human trafficking, confirmed in a telephone interview in Bolivia, although there is no calculation of the Total. A 2019 investigation by the Munasim Kullakita Foundation found 338 cases of commercial sexual exploitation of minors alone.
“She probably went with her boyfriend.”
“Many speeches, including from authorities, confirm that fifteen-year-old girls work because they want to,” complains Alé. This prejudice affects the lack of investigation because it is common, he continues, because when a young woman disappears, “for example, a police officer will say that she most likely left with her boyfriend.”
Ricardo rescued his 16-year-old daughter from a brothel in Santa Cruz, in an area similar to the 12 de Octubre district in El Alto, two weeks after she disappeared. The girl, deceived by a friend, was kidnapped in La Paz, held for several days and finally transferred to the country's economic capital, according to testimonies accessed by this newspaper. “They found her drugged, but thanks to a police operation they were able to save her,” said a person close to the victim.
However, Doña Lidia was not so lucky. His daughter Juliva left home on July 10, 2014, heading to the Public University of El Alto, where she was studying her second year of psychology. Never came back. “We reported it in La Paz, but since my daughter was already 21 years old, they didn't pay any attention to us, they told me she went with a man,” says this Chola from La Paz in a hotel in the Bolivian capital , while holding one of the signs. Search with Juliva's face spreading more and more from time to time. In the first 15 days after her disappearance, Doña Lidia received several calls from Juliva's number on her cell phone without anyone answering. One of her daughters also received her, although in this case a man's voice told her that the young woman was in the city of Oruro (in the west of the country) and that clothes needed to be brought to her.
Doña Lidia looks at a photo of her daughter Juliva, who disappeared on July 10, 2014 while going to university. Manuel Seoane
“The police never triangulated the calls, they didn’t analyze them,” complains Doña Lidia, who says that “ten different investigators” have been assigned to her over the years. One of them, he says, asked him for money to look for her: “I gave him half, but he never did anything.” The last possible lead about her daughter was received in 2015. “A man called me from a number I didn't know and told me that he had seen my daughter in Cochabamba, so I went there but didn't find her,” she says. Then she went to one Media company and asked for help in finding Juliva, and when she left they called her again: “They told me that if I continued looking for my daughter I would die.” According to Ms. Lidia, the police never made these calls “I think it's because we're poor people, but the same doesn't apply to rich people,” he says.
Doña Lorenza, who uses Aymara words in Spanish, also failed to find her daughter Juliana. She was 12 years old when she disappeared on July 14, 2016. “She went to my eldest son's house to play, but she never arrived,” laments the woman, who speculates that “they must have been kidnapped.” Shortly afterwards, like Doña Lidia, she received a call from a man who told her assured that he would return her daughter if she gave him money. “I waited where they told me to be, but there was no one there and they called me again to ask for more money,” he complains. She didn't give it to her because she didn't have it, and she was never contacted again.
Photo of Juliana, daughter of Doña Lorenza, who disappeared on July 14, 2016. Manuel Seoane
Weakness of the police
Not knowing the fate of their daughters torments Doña Lidia and Doña Lorenza, who agree to speak to this newspaper in the hope that their daughters, if they are still alive, will read the story and know that their mothers still looking for them. But “mapping the places where sexual exploitation occurs is very difficult because the police in Bolivia are very weak,” describes Alé. Queen confirms this argument. “I notified the police when we knew there were minors in a brothel, and when they arrived there was no one there,” says the social worker, who suspects the police are tipping off pimps.
“We have a weakness in the justice system and investigations,” admits Arraya. For this reason, he assures, “the government of Luis Arce is increasing the specialization and training of officials, both of the judicial authorities and of the Bolivian police,” because, he assures, “the crime of human trafficking and related crimes”. [pornografía, proxenetismo y violencia sexual comercial]“in their understanding, complex crimes” for people without sufficient experience and training.
According to the U.S. State Department's latest human trafficking report, which devotes a chapter to Bolivia, “the government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, but is making significant efforts to achieve this.” Due to police efforts, the government does the same Document ensures that “authorities reported no investigation, prosecution or conviction of a trafficker in 2022, the most recent year for which the agency has provided consolidated figures.” Instead, in 2021, officials reported “62 human trafficking investigations and 22 human trafficking prosecutions.” [12 por trata sexual, cinco por trata laboral y cinco por otras formas de servidumbre]and 12 convictions for human trafficking.” According to Alé, the tip of the iceberg.
Reports of missing persons at the La Paz bus terminal police station. Manuel Seoane
But there are places in Bolivia where sexual exploitation is evident. “A commercial environment also emerges around the places where it is created,” suggests Alé, such as in the areas of logging and gold exploitation. “Specifically where a men’s camp is being built,” he explains. This is what happens in the 12 de Octubre district, with hundreds of shops and grocery stores offering men food and drink. “Why does no one question the presence of teenagers in such places?” asks the Educo expert.
From the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, Arraya insists on the measures being taken to strengthen judicial investigations with the provision of technology and equipment to track pornography on the Internet or facial recognition systems to search for missing people and the creation of a free law enforcement university degree to specialize on human trafficking, training agents at airports, bus stations and border crossings and intensifying research in mining areas. Likewise, educational prevention programs have been created in schools, the Government of Bolivia has signed agreements with Brazil and Argentina to monitor crimes committed in border areas and plans to amend Law 2/63 on Trafficking in Persons and Trafficking in Persons to classify crimes more precisely. These include new measures such as “ Grooming” (when an adult poses as a minor on the Internet in order to establish a trusting relationship with another minor) or the distribution of “children’s sexual material” on social networks.
Doña Lidia shows a poster about missing women in Bolivia.Manuel Seoane
The vulnerability of the victims
“Of the 3,409 people who disappeared in 2023, in 2,193 cases the individuals concerned had behavioral or family problems, making them potential victims of human trafficking,” explains the director general of the department that investigates this crime. According to organizations that work with victims, child recruiters often take advantage of victims' precarious situations. The most common techniques are false job offers or what Alé calls the “infatuation technique,” in which the kidnapper first woos a teenager until he annuls her will and sexually abuses or prostitutes her.
So-called online recruiting, via telephone applications or social networks, is increasingly present, as Arraya confirms. “And even online video games,” confirms Lindsay, a teenage member of the Advisory Council for Children and Youth of La Paz and El Alto, which was founded to fight against online recruitment. “I've seen some of my friends compete to see who can get the most contacts from strangers [en sus redes sociales]“As if it were proof of the success of their publications,” adds Milenka, a member of the same group.
Monica (not her real name, 26 years old) is a survivor of sexual abuse through the technique of falling in love. After suffering years of abuse from her father, who subjected her to beatings and rape, she ended up in the house of her godfather and his wife as a teenager. “He started talking to me that he was in love with me, that he was going to take me to another house so we could be alone… At that age we are brainwashed and can dominate each other,” she recalls still feeling guilty. “When an older person dominates a minor and offers him a house or money in exchange for sex, it is called pimping,” answers Queen. And she points out one of the main problems in identifying this sexual violence: “In a process of survival, girls confirm what they experience as if they were doing it voluntarily,” she emphasizes. A part of society also confirms this, he adds.
Verónica plays with her children in a park.Manuel Seoane
Now Mónica, who was taken into a sheltered home by the Protejeres program when she was under 18, has rebuilt her life, has two children and has just completed her studies in social work. “Even though I did fall,” he regrets.
“Pimps are experts at spotting vulnerabilities,” says Queen, pointing to two men standing on a railing in the middle of one of the main squares in the 12 de Octubre district. He doesn’t know their names, but his years of experience in the area reveal their intentions: “Look, they haven’t moved since we arrived. Do you know why? Because they are looking for a young girl to attract.”
This report was prepared with the support of Educo, an NGO that promotes the well-being and rights of children in 14 countries.
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