Editor of The Tribune
AUSTIN, Texas - It is the one crime used by television to sell police shows like NYPD Blue, Law & Order and Cold Case. Glossy national magazines find the topic always yields a high readership. True Crime books invariably find one or two of these sad and sordid stories as grist for the idle mind. Cops note it as a growing problem and politicians carp endlessly about its coming to America.
Here's a testimonial from a young victim, a woman who came forward amid threats from her pimp: "He called me a stupid bitch…a worthless piece of shit. I had to tell people I fell off stage because I had so many bruises on my ribs face and legs. I have a permanent twitch in my eye from him hitting me in my face so much. I have none of my irreplaceable things from my youth."
Her name was Felicia, a minor prostitute-stripper enslaved by a trafficker at a very young age.
It's a painful lifestyle usually lived by runaway girls and poor women. Their story is well-known; pimps and other abusers have used them since time immemorial. In Texas, the crime is everywhere, in Dallas and Austin and Houston and San Antonio. Lately, it has arrived in small towns along the Texas-Mexico border, where young girls are kidnapped in Mexico and delivered like sacks of drugs to bars and strip clubs in places such as Laredo, Starr County and other spots along the Rio Grande Valley.
Not much was heard about the trend during the state's recent legislative session, where budget deficits and partisan politics stole the day. No state politician made a big deal out of sex trafficking, although they know it's there.
That sad photography atop this sory comes from a lengthy report in the current edition of Vanity Fair magazine, which offers a tapeworm of a story about sex trafficking in America. The report is at once insightful and alarming.
There are no bordellos in the U.S., other than the legalized sprinkling of whorehouses in Nevada.
Americans like to see this as something to be found only in the outs of Bangkok or Manila or Mexico City, where young girls are traded as if baseball cards, where they are forced to serve sex-starved foreigners and where the unsympathetic governments look the other way.
All of that has landed on America's shores, in places such as Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.
Look for it and find it in Smalltown, USA.
It's there, too...
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22 comments:
I hate to sound like this, but human trafficking is like prostitution, it isn't going to stop.
Drug dealing, pimping, traffcking, smuggeling, prostitution, brothers it is here to stay, I don't care how many people you put in jail.
Yes it is everywhere, just like every other sort of crime, and while we might not be able to stop it, we can certainly do something about it. It's just like walking past a trash-strewn lot every day, you can choose to just keep walking and live amid ugliness or you can pick up some every day and make your world a better place.
La Joya, Texas is the center of sex trafficking in the Valley. No question
Politics are dominated by men. So crimes-against-women aren't frontcenter on their mind. This stuff has been around saince the days of the Wild West.
This week is the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. And we're going to commemorate these costly handouts ... by taking action to get rid of them.
10 years of Bush tax cuts is enough! Click here to demand your representative supports the Fairness in Taxation Act so the rich contribute their fair share.
On June 7, 2001, President George W. Bush began to use Americans as lab rats for another experiment in conservative voodoo economics.
Cutting taxes on the wealthy did not create jobs as conservatives promised. Rich people did help to inflate the housing bubble, leading to the financial crash. And the Bush Administration earned was the "worst track record on record" for jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bush declared that "the surplus is the people's money," and proceeded to give the surplus away to very few people. Now that we face chronic deficits, it's long past time for millionaires and billionaires to starting giving back.
The Bush tax cuts made our tax brackets more regressive. Rep. Jan Schakowsky's Fairness in Taxation Act makes them more progressive.
It would create new tax brackets for annual income above $1 million, starting at 45% for income between $1 million and $10 million, inching up to 49% for income over $1 billion.
It's plain common sense.
Before we try balancing the budget by cutting Social Security, unemployment insurance, aid to hungry children or health care for the poor, let's start with the obvious: higher taxes on those that can easily afford it.
They tried it their way 10 years ago. It was a colossal failure, and we are all paying the price for it today.
It's time for the rich to pay their fair share, so we all can prosper again.
So it's in La Joya, huh? Needless to say, I'm there.
Armando Villalobos isn't going to win anything there are already, two other candidates for the position of District Attorney.
Armandito, back to work. And forget the position for Congress. You just doesn't understand the politics.
Blogger M, I am not saying it is okay to traffic humans, but you put one human smuggler in Jail, and there are seven more to take his place.
Out in the streets the talk is brutal on how to cheat on ICE.
Sex sells. that's all there is to it. Men sell and women sell it. Its when kids are involved that it becomes a mess. Good article.
ALL:...We do not ever post comments to do with linking this site - and our readers - to porno sites. You're wasting your time submitting such stupidities. Sex is great, perhaps the greatest activity granted Man and Woman, but deviant sex sites do nothing for me. Sex remains a participatory sport. We leave the wishful gazing to you... - Editor
alabama's law won't pass legal muster. Bet on it. We're a nation of immigrants who come here for the worst of reasons but sooner or later become us.
The new congressman is not going to be any of those guys you mention in the top sidebar. It's going to be someone new. We need someone new.
Tony Chapa for dog Catcher, Juan Ortega for Barrendero de la ciudad.
Eddie Lucio, for rip off, of the month.
100 news releases, about 8 comments. Juan Jose (la chinche) and a few other losers on Chapa's blog. Puros losers, todos.
That woman on the sidebar who threw her hubby out the window has trouble written all across her hillbilly face. Poor slob.
That Amber Hilderling, looks like a guy, dressed as a woman.
Newt Grinwich, is a fake and a good phony, he is living out of 6 different phony groups, tax free.
Going off course, Gus Garza announces that he will run for DA? His pic makes him look like a crook? His wife or partner (whatever she is?) Martha Galarza is a real bitch and hated within the county. Not for doing her job? GG is reaching for that dream to win voters confidence for DA? He couldn't beat that very large "Frito Bandido looking guy" Juan Mendoza? He couldn't make that small precinct come out and vote for him? What makes him think that he can get ALL of Cameron County to come out and vote for him?
Juan Ortega is blogging again, damn, this guy needs to go away, he is cucaracho,(roach), someone, needs to tell him to his face. I hear, he to is hiding away from the Big Dawgggggg.
I hear Chapa doesn't go to Mi Rancho anymore, andale cabron, he talks smack ony when the dawg is not around.
Man, the Dog and Pony show of Sara Palin, a hillbillie from the state of Alaska.
The other day at the oil change shop, some crazy old bitches were speaking about Palin as if she really mattered. Can you believe some Hispanic males were actually agreeing with the old bitches, I finally told them, Palin was a two bid fraud. And that she will never be anymore than a used car salesperson.
What a bunch of lunatics.
Sara Palin, for Janitor at my Rancho, Tonie Chapa for Assh&*&*&e of the month. J.Ortega for Mamon of the year.
They are at the same level.
Juan ortega and chapos for hotinchones of the month.
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