One way ticket to hell

Desaparecidas en democracia

Latin America is one of the parts in the world most affected by the scourge of human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation. A phenomenon that sadly involves about 24 million people in the world, mostly women and children forced into prostitution, traded as sex slaves, raped, abused and often killed. In Argentina ‘La ley de trata’ - the law against human trafficking - was created in 2008. The sentence varies from 5 to 18 years and is multiplied by each victim for which he is responsible. Recently a telephone line has also been set up to report crimes related to this issue, the line 145. 40% of victims in Argentina come from Paraguay. The main reason is the poverty of many families who have numerous children and no resources to survive. This is the reason why many young teenagers often migrate voluntarily to seek their fortune in Argentina or are victims of people who promise them a job and a different life, help them to illegally cross the border with a false document that is subsequently confiscated forcing them to prostitute in the brothels of Santa Fè, Buenos Aires or the rich tourist cities of the south such as Puerto Madryn or Ushuaia in the Fire's Land.

The main route is through the natural boundaries of Encarnacion (Paraguay) / Posadas (Argentina), where women arrive from the Trini- dad area in Itapuà region and from Alto Paranà (Ciudad del Este) and the border Asuncion (Paraguay) / Clorinda (Argentina). The victims pass by land or by river most of the time illegally and then along the Ruta 11, 12 or 14 they are sorted in the big cities or in the tourist places. Those that do not end up in Argentina are sent to Spain, Chile or Brazil, victims of the same traffic. Human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation most of the time is linked to drug trafficking and the phenomenon involves several parts of society and often uses police and justice corruption to proliferate unpunished.

Prostitution was declared illegal in 1937. From 1937 to 2011, police and pimps formed a system of mutual gain and cooperation. Many cases of seized clandestine brothels were supported by the police as in the famous case of Sheik brothel in Ushuaia where Alika Kinan was imprisoned for years. She was the only survivor of the network in Argentina who managed to escape from the brothel, denounce her torturers and win the case being compensated by the state. 9% of those convicted on this issue are members of the police. Once inside this system, the victims are forced to keep sexual relations with even 30 men per day, they are beaten, drugged, tortured and live as jailed without a chance to escape. Some are sold directly by their own families for little amounts of money.

Argentina is the country of South America where there have been more convictions also for the visibility that has had the phenomenon thanks to the daily struggle of various organizations that are committed to report cases and try to track down and redeem the victims. Prostitution in Argentina is illegal but in the only Buenos Aires there are around 1,500 brothels and around 40,000 throughout the country. The most requested victims are girls from 6 to 12 years, then those between the ages of 13 and 18 while the ‘older’ ones have a lower cost on the market. About 1000 women in the last 10 years have disappeared in the only Argentine. Most were found dead after years or disappeared forever.

This work describes this sad phenomenon and reconstructs the route of human trafficking from Paraguay to the extreme south of Argentina through the stories and the paths walk by Lucia, Belen, Rosalia, Alika, Romina, Florencia, Silvia and her daughters and the fight of mothers like Margarita and Adriana that I’m following since 2015.


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The main part of this project was self-produced by me and some parts were produced on assignment for Stern and Geo Magazine with articles written by Jan-Christoph Wiechmann