Of the more than 1,000 people who disappear each year in Bolivia, some 300, mostly teenagers, are victims of trafficking. But illegal prostitution also reaches many other minors who fall into the spiral of sex for money in the face of a police force that is unable to combat the situation.
“- 50 bolivianos, I’ll help you to start. With oral it is more.
– Where is?
– That red garage door.”
50 bolivianos, four euros, per “piece”, that is, sexual service. Full service, adds the young woman. Álvaro seems to be a client like the others, who has come to this neighborhood with his friend Bernardo to have sex with prostitutes.
In Bolivia, the profession is legal as long as the workers work in declared brothels. But obviously that’s not the case for the young women on the sidewalk tonight. On this avenue on October 12, the red light district of the city of El Alto, dozens and dozens of men wait their turn in line in front of women who offer their bodies for just four or five euros.
In reality, Bernardo and Álvaro are social workers for the Munasim Kullakita organization. They are here to observe the street dynamics. They go to what they call “strategic points.” “Here we work with what we call the builders who are actually a means of communication for us. We could not present ourselves as social workers directly to the girls, because there are some very large networks, and it would be dangerous”, explains Bernardo.
commercial sexual violence
An essential fieldwork to, among other things, detect the youngest. The entire Munasim team is unanimous: one should not talk about prostitution when they are minors, but about commercial sexual violence, one of the forms of trafficking in human beings, which also exists in other forms, such as forced domestic chores. .
Annelise is part of the team that does this street work every week: “Many of them think they are sex workers. But it is not like that, they are victims of commercial sexual violence. They say they have chosen this job. We identify them, and from there a whole process begins, we explain to them that what they are doing is not right, that it is a criminal offense”, she details.
Commercial sexual violence is what most of the adolescent girls who live in Munasim Kullakita’s home have suffered. From the outside, there is nothing to guess that it is a home for young people. It is a house like the others, on an empty avenue in the city of El Alto. Not even the doorbell indicates anything.
Here the outside world is mistrusted, which has always been a danger to these girls. “Most of the time they come from troubled families, with alcoholic parents who were their pimps, due to financial need. So we look for a reference in the extended family, an uncle, a grandmother, someone who can help them”, says Elizabeth Velasco, the director of the place.
“Work on anything”
Six months is the “ideal” duration to stay at home, to receive comprehensive medical, psychological, and social care. But some have been living here for several years because they have no one to turn to.
The private foundation Munasim Kullakita carries out public service work, no home at the municipal level is specialized to receive minors. Every year the Bolivian police receive around 500 complaints of human trafficking, and there are very few spaces in homes at the national level.
Today is a holiday. It is the ch’alla, an Aymara ritual to bless a place by thanking mother earth. The girls blow up balloons, decorate the patio and braid their hair. They have a hard time managing their emotions, since they are between 10 and 17 years old… and most of them were prostituted.
Rita is 15 years old and her story is terrifying. She started having sex for money when she was 12 years old. “Life was difficult. We had to work day by day to earn a plate to eat. There was an intention to work in any way to help my mother. Legal things, illegal things. Sell white things. A friend told me. I waited a week and told him yes. I went to make a piece. She was desperate and wanted above all to support my brothers. There are five of them,” she says.
The working conditions were difficult: “Four euros. But I didn’t earn that much because I had to give everything to the boss and he would then pay me. Some forced me to make strict schedules… One of them hit me one day saying why don’t you work well?”, recalls the young woman.
kidnapped girls
Rita was a victim of trafficking, but not taken from her environment. Others, on the contrary, are kidnapped: more or less 300 each year. A few kilometers from her home, in a popular neighborhood in the city of El Alto, Lidia Ramos welcomes us at her house. Her daughter Juliva disappeared eight years ago, and her investigation was carried out by her with her family.
“We have traced his phone calls from the day of his disappearance and one call was going to a brothel in Miraflores. Also at the end of the afternoon I received a message from her cell phone saying ‘I’m in a job interview’. But it was not her handwriting, my daughter did not write with mistakes, ”she says.
Lidia denounces the failures of the system: “How many mothers are in the same situation as mine? For me the police did not do much. Why? Because when an investigator advances, he advances, advances, and suddenly they change him. We have to do everything again.”
Mistrust in the police and justice
And he’s not afraid to say so: the police not only lack professionalism, but are also corrupt: “You don’t have to trust the police. They have their contacts in the brothels. And it is known that some even own these places.”
She and other mothers formed an association to support each other in the search for their missing daughters. Among them is Marcela Martínez, Zarlet’s mother, who disappeared 10 years ago. She is seen on television, she is interviewed on the radio and her photo appears in the newspapers.
She is convinced that her daughter Zarlet is alive, somewhere in the world. And Marcela, like Lidia, has no trust in the police and even less in the Bolivian justice system. Being a lawyer, she knows a lot about the subject.
“It is useless to be a good lawyer, to have good diplomas, if they do not give the famous bribe. I never wanted to give it. What I do is go with the media behind me to make sure that justice is going to be done. I do not want to participate in this phenomenon of corruption. But, for this reason they have already closed my case when the international instances say it clearly, the crime of trafficking does not prescribe. But when I am going to find my daughter, I am going to sue each of the prosecutors who have closed my case, ”she emphasizes.
According to a UN special rapporteur, there is a “serious gap” in access to justice in the country. He came to Bolivia in 2022 for “questioning judicial independence.” And it is that corruption is vitiating the entire Bolivian judicial apparatus… and cases of human trafficking are no exception.
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