The abyss of sexual exploitation of minors in Bolivia: “They told me that if I continued looking for my daughter I was going to die”

A man in a suit.

A boy in a cap and shorts.

A man in overalls.

An elderly man.

Two young people in jeans.

Another with a tie and with the briefcase still in his hand.

Thus, one after another, 18 men enter a store with a red facade in less than a minute, the time in which a traffic light remains green for pedestrians to cross in the 12 de Octubre district of the Bolivian city of El High.

A guard guards the door, through which he appears a string of wall-mounted urinals in front of which the newcomers make a brief stop.

What lies beyond the toilets cannot be seen, but is known: rooms where pimps prostitute, mainly, women.

The picture is from Monday afternoon and the area, considered red on a scale in which the color crimson describes the maximum degree of danger of a prostitution area, is already full of whores.

No matter where you look.

“Although from Thursday to Sunday there are still many more people,” explains a worker from the Munasim Kullakita Foundation (“love you, little sister,” in Aymara), a Bolivian organization that works against human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of minors.

The woman, whom we will refer to as Queen to protect her identity, draws attention to a teenager waiting on a corner and another group of boys lining up in front of a metal gate.

“When there is news that a new girl arrives, more people gather,” says Queen, who has worked for years in this neighborhood to rescue minors forced into prostitution.

“There are establishments and hotels everywhere with rooms that are rented by the hour or minute,” she adds.

That building covered in glass.

That other one with the look of a

Brooklyn

loft .

That public bathroom where “entering with someone costs only five bolivianos [about 0.7 euros].”

And everyone in this district, which is far from being a tourist area, has the “accommodation” sign hanging.

“I have managed to identify about 300

accommodations

plus about 120 brothels in 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 accommodations that are often used for prostitution.MANUEL SEOANE

“When there is news that a new girl arrives, more people gather,” says Queen, who has worked for years in El Alto to rescue minors forced into prostitution.

Prostitution carried out voluntarily by people of legal age 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 who exercises it and because it serves, in practice, to protect it.

For this reason, organizations like yours focus on what is clearly illegal: the commercial sexual exploitation of minors.

“Consent never exists in these cases,” she points out.

“It is an unquantified phenomenon and about which there is great ignorance, both about its dynamics and 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 developed by the NGO Educo together with Munasim Kullakita and other organizations.

It can “materialize in human trafficking, pimping, commercial sexual violence or pornography,” adds Alé.

In El Alto and La Paz, the walls of train stations, buses and the airport are covered with posters with faces of missing people and screens where images and data of women whose families continue to search alternate.

Illuminated sign that publishes announcements of missing people at the La Paz bus terminal.Manuel Seoane

The lack of data complicates the diagnosis of this type of violence.

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Government of Bolivia, in 2022 there were 711 complaints for crimes related to human trafficking and related crimes (pornography, pimping, human trafficking and commercial sexual violence), in which 23% of the victims They were minors.

All the experts consulted consider that these figures are only the tip of the iceberg: it is not known exactly, for example, how many girls and women are still missing or how many minors are exploited without their families coming forward to report them.

According to preliminary data from the Ministry of Government, in 2023 alone the disappearance of 3,409 people was reported, “of which 485 remain missing,” as confirmed in a telephone interview by Carola Arraya, general director of the Fight against Human Trafficking and Trafficking of Bolivia, although there is no calculation of the total.

A 2019 investigation by the Munasim Kullakita Foundation identified 338 cases of commercial sexual exploitation of minors alone.

“She probably went with her boyfriend.”

“Many speeches, even from authorities, validate that fifteen-year-old girls work because they want to,” Alé laments.

This prejudice affects the lack of investigation, because it is common, he continues, for when a young woman disappears “a police officer says, for example, that it is most likely that she 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 of El Alto, two weeks after her disappearance.

The girl, deceived by a friend, was kidnapped in La Paz, detained for several days and finally transferred to the economic capital of the country, according to testimony to which this newspaper has had access.

“They found her drugged but they were able to save her thanks to a police operation,” says a person close to the victim.

Doña Lidia, however, was not so lucky.

Her daughter Juliva left home on July 10, 2014, on her way to the Public University of El Alto, where she was studying her second year of Psychology.

She 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 that she had gone with some 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 that from time to time continues to distribute.

During the first 15 days after her disappearance, Mrs. Lidia received several calls to her cell phone from Juliva's number without anyone answering.

She also received them from one of her daughters, although in that case, a man's voice told her that the young woman was in the city of Oruro (west of the country) and that she needed clothes to be brought to her.

Doña Lidia looks at a photo of her daughter Juliva, who disappeared on July 10, 2014 when she was going to university.Manuel Seoane

“The police never triangulated the calls, they did not analyze them,” complains Doña Lidia, who says that over the years she has been assigned “10 different investigators.”

One of them, she says, asked her for money to look for her: “I gave him half of it, but he never did anything.”

The last possible clue about her daughter was obtained in 2015. “A man called me from a number that I didn't know and told me that he had seen my daughter in Cochabamba, so I went there, but I didn't find her,” she says. .

It was then that she went to a media outlet to request help in the search for Juliva and, upon leaving, they called her again: “They told me that if I continued looking for my daughter I was going to die.”

The police, according to Mrs. Lidia, never investigated these calls.

“I think it's because we are poor people, the same doesn't happen with rich people,” she says.

Nor has Doña Lorenza, who expresses herself in Spanish mixed with Aymara words, managed to find her daughter Juliana.

She was 12 years old when she disappeared, on July 14, 2016. “She had gone to play at my eldest son's house, but she never arrived,” deplores the woman, who speculates that “they must have kidnapped her.”

Shortly after her, like Doña Lidia, she received a call from a man who assured her that he would return her daughter if she gave him money.

“I waited at the place they told me to, but there was no one there and they called me again to ask for more money,” she laments.

She didn't give it to him because she didn't have it, and she was never contacted again.

Photograph of Juliana, daughter of Doña Lorenza, who disappeared on July 14, 2016.Manuel Seoane

Police weakness

Not knowing the fate of their daughters torments Doña Lidia and Doña Lorenza, who agree to speak with this newspaper in the hope that their daughters, if they are still alive, will read the story and know that their mothers are still looking for them.

But “mapping the places where sexual exploitation occurs is very difficult, because the police are very weak in Bolivia,” describes Alé.

Queen confirms this argument.

“I have notified the police when we knew that there were minors in a brothel, and when they arrived, there was no one there,” says the social worker, who suspects police tips on pimps.

“We have a weakness in the judicial system and in the investigation,” admits Arraya.

For this reason, he assures, the Government of Luis Arce is “strengthening the specialization and training of public servants, both from the judicial bodies and the Bolivian police” because, he assures, the crime “of human trafficking and its related crimes [pornography , pimping and commercial sexual violence]” are “complicated crimes in their understanding” for people without adequate experience and training.

According to the latest report on trafficking from the United States Department of State, which dedicates a special chapter to Bolivia, “the Government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making significant efforts to achieve it.” Regarding the police efforts, the same document ensures that “the authorities did not report having investigated, prosecuted or convicted any trafficker” in 2022, the last year for which the agency has consolidated figures.

By contrast, in 2021 “officials reported 62 trafficking investigations, 22 trafficking prosecutions [12 for sex trafficking, five for labor trafficking, and five for other forms of servitude], and 12 trafficking convictions.”

The tip of the iceberg, according to Alé.

Announcements of missing persons at the police station of the La Paz Bus Terminal. Manuel Seoane

But there are places in Bolivia where sexual exploitation is evident.

“Around the places where it is generated, a commercial environment is also created,” suggests Alé, such as in the areas of logging and gold exploitation.

“Specifically, where a men's camp arises,” he specifies.

This is what happens in the 12 de Octubre district, with hundreds of shops and grocery stores from which guys come out with food and drink.

“Why doesn't anyone question the presence of teenagers in places like these?” asks the Educo expert.

From the department against human trafficking, Arraya insists on the measures that are being applied to strengthen the judicial investigation with the provision of technology and equipment for the prosecution of pornography on the Internet or facial recognition systems to find the missing, the creation of a free university degree for specialization in trafficking, the training of agents at airports, bus terminals and border crossings and the intensification of 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 a modification of Law 2/63 on Trafficking and Trafficking. of Persons to classify crimes more precisely and include new ones such as

grooming

(when an adult impersonates a minor on the Internet to establish a relationship of trust with another minor) or the dissemination of “child sexual material” on social networks .

Doña Lidia shows a poster of missing women in Bolivia.Manuel Seoane

The vulnerability of victims

“Of the 3,409 people who disappeared in 2023, in 2,193 cases the person had behavioral or family problems, which makes them potential victims of trafficking,” explains the general director of the department that investigates this crime.

Child recruiters often take advantage of victims' vulnerable situations, according to organizations that work with victims.

The most common techniques are false job offers, or what Alé calls the “infatuation technique,” ​​which consists of the captor previously courting a teenager until he overrides her will and sexually abuses her or prostitutes her.

The so-called online

recruitment , through telephone applications or social networks,

is increasingly present, as confirmed by Arraya .

“And even online video games,” confirms Lindsay, a teenage member of the Consultative Council of Children and Adolescents of La Paz and El Alto, formed to fight against

online

recruitment .

“I have seen how some of my friends compete to see who receives the most contacts from unknown people [on their social networks]” 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 falling in love technique.

After suffering years of abuse from her father, who subjected her to beatings and rapes, she ended up staying in the home of her godfather and his wife when she was still a teenager.

“He started to talk 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 they brainwash us and they can dominate us,” she still remembers with guilt.

“When an older person dominates a minor and offers him a house or money in exchange for sex, that is called pimping,” Queen replies.

And she highlights one of the main problems in identifying this sexual violence: “Girls, in a process of survival, validate what they are experiencing, as if they were doing it voluntarily,” she emphasizes.

Part of society also validates it, she adds.

Verónica plays with her children in a park.Manuel Seoane

Now Mónica, who was welcomed in a house protected by the Protejeres program, when she was not yet 18 years old, has rebuilt her life, has two children and has just finished her degree in Social Work.

“Although I have had falls during the process,” she regrets.

“Pimps are experts at detecting vulnerabilities,” says Queen, pointing to two men standing on a railing in the center of one of the main squares in the 12 de Octubre district.

She does not know their names, but her years of experience working in the area reveal her intentions: “Look, since we arrived they have not moved.

Do you know why?

Because they are looking for a young girl to attract.”

This report has been prepared with the support of Educo, an NGO that works in 14 countries for the well-being and rights of children. 

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