11/7/2022 0 Comments Cartagena colombia prostitucionSome local officials have denied the phenomenon to avoid "generating scandals," Zapata said. "People sell tourist packets that include going downtown to visit the chapel and the Clock Tower, and drugs and sex," Cartagena city councilman Herman Zapata said in an interview. 'In Cartagena, just walking on the beach you can get anything - from kayaks to drugs to women to kids.' Underage sex workers can also be manipulated by organized prostitution rings, as a bust in October demonstrated. On October 12, a former Miss Cartagena and model Kelly Suarez was arrested for bringing girls as young as 12 years old to a nearby island to serve men posing as rich American tourists who were actually US investigators. "The girls say they prefer the foreigners because they pay more." "Many fathers or husbands of girls' mothers say the girls have to go look for money or they'll get kicked out of the house, and this is the only work there is," said Maira Payares, a housekeeper from one of Cartagena's poorest neighborhoods. Impoverished youths often feel pressure to enter the lucrative field. Some residents told VICE News that half the women in their neighborhoods work in the sex industry. "The underage girls always earn more, for being young." Fares give him anywhere between $30 and $100 for being taken to a girl, depending on how beautiful she is. "I have the luck of always picking up foreigners who come for this," Luis told VICE News. He drives the girls to clients and takes passengers to the girl of their choice. Luis, a cabbie, told me he handles about 10 different prostitutes, some minors and some of legal age. Cartagena colombia prostitucion drivers#A network of taxi drivers and candy vendors profit from matching new visitors with the youth of their desire, sources said.Ī street in Cartagena, Colombia. Prostitutes fill the main square nightly in Cartagena, and line police-patrolled streets. VICE News visited Cartagena recently to examine why so many youths are being drawn into sex work, and found a highly organized scheme serving lusty foreigners while pumping profits to tourism agencies, taxi drivers, and other entrepreneurs. Finding sex for pay is easy here. 'The girls say they prefer the foreigners because they pay more.' About 35,000 minors face sexual exploitation in Colombia, and 2,000 of those are in Cartagena, UNICEF reported earlier this year. Underage prostitution is increasing, local experts say, as highlighted by a high-profile sex trafficking bust last October involving a local beauty queen. Due to the sensitive nature of the business, she and several other subjects asked VICE News not to publish their last names.Ĭolombian officials admitted the problem was out of control last month during a session of the Colombian senate's human rights commission, where a "sex tourism alert" was issued as foreigners began flooding the city during peak tourist season. "I came here because there's more tourism, so more money," she said.Īdela is among thousands of young women, many of them minors, serving Cartagena's booming sex tourism market. All she wanted to do, she said, is support her baby by servicing wealthy travelers in Colombia's tourist capital. She claimed on a recent day that she was of age to work - prostitution is legal in Colombia starting at 18 - but would not share an ID to prove it.
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