Numbers are sometimes such a hard thing to work out. So abstract, so lost in translation that they seem hard to comprehend in a practical way.
What does half a million people really mean? How can we imagine that amount? We couldn’t possibly picture each single person and we would have to settle for a blurred impression of a big mass.
Perhaps it would help if we put it in context. For example, cities like Tel Aviv or Mar del Plata have around 500,000 inhabitants.
But more than just a figure, in Argentina this number expresses the amount of people who are directly or indirectly involved in people-trafficking networks, according to the International Work Organisation.
An entire city of criminals dedicated to kidnapping, selling and sexually exploiting thousands of victims across the country.
An alarming 90% of the abducted are woman. In 2006 alone, 476 females were reported missing.
Taken in broad daylight
On 3rd April 2002 Marita Verón, 23, left her house to go to the doctor. She didn’t make it to her appointment as she was kidnapped on the way.
It was broad daylight when, according to witnesses, she was taken from a street in Tucumán’s capital city San Miguel de Tucumán, pulled into a remise (private car that works as a taxi) and vanished into thin air.
The car company allegedly belonged to the Alé family, a powerful clan in the province, who own 3,000 cars that work through as backup vehicles for the police through a decree signed by the local government.
Three days after the abduction Marita was seen about 30km from the city, stumbling, and looking like she was drugged, no longer wearing her tennis shoes but high heels.
A police car picked her up and she hasn’t been seen since. The police officer said they took her to a bus station to catch a bus home but their version is said to be vague and confusing.
With time, it became clear for her family that Marita, like many other missing women across the country, had fallen into a prostitution net.
Susana Trimarco, Marita’s mother, has battled to find her daughter since the day she went missing. She has knocked on doors carrying her picture, marched every 3rd of the month; she has even dressed up as prostitute and walked into dangerous places to contact other girls and gather any helpful information. She has consistently been on the receiving end of death threats, and has travelled the length and breadth of the country following any possible leads.
But more importantly, through her fight, Susana has managed to dismantle several brothels and set over 100 women free (some of whom had shared their time in captivity with her daughter).
These women are living proof of how they were sold and kept under key to work as sexual slaves. They are a testimony to a reality that can no longer be hidden.
Susana’s persistence led the FBI to become involved in the case, and she was even presented with the ‘Courageous Woman’ prize by US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice.
Although such recognition is encouraging, the 12 people currently being prosecuted for Marita’s kidnapping have not provided enough information for her to be found, and Susana has to explain day after day to her eight-year-old granddaugther why her mother is still away.
Police involvement
On 23rd October 2006, Otoño Uriarte finished playing volleyball and headed home on foot but she never arrived.
After six months of desperate search, the 16-year-old was found dead in a canal about 150m from her home in Fernández de Oro, Neuquén. The advanced state of decomposition of her body made it difficult to determine the cause of death.
But further investigations did bring some conclusions, and determined that the teenager had also fallen into the hands of sexual exploiters.
Even more, Otoño’s case represented a breakthrough, as it was the first time that proof of a connection between the police and a prostitution network was found.
The evidence consisted of a recorded telephone conversation between a sub-commissioner from Choele-Choel in Río Negro and a brothel owner in which they talked about ‘checking the new girl into the brothel’.
Although several organisations, such as ‘Red no a la Trata’ and ‘Missing Children’, work every day to locate the disappeared woman, they find themselves on the hard side of the fight as these trafficking networks are organised and work on an international level.
The fact that some of the women have been smuggled across the borders not only makes everything harder, but may also indicate that these networks operate either with the authorities cooperation, or through their negligence.
Argentina’s legislation leaves a lot to be desired, as legal experts and families have been fighting for it to be changed, as often the abducted woman are asked to prove they didn’t agree to leave.
Roberto Uriarte, Otoño’s father, has denounced several irregularities on his daughter’s case. He has explained that bureaucratic hold-ups delayed the case being opened, such as the necessity to filing the case as if it was about a runaway child instead of an abduction.
As a result of his accusations, the Magistrate’s court in decided to lead an investigation against the Judge, Maria del Carmen Garcia.
As for the way these bands work, legal experts and witnesses explain that not only are women kidnapped, but sometimes taken under false pretences of a job opportunity. Later on, their documents are confiscated and they remain locked with no contact with the outside world.
Right under democracy’s nose, disappearances and torture are still a reality to some.
Someone waits for them in their homes, where they are remembered for their names, their likes and dislikes, for the tone of their voice, for whatever made them happy or sad.
For them taken lives are not just a statistic, they are not a figure, they are not just another abstract number.
