Buenos Aires, Jan 26 (IANS/EFE) Some 4,000 women, majority of them undocumented, are sexually exploited in some 400 brothels in the Argentine coastal resort of Mar del Plata, members of a non-governmental organisation have said.
La Alameda Foundation, a group that seeks to fight slavery-like work practices, Monday filed a complaint with federal prosecutor Esteban Righi concerning “the existence of a known network of places where prostitution is ostensibly practised, people are sexually exploited and people who practise prostitution are reduced to servitude”.

After a three-month investigation during which several members of the foundation infiltrated the brothels with hidden cameras, the organisation was able to verify that there are around 4,000 girls and women who are the victims of enforced prostitution in Mar del Plata, a city on the Atlantic coast 400 km from Buenos Aires.

“Many of them are undocumented immigrants, some are minors, who in many cases are forced to take drugs to be able to maintain a level of productivity and to be able to spend the little money they earn, since more than 50 percent goes to the pimp,” foundation president Gustavo Vera told EFE.

“In addition, many of them are locked up 24 hours a day in the brothel, they only sleep between clients,” he said.

The greater portion of the girls are Paraguayan, but there are also Dominicans, Cubans and Colombians, most of them between the ages of 17 and 23 with “a rather low level of education and in a situation of extreme vulnerability and, moreover, rather ignorant with regard to their own rights”, Vera said.

“On the basis of poverty, the pimps manipulate the will of these girls, preventing any exercise of freedom,” he said.

Although police know of the situation and have made some 250 raids on the brothels in recent years, Vera said that they focus “on minor issues like dishonest activity or excessive noise”.

“There are some brothels that have had their owners indicted, with the place where they had been closed and awaiting trial. However, they open up again with undocumented immigrants, which (shows) the level of impunity that we are denouncing,” Vera said.

La Alameda complained about two types of locations: the cabarets, which ostensibly function legally, but where prostitution is practised clandestinely, and the “private” brothels that operate in individual homes.

By filing the complaint, the organisation seeks “to raise a clamour to try and put this matter on the public agenda and spur raids like those that could happen in the coming days”, Vera said.

–IANS/EFE

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