SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- Uruguayan authorities recorded a total of 208 victims of human trafficking, among which there were Cuban migrants.
According to a newspaper note The country, Of the 208, 169 were minors, a figure collected from reports published by the US government and confirmed by local sources.
Uruguayans, Argentines, Colombians, Cubans and Nicaraguans have been victims trafficking for sexual or labor exploitation in the South American country.
The president of the National Institute for Women (Inmujeres), Mónica Bottero, stated that Uruguay has become a country with an increase in human trafficking.
“In the 1990s we were more of a receiving country, today we are also a country of origin and transit,” she said in a discussion on the World Day Against Human Trafficking.
At the beginning of the year, authorities had warned that Cuban and Dominican immigrants are especially vulnerable in this regard. “They arrive with the promise of a job that is not fulfilled, and once in the country they find themselves alone, in asylum and without knowing where they can turn.”
The report cited by The country reveals that 35 traffickers were convicted in 2023, almost three times as many as 13 in 2022. However, efforts are not sufficient.
Mariana Kiefer, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Uruguay, pointed out that criminals take advantage of technology to attract victims.
“The ways in which criminal groups operate have changed in recent years. This is due to several factors, according to Kiefer. One of them is the development of children and adolescents in the technological world,” he stressed.
“We think they are safe because they are in their room, but they could be talking to people from anywhere in the world who pretend to be their age,” she added, explaining that “banning is not the solution, but rather it is necessary to teach them to take care of themselves in the digital world as they do in the physical world.”
Uruguay has become one of the destinations for Cubans who seek other routes to escape the crisis in the country.
Uruguay closed 2023 with 24,193 asylum applications pending resolution. Last year alone, 9,129 people requested asylum in Uruguayan territory, of which 7,293 were Cuban.
Cuban migrants have been victims of trafficking in some of the countries where they have fled the island.
In June, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Quintana Roo and the National Guard of Mexico 29 women victims of human trafficking, including two Cuban citizens, were rescued from a bar in the municipality of Solidaridad, Playa del Carmen.
The official statement from the Prosecutor’s Office He stressed that “the women were hooked by an international network dedicated to human trafficking, through deception, with false promises of love and job offers.”
He modus operandi The trafficking network consisted of “befriending the victims, then making them fall in love with them and convincing them to travel to Playa del Carmen.” Once at their destination, they would seize their passports and force them to fulfill a quota of sexual services, under threats of harming their families if they did not comply.
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