Belize: Human Trafficking Superhighway
Overview
- Belize: Human Trafficking Superhighway
Belize: Human Trafficking Superhighway explores the system of corruption that keeps a steady flow of Central American women and children disappearing into the international human trafficking vortex. At its core, the story is an indictment of the Belize government.
Most of those trafficked are young women, 15 to 22, who wind up in involuntary prostitution, primarily in Central America, Mexico and North America. Almost all of them arrive at their end destinations -- usually very low-end brothels disguised as bars, massage parlors etc. -- via porous Belizean borders, supported by systemic money-bound corruption.
The documentary moves from the general to the specific.
First, the general: the overarching human trafficking system that sends victims into enforced prostitution in Central American and beyond.
Second, the specific: what's in place inside Belize -- either by omission or commission -- that keeps human trafficking victims caught once they have been sold into service if Belize is their end destination.
Outline
Beginning: How any 16-year-old girl from any isolated Guatemalan pueblo can wind up in a ficha bar in Belize or elsewhere: a woman coyote or recruiter comes to a remote village with stories of the earnings to be had through work as a resort hotel maid. The money that would be sent back seems like a veritable fortune to the impoverished family. This is a typical scenario.
Middle: Once "recruited" the women are now on the human trafficking superhighway.
Illustrate how the victims are transported:
* on what paths/routes/waterways and where they intersect
* how the porous Belizean borders are maintained and by whom
* how easily the borders are crossed, e.g., with victims in the trunks of cars or packed into vans.
Also illustrated is the money trail that is part of the human trafficking superhighway:
* chart all the players up the chain, including, coyote; the victim wranglers; border guards; police from the bottom to the top; judges; government officials from minor to major status.
As well, illustrate other elements of the superhighway, including, but not limited to:
* Belize government's unwillingness to enforce its own prostitution laws
* sex tourism (e.g., show how easy it is to ask any San Pedro Ambergris Caye Belize taxi driver to take you to a ficha bar)
* how the women are trapped in the system: without passport or other documentation, escapees wind up in jail through the corrupt policing and justice system; jail is often worse and more dangerous than staying with their trafficking captors.
End: Systemic corruption is too vast and ambiguous to be taken on as a concluding point. The story encourages the international community to consider two graspable/do-able remedies to address the human trafficking superhighway:
* porous Belize borders
* enforcement within Belize of its own prostitution laws.
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