An important legal development in this area was the enactment of law number 26.364,[6] which tries to achieve what this international protocol seeks[7] and provides penalties of 3 to 15 years in prison.
[9] As a means of preventing trafficking, in July 2011 the government issued an order that banned the publication of explicit advertisements of sexual solicitation in the newspapers.
It is in accordance with the codes of international protocol and places emphasis on assistance and rights of victims and their differentiation between adults and minors.
[Translation: It is meant by trafficking in minors the recruitment, transportation and / or transfer, whether within the country or to and from abroad—, harboring or receipt of persons under eighteen (18) years of age, with the purpose of exploitation.
Trafficking of minors exists even when there is no medium of deception, fraud, violence, threat, or any form of intimidation or coercion, abuse of authority or of a position of vulnerability, giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control on the victim.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC – Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos), unregistered labor in apparel approaches 75%.
According to Gustavo Vera, president of the cooperative La Alameda (which represents and defends textile workers), "We know that there are about 3,000 underground sweatshops in the Federal Capital" and he adds "There are also some 15,000 underground sweatshops in the first tier of the Buenos Aires suburbs and several thousand more in Greater Buenos Aires, Rosario, Mendoza and Cordoba.
And they are recruited from marginal rural areas of Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Tucuman, Catamarca and Jujuy and from migrant workers from bordering countries such as Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay.
[26] In the late nineteenth century "european slavery" rings were established that provided jewish women from Central Europe and Russia, who were sold in a sham marriage to a ruffian.
[25][27] Among the customers it is possible to highlight periods of intense European migration that brought primarily single men as main consumers of trafficking, although upper middle class Argentinians also had a high level use of prostitution.
In practice, this criminal activity is organized on a grand scale and is frequently associated with the illegal drug trade and with arms trafficking.
[9][32] A study in 2012 of court cases of the Unidad Fiscal de Asistencia en Secuestros Extorsivos y Trata de Personas [Fiscal Unit of Assistance in Kidnappings and Trafficking in Persons](UFASE) and the Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales y Sociales [Institute for Comparative Studies in Criminal and Social Sciences] (INECIP) revealed that trafficking for sexual exploitation is mutating into new forms of subjugation of women, to make it more difficult to prove the existence of slavery in bordellos and thus evading the law.
Furthermore, the report shows collusion between state, local, police, and judicial entities that "legitimizes the activity and leads to its habituation."
Some 72% of cases are enslaved in nightclubs like whiskerías (undercover brothels), pubs, or pool halls, all enabled by the municipalities, and the other 22% in private apartments.
Cuando llegué a la dirección que me habían dado, me dijeron que el restaurante era a unas cuadras, y me llevaron en auto.
Además, me dijeron que si le decía algo a alguien, esto mismo se lo harían a mis hijas, ya que sabían dónde vivían... Nunca pensé que me pudiera pasar una cosa así…”[Translation: "I was offered employment in a restaurant in the capital, nearly 400 km from my house.
I never would have thought that such a thing could happen to me ... "] Narrative of labor exploitation:[18] “Un día por la radio escuché que un fabricante pedía costureros para su taller en Buenos Aires.
Ayer cuando le pedí lo que me debía, porque quería mandar plata a mi familia, me dijo que no me debía nada, me gritó que si lo seguía jodiendo llamaba a los de migraciones y me agarró a las patadas; a mi señora también le pegó.”[Translation: "One day I heard on the radio that a manufacturer was asking for sewing workers for their workshop in Buenos Aires.
In Santa Cruz (Bolivia), I interviewed with a woman who told me they were paying one peso per fifty garments, with room and board.
From Retiro, the main terminal for long-distance bus travel in Buenos Aires, they took us straight to the shop and the owner kept our documents.
If anyone gets tired or wants to sleep, the owner threatens to not pay us anything, to "beat the crap out of us for being lazy," or to denounce us to the police so they would deport us.
"]One of the more well known cases in Argentina is that of Marita Veron, which was brought to court in 2012 after an intensive search and collection of evidence, where part of the network of this country's web of trafficking for sexual exploitation was discovered.
[35][36] It is known that she left her home on April 3, 2002, and three days later, she was found by police while escaping from a sex party that seems to have been her first destination; she was put on a bus with a group traveling in the direction of Tucuman but never arrived.
Later, a witness saw her in one of three Rioja brothels, which the Appeals Chamber of Tucumán described as "places intended for the practice of prostitution where there is a systematic recruitment of women including by means deprivation of liberty."
Marita's mother Susana Trimarco, the principal impulse behind the investigation, has managed to rescue more than 20 women who were victims of trafficking.
[37][38] The trial over the disappearance of Marita began on February 8, 2012, and indicted 13 people, 7 men and 6 women, who are linked to the kidnapping and to the promotion of prostitution.
They accompany the victim from the time of their rescue or escape from the place of exploitation and during the investigation of the trafficking crime, later providing support and legal assistance until the moment they give testimony.
[19] Fundación María de los Ángeles[44] [Foundation of Maria of the Angels] is a nonprofit organization that fights against the crime of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
[45] It seeks to prosecute applicable cases under Law 26.364 and to provide psychological support to victims so they can overcome the traumatic situations they have lived through.
Since then this group has achieved the filing of more than 800 court cases, and has found and rescued at least 400 women subjected to sex trafficking without their consent.