Human trafficking in Peru
Several thousand persons were estimated to be subjected to conditions of forced labor within Peru, mainly in mining, logging, agriculture, brick making, and domestic servitude.
Many trafficking victims were women and girls from impoverished rural regions of the Amazon, recruited and coerced into prostitution in urban nightclubs, bars, and brothels, often through false employment offers or promises of education.
[2] In 2006, International Labour Organisation estimated that there were 33,000 people in conditions of forced labor in the Peruvian Amazon, primarily in the regions of Ucayali, Madre de Dios, Loreto, Pucallpa, Atalaya and Puerto Maldonado.
However, the government failed to provide adequate victim services and made insufficient efforts to address the high incidence of labor trafficking in the country.
[2] In October 2011, almost 300 women and young girls were rescued from sexual exploitation in a raid in an Amazonian region of Peru known as a gold mining hub.
[10] Fitzcarrald's enterprise was dependent on indigenous slave labor, primarily from the Asháninka, Mashco-Piro, Harákmbut, Shipibo and Conibo nations.
Carlos Scharff assumed responsibility for a large portion of Fitzcarrald's enterprise as well as its workforce, he eventually became the most powerful rubber baron on the Ucayali, Urubamba Rivers and their tributaries.
While travelling through the region that Scharff's enterprise was active, anthropologist William Curtis Farabee noted the presence of a rubber tapper referred to as Torres.
Torres was a migrant from the Putumayo River basin and he trafficked around twenty Huitoto families from that region to the Madre de Dios area.
[21] Government commissioner Joaquin Capello attempted to combat human trafficking in the department of Loreto by issuing a decree that required patron's to pay a bond for peon's that were travelling to another country.
"[22][23] Fuentes believed that this practice was depopulating the department of Loreto, specifically around Rioja, Moyobamba, Lamas, Tarapoto, Nauta, Parinari and Pebas.
[24] Fuentes described the practice of correrías in a book he published in 1908, he noted that men and elderly women were typically killed while children as well as young females were trafficked to nearby rubber camps or Iquitos.
[14] correrías were referred to as "the great crime of the mountain" by Fuentes, however he claimed that his government was incompetent to put an end to them because they occurred beyond the reach of authorities.
In Ciprani's words, the rubber barons "encourage and force the savages to surrender to the so called correrías, which means murders, crimes, bloody scenes, all concluding with the theft of children and women and the complete disappearance of a family, whose weak and unfortunate members have to be traded material.
Corruption among low-level officials enabled trafficking in certain instances, and individual police officers tolerated the operation of unlicensed brothels and the prostitution of children.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provided care to sexually exploited women; however, specialized services and shelter for trafficking victims remained largely unavailable.
