ACAPULCO, Mexico, Nov 2 (IPS) – Acapulco is a paradise. A harbor of golden sunsets, toasty sand and deep blue seas. Its dream seashores captivated the hearts of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. American President John F. Kennedy selected its shores to spend his honeymoon with Jackie Kennedy. Its luxurious inns and wild sea have made it Mexico’s most well-known vacationer vacation spot.
Within the final century, her magnificence attracted the world’s most influential celebrities. Its quiet mornings and vibrant nightlife attracted actresses, singers, politicians, aristocratic musicians and households who needed to spend their summers by the ocean. I actually spent my youth within the household residence timeshare in Acapulco, and that is the place I met my husband Alejandro, who I have been married to for 40 years. My life is completely linked to Acapulco.
Luxurious businessmen, millionaire athletes and Michelin-starred cooks arrived. Additionally drug sellers, cash launderers and males who search for women and boys to rape in trade for meals or a number of {dollars} for his or her dad and mom who lived in poor areas of town.
As a result of there are two Acapulcos. They each share an airport and roads, so all roads result in these two variations of the identical metropolis. There’s a “diamond Acapulco” the place wealthy vacationers with all of the facilities at their disposal. And there’s a “conventional Acapulco”, the place poor folks stay who work for wealthy vacationers.
The inhabitants of “diamond Acapulco” and “conventional Acapulco” usually don’t cross paths. They stay in the identical metropolis, however they’re separated by golf programs and unique buying facilities. Solely wealthy foreigners and wealthy nationals go over to the aspect of the poor once they really feel a repugnant want: to make their youngster intercourse tourism plans a actuality with women and boys as younger as 3 years previous.
Acapulco is likely one of the most unequal vacationer locations on this planet. In Mexico, it’s the most unequal municipality of all: greater than 60% of its 900,000 inhabitants stay in excessive poverty, which implies they have no idea what they’ll eat as we speak or tomorrow. These are the employees who serve the plates of recent seafood, who sweep the marble flooring, who fill the vacationers’ wine glasses.
For years, journalists and human rights organizations have informed horrific tales linking poverty, inequality and intercourse tourism: a 6-year-old boy rented to be photographed bare in trade for milk and eggs; a 9-year-old woman bought to a Canadian vacationer to be his spouse for a month; homeless youngsters invited to intercourse events on lavish yachts in trade for meals; dad and mom and moms wait exterior inns for his or her kids to be raped for a worth paid in {dollars} per hour.
These pedophiles and youngster molesters have made Acapulco the nation’s main vacation spot for youngster intercourse tourism. They’ve additionally led Mexico to a shameful second place within the manufacturing of kid pornography, surpassed solely by Thailand, in accordance with knowledge from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the United Nations Kids’s Fund.
Right this moment, Acapulco is a distinct place. Little stays of the port that enchanted the singers Agustín Lara and Luis Miguel. There are millions of poor homeless households, a whole lot of employees who’ve misplaced their jobs and dozens of fishermen with out boats to go to sea to search out their livelihood. The destruction is so nice {that a} full financial restoration is estimated to take many years, not years.
Below these circumstances, childhood is at very excessive threat. Many households have misplaced a lot that their our bodies are the one forex they’ve left. And within the soiled enterprise of pressured prostitution, the our bodies of kids are probably the most wanted.
Within the midst of this unprecedented disaster in Mexico, the Chamber of Deputies permitted amendments to the final legislation in opposition to human trafficking. These modifications purpose to broaden the scope of the legislation enacted in 2012 and replace it to take note of new applied sciences that traffickers and arranged crime engaged in sexual exploitation might use. The wording has some issues that we’re nonetheless analyzing, however it additionally has optimistic points.
For instance, it introduces new protections for folks with accidents, mental disabilities, and for Afro-Mexican cities and communities. The latter symbolize 6.5% of the full inhabitants of Guerrero and 4% of the inhabitants of Acapulco, in accordance with the Nationwide Inhabitants Council.
Civil society organizations are monitoring these modifications and hope that MPs will honor their dedication to defending victims.
Within the meantime, it’s everybody’s accountability, not simply Mexico, to assist Acapulco get again on its toes, a spot that has given a lot to nationals and foreigners alike. It will not be simple or fast, however day-after-day of delay places susceptible kids in danger because of the scale of intercourse tourism on this stunning port.
After Hurricane Otis, Acapulco might be completely different. Its reconstruction is a chance to construct a brand new metropolis on the ruins of depravity, a metropolis stuffed with values and respect for human dignity. I am unable to wait to see it standing and its shoreline, seashore and air remaining a paradise, particularly for kids like me who grew up fortunately by the ocean.
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