A Victim´s Profitability
Based on the exhaustive analysis of an account book from a clandestine brothel, in La Pampa, Peru’s largest illegal gold mining field, Frontera Pirata calculated how much a trafficking victim earns, how much net money she’s making for her exploiters, and how much is Backus & Johnson earning every time a sexually exploited human trafficking victim sells a bottle of beer.
By: Gabriel Arriarán
LMQC waits in a Gessell chamber in Puerto Maldonado for the forensic psychologist to arrive. It is November 30, 2013. It has been no more than a day after the police raided the Embassy´s and rescued her from Km. 108 of the Interoceanic Highway.
She knows there is people watching her behind the polarized glass embedded in the wall, but she can not see them.
Moments later a man sits at the table and offers a string of clichés as a greeting. LMQC is an orphan. She has lived alone since she was thirteen. The transcript of this conversation suggests that the psychologist is modulating his voice in falsetto to formulate his questions. The incessant rattling that this man received from NGO in workshops to avoid re victimization resonates in each of his words. An echo that hints the responsibility of the State towards this minor orphan and alleged victim of trafficking in persons.
But it is the same State that this psychologist represents which has already failed to comply with its obligations of education, health and employment for the young woman, and that will fail again when the psychologist lodge her in a hostel. The Peruvian State will insist yet again in its failure when, weeks later, an aunt come looking for LMQC and return her to the same situation of poverty and exclusion from which she escaped in the first place. A runaway condemned to forced labor and sexual exploitation. Peru will not hear from her again.
“My name is…”, introduces himself the psychologist. “Our duty is to…to talk to girls like you. “We´ve been chosen to listen so that you can speak with confidence about what happened to you. All the information we collect today will be used for your benefit”.
LMQC is just 17 years old, enough to know that any caution that the psychologist takes with her in formulating his questions is falser than a snake kick.
“What used to be your schedule?”, the psychologist continues.
Her work began at noon. It carried on for twelve hours, until one or two in the morning. She is just one of the thousands of girls who sat down with illegal miners and sold them beer and other beverages, but beer mainly, at ten soles a bottle.
“I used to ask the cashier”, LMQC adds, “a pair (of 620ml beer bottles), two pairs, three pairs. For each pair of bottles, at ten soles a bottle, we were commissioning five soles.
A Victim´s Wage
Beer is the main business of illegal brothels like The Embassy´s at La Pampa. Hundreds of women constitute a sexually exploited sales force that the final consumer can see and touch. They earn much less than Peru´s minimum wage, which today is S/850. (US1=S/.3.3)
In the case of LMQC, the 17-year-old victim for whom the Embassy was closed: 190 soles net of salary for 16 days of alcoholizaition and sexual abuse. This figure includes the discount of 300 soles for the advance the girl received through Soledad (one of her recruiters in Juliaca, who was the one who sent her to La Pampa), and also includes a S/.100 fine for two days she failed to work.
During this period of time, LMQC sold 172 bottles of beer, a bottle of water and one sexual service. This means a daily net salary of S/.11.88 (US$ 3.6) for assuming the risk of becoming infected with HIV, syphilis (and several other STDs), dengue, malaria, and developing clinical symptoms of alcoholism and depression, without any access to the State health system.
We don´t serve provinces
In 2013, when the police intervened and closed The Embassy´s, Ambev´s Union de Cervecerias Backus & Johnson controlled 96.5% of Peru’s beer market. An almost perfect monopoly.
According to its 2013 annual report, Backus & Johnson, Peru’s beer giant, had a highly, highly profitable business. They had sold 3201.6 million soles in beer. (Around 985 million dollars, at the current exchange rate: US $ 1.0 = S / .3.25).
That year, shareholders split a 915.6 million soles dividend. In 2013, Backus & Johnson included the president of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, as a board member, and Fernando Zavala, until recently, Peru’s prime minister, as general manager.
With a position of dominance over the market and renewed control over distribution, Backus has been pouring money into its accounts through the indirect sale of beer in the country’s main illegal mining camp.
Does this company have any responsibility in the sexual exploitation, forced labor and human trafficking of hundreds of women in Madre De Dios, in particular in the tens of prostitutes that gather at Km.108 of the Interoceanic Highway?
How could they help solve this problem?
We would love to ask them these questions.
Frontera Pirata has tried to communicate over the phone repeatedly with its representatives, so forth, with no luck at all.
First published in Spanish in February 5, 2018, as La rentabilidad de una víctima
