vivian trill

, United States

What is the one word that describes you? Dedicated

Interview with the Hunter of Human Traffickers

El Cazador: The Interview

The following interview captures the voice of El Cazador – The Hunter. In his own words, he will tell the story of the underground world of sex trafficking in Central America, why it happens, what should happen and what plans are in place to stop trafficking of girls in these countries.

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Q. Who are you?

A. I am a person who has hunted girls who have been taken by human traffickers. I hunt for them and returned them to their families.

Q. How many girls have you hunted and recovered?

A. Over 100 in the last two years. Almost all were returned to their families.

Q. Why or how did you become involved in human trafficking?

A. Through personal experience. I knew families whose daughters had been taken by human traffickers. The families started asking me to help find girls and bring them home. These are families with no money and no other resources.

Q. Why are you called El Cazador – The Hunter?

A. The name was given to me by an old woman in Honduras. She often offers safe haven for girls we have hunted and recovered. She provides them with a home while we work on getting them back to their families. The traffickers know me by that name too.

Q How do you hunt and recover trafficked girls? How does it work?

A. Families find us. Ask us to bring their daughter back. We track the girls down through our contacts. We usually find them in ficha (link to explanation) bars being sold for sex by the owners who work with the traffickers.

We know where to look. Belize, for example, has five prime resort locations where trafficked girls are on offer in the bars.

When we locate the girl, we send two to three people to buy that girl – that is, pretend to be a sex customer purchasing her time. Then we leave with her and don’t come back. Or we wait until the bar closes and we physically remove her by force. Sometimes we get several girls at a time out that way.

Then the next step is getting them passports or other documents so we can get them across borders and back home.

Q. Why do the traffickers always take the girls across borders?

A. Most of these girls don’t have passports or other documentation. Without that, the girls can’t really run away or cross borders back to their home countries.

If a girl we’ve recovered has documents we escort her home to her family. Often our escorts are girls who we’ve hunted and recovered and who have decided to stay and help us.

If a girl has no identifying papers we wait for the families to send us a birth certificate or something like that. While the girl waits for the documents to arrive we have places that house the girls and look after them in a family-like environment. The girls are able to speak by phone with their family back in the village or wherever.

Q. Who pays for the hunt?

A. We fund it ourselves out of profits from business investments that we have.

Q. Why are you coming out from underground? And why now?

A. Although we have had some success in hunting and recovering the girls, it’s best now that we take another approach. We’ve helped some individuals, however, we have not solved the larger problem.

And, in the scheme of things, the 100 girls or so we have successfully recovered are not enough to threaten the trafficking industry. But we are at risk now because the traffickers have learned our identities. Now they are hunting us.

So there’s the risk, yes. But we have also come to the point where we have a clear understanding of the problem and how to find a larger remedy.

First, the human trafficking issue needs to be brought to the attention of the public who, in turn, must make demands for change – and we mean demand change from officials in Central America and other countries.

And second, we have a few ideas for simple changes that will have a large impact and immediate results.

Q. What are these simple changes with large impacts that you are asking for?

A. These simple changes are in the areas of: immigration and tourism.

Let’s look at immigration first.

Corruption at the borders in these countries is normal and accepted. Bribery is the universal passport and is no exception here. That’s how the traffickers move the girls through. With border controls tightened, we would see immediate results.

We know from experience that Belize is a stopping point from which girls are passed on to Mexico and lost forever. Better enforcement of laws at such borders would seriously damage the trafficking flow of girls.

Next, we’d like to see that tourism operators are more responsible about the tourist resorts they profit from.

For example, resort towns with lots of sex traffic victim bars should not be a port of call for cruise ships.

The growth of tourism, particularly cruise lines working in Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, have greatly opened those countries to a greater volume of tourists and sex tourism.

In fact, you can ask any taxi driver in any Central American port where cruise ships dock and they will find you a woman for sex. Most likely, with a trafficked girl in a ficha bar.

Q. Why does it have to be you, El Cazador, doing this? What can you accomplish that others can’t or won’t?

A. Over the years, we have contacted numerous governments, including American, Swiss and British. We’ve also approached many NGOs that deal with human trafficking issues. We have gotten no support from them. Generally, they are concerned with worldwide human trafficking issues. They told us the lack of convincing statistics on the Central American situation is a problem for them.

They have also conveyed to us that Central American human trafficking is a small problem in the global human trafficking context.

We don’t agree because we know better.

Through our contacts, we know that every month about 1,000 women, girls and children are moved through the Central American borders as victims of human trafficking.

Through our hunt and recovery work we know exactly how the trafficking system operates, who’s running it and who profits.

We know the chinks in their armor – immigration and tourism. We have a plan that targets those two weak points in the trafficking system.

Q. What is the El Cazador Campaign to address human trafficking in Central America?

A. Since we have no support from Central America, other governments or NGOs, we have no choice but to try another approach.

Here’s our basic plan. Stop the sex trafficking.

How? Target immigration and tourism. Get Central American countries to tighten their borders against trafficking. Stop sending or directing tourists to resorts where sex trafficked victims are available.

How to target immigration and tourism? Number one, inform the public. Get their attention. Also get them to help us redirect tourists away from resorts populated with sex trafficking bars. Then, get them to put pressure on politicians in Central American, the US and other countries.

How to engage the public? Through Internet and Social Media. This web site is the starting point.

What we hope to accomplish is to create a campaign of social interest that would, for example, force Belize to take control of their borders, deal with their low-level customs staff within immigration at the borders.

Another example? The campaign would also put pressure on cruise lines not to bring passengers to resorts in Belize, well known for its ficha bars and readily available trafficked girls.

Stop the corrupt immigration at the borders. Stop the tourist profits in girl traffic resorts.
The following interview captures the voice of El Cazador