ARGENTINA:
TV Serial Raises
Awareness on Trafficking
in Women
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES,
(IPS) - The soap opera
has proved itself an
effective medium for
portraying social
problems in Latin
America, and now a
popular one in Argentina
is addressing an issue
on which the news
broadcasts have remained
silent: the
disappearance of women
for commercial sexual
exploitation.
"Vidas Robadas" (Stolen
Lives), shown daily from
this month on the Telefé
TV channel, stars
Facundo Arana and
veteran actress Soledad
Silveyra, and was
watched by an estimated
two million viewers
every night during the
first week.
The idea of a fictional
plot based on a
real-life story had
already been used
successfully in "Montecristo",
a 2006 soap opera that
told the story of a
young woman whose
parents were
"disappeared" during the
1976-1983 military
dictatorship, and whose
true identity was kept
secret from her by the
couple who stole her as
a baby and raised her as
their own.
"Montecristo" had the
highest ratings of any
soap opera on Argentine
television to date, and
was later sold to
stations in Chile,
Mexico, Portugal and
Uruguay.
Stolen Lives begins with
the kidnap of a young
girl from a low-income
family, who falls into
the hands of a human
trafficking network
which forces her into
prostitution. The
villain of the piece is
the head of the
trafficking ring, and
the complicity between
state and society in
covering up the crime is
shown.
After the first episode
of the serial, the
station broadcast "Humanos
en el camino", a
programme on real-life
cases of women who had
fallen victim to
networks trafficking in
persons in Argentina.
Audience monitoring
indicated that most
viewers stayed with the
channel and did not
switch programmes.
Silveyra, who plays the
mother of the kidnapped
girl, met several times
with Susana Trimarco,
the mother of Marita
Verón, a young woman
abducted in 2002 in the
province of Tucumán in
the northwest of the
country, and who is
presumed to have been
sold to a brothel.
Verón is still missing,
but her mother’s search
has led to the discovery
and freeing of hundreds
of women, many of them
foreigners.
Human trafficking has
already been the subject
of popular serials in
Brazil and Colombia.
However, the real
stories of the girls
kidnapped in Argentina
are much stranger than
fiction.
In 2004, 26-year-old
Andrea López
disappeared. The father
of one of her three
children was her partner
Víctor Purreta, the
owner of two brothels in
the province of Buenos
Aires. Purreta was
sentenced to prison for
forcing López to work as
a prostitute, but when
he was released he
denied any knowledge of
her whereabouts.
López’s mother, Julia
Ferreira, told IPS that
she agonises over the
soap opera, but at the
same time she believes
that discussing the
problem publicly may
help people "to become
aware of what is
happening, to have
compassion for us and to
come forward with
information that can
help us find the girls."
"Because of shame or
ignorance, I never asked
for help, but now I
think that if I had done
so when my daughter was
beaten by her husband,
perhaps she would not
have disappeared," she
said. Now she only has
vague clues suggesting
her daughter might once
have been in a brothel
in the province of
Córdoba, but no solid
evidence.
The only witness who
said he had seen the
girl in one of Purreta’s
brothels was found
hanged with a gag in his
mouth, "a mafia killing,
for which no one was
ever charged," Ferreira
said.
Ferreira lives in the
central province of La
Pampa, and is raising
her grandson, now seven
years old. She has to
put up with Purreta’s
visitation rights.
"As the justice system
maintains that my
daughter abandoned her
marital home, it gives
him the right -- he, who
forced my daughter into
prostitution -- to take
the child away with him
on the weekend," she
complained.
Ferreira is convinced
that Purreta knows what
happened, but won’t say.
"He said he woke up and
she wasn’t there, but he
only told me 20 days
later. I wonder: if he
knew that every time he
beat my daughter, she
came to my house, why
didn’t he phone me that
time to ask whether she
was with me?"
Although there are no
official statistics,
women’s organisations
report that there are
about 500 young women
who are missing, and who
could be in the hands of
these networks. Some
have been kidnapped,
while others have been
lured by tempting offers
of supposedly well-paid
jobs in other provinces
or countries.
Activists have not
managed to get a law
passed against this
crime, which would also
provide support and
assistance to the
victims. They blame a
lack of political will.
"The state does not show
much interest in
dedicating resources to
this issue," lawyer
Marta Fontenla, of the
Women’s Association for
Work and Studies (ATEM),
told IPS.
"The soap opera is very
important because it
creates awareness and
raises the profile of
the problem. My only
concern is that it might
get stuck on the cases
of kidnapped girls, when
in fact those who
weren’t forced to the
same degree are also
victims if they fall
into the hands of a
network," she said.
Fontenla said Argentina
needs a law against
trafficking that does
not oblige women over 18
to prove that their
captors used trickery or
violence to force them
into prostitution, as is
stipulated in a draft
law that was considered
by Congress in 2007, but
failed to make it
through both chambers.
Sara Torres, the
coordinator of the Red
No a la Trata de Mujeres
(No to Trafficking of
Women Network), said
that it was necessary to
go beyond the fictional
story. "The soap opera
is good because it makes
the problem visible, but
this must not end
there," she told IPS.
"The issue is gaining
visibility in Argentina,
because although pimping
is against the law, new
brothels are being
opened every day," she
said. |
