ACAPULCO, Mexico, Nov 2 (IPS) – Acapulco is a paradise. A harbor with golden sunsets, toasted sand and a deep blue sea. The dream beaches enchanted the hearts of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. US President John F. Kennedy chose the coast to spend his honeymoon with Jackie Kennedy. The luxurious hotels and untamed sea made it the most famous tourist destination in Mexico.
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In the last century, the island’s beauty attracted the most influential celebrities in the world. The quiet mornings and lively nightlife attracted actresses, singers, politicians, aristocratic musicians and families who wanted to spend their summers by the sea. I personally spent my childhood in the family timeshare apartment in Acapulco, and that is where I met my husband of 40 years, Alejandro. My life is permanently linked to Acapulco.
Luxury businessmen, millionaire athletes and Michelin-starred chefs arrived. Also drug dealers, money launderers and men looking for girls and boys to rape in exchange for food or a few dollars for their parents who lived in the city’s poor neighborhoods.
Because there are two Acapulcos. They both share an airport and roads, so all roads lead to that pair of versions of the same city. There is a “diamond Acapulco” where wealthy holidaymakers are provided with all comforts. And there is a ‘traditional Acapulco’, where the poor live who work for rich tourists.
The people who inhabit “diamond Acapulco” and “traditional Acapulco” do not usually intersect. They live in the same city, but are separated by golf courses and exclusive shopping centers. Only rich foreigners and wealthy nationals switch to the poor side when they feel a disgusting urge: to make their plans for child sex tourism a reality with girls and boys as young as three years old.
Acapulco is one of the most unequal tourist destinations in the world. In Mexico, it is the most unequal municipality of all: more than 60% of the 900,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty, meaning they do not know what they are going to eat today or tomorrow. They are the workers who serve plates of fresh seafood, who sweep marble floors, who fill tourists’ wine glasses.
For years, journalists and human rights organizations have told horrific stories that combine poverty, inequality and sex tourism: a six-year-old boy was rented out to be photographed naked in exchange for milk and eggs; sold a 9-year-old girl to a Canadian tourist to be his wife for a month; homeless teens invited to sex parties on lavish yachts in exchange for food; parents and mothers wait outside hotels for their children to be raped for a price in dollars per hour.
These pedophiles and child molesters turned Acapulco into the country’s leading destination for child sexual tourism. They also pushed Mexico to a shameful second place in child pornography production, surpassed only by Thailand, according to data from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Today, Acapulco is a different place. Few remains of the port that enchanted the singers Agustín Lara and Luis Miguel. There are thousands of poor families without homes, hundreds of workers who have lost their jobs, and dozens of fishermen without boats who go to sea to earn a living. The devastation is so great that full economic recovery is estimated to take decades rather than years.
Under these circumstances, childhood is at very high risk. Many families have lost so much that their bodies are the only means of payment they have left. And in the dirty world of forced prostitution, children’s bodies are the most sought after.
Amid this unprecedented crisis in Mexico, the Chamber of Deputies has approved changes to the general law against human trafficking. These changes are intended to broaden and update the scope of the law issued in 2012 to address new technologies that human traffickers and organized crime engaged in sexual exploitation may use. The formulation contains a number of problems that we are still analyzing, but also contains positive aspects.
For example, it introduces new protections for individuals with injuries, intellectual disabilities, and African-Mexican cities and communities. According to the National Population Council, the latter represent 6.5% of the total population in Guerrero and 4% of the inhabitants of Acapulco.
Civil society organizations are monitoring these changes and hope that deputies will keep their promise to protect victims.
In the meantime, it is the responsibility of everyone, and not just in Mexico, to help Acapulco get back on its feet, a place that has given so much to nationals and foreigners alike. It won’t be easy or quick, but every day we delay, vulnerable children are at risk because of the scale of sex tourism in that beautiful port.
After Hurricane Otis, Acapulco will look different. Reconstruction is an opportunity to build a new city on the ruins of depravity, a city with values and respect for human dignity. I long for it to remain standing today and for its coastline, beach and sky to remain a paradise, especially for children like me who grew up happily by the sea.
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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service