In a collaboration with four media organizations in Latin America, InSight Crime looks at the role of organized crime in driving displacement and slavery in the region — and what authorities have failed to do about it.
Investigation Chapters
‘The Mafia’s Shadow’ Highlights the Human Rights Consequences of Organized Crime
In April of this year, InSight Crime, with financing from the non-governmental organization Internews, met with journalists from four online news media organizations. The four represented the cream of the crop in terms of their online presence and focus, the presentation of their materials, and, of course, the quality of their investigations. And the meeting…
Slaves of Organized Crime in Latin America
In Latin America, the word slavery tends to conjure images of Indigenous people subjected to forced labor at the end of a whip, and auctions of African men and women just off the slave ships. Today the images are different: women locked in brothels, deceived, tied up and forced to serve as sex slaves; migrants…
Men Who Sold Women: Human Trafficking Networks in Central America
In a hearing before the Ninth Court of Peace of the city of San Salvador, in front of a man who she recognized as one of her assailants, at 9 a.m. on the morning of July 2, 2010, Grecia answered questions about what had happened to her and how she survived.
How Mexico’s Zetas Enslave Engineers
The date was January 25, 2009, and Jose Antonio Robledo Fernandez was talking to his girlfriend on the phone as he parked his car in front of a mechanic shop in Monclava, Coahuila.Jose Antonio was an engineer. He was born in Mexico City, but he had been living for months in this northern city, where…
Of Slaves and Serfs: Guatemala’s ‘Occupied’ Bodies
Organized crime networks dedicated to human trafficking have had a great deal of time to perfect their system and ally themselves with new players in Guatemala, including drug traffickers. Small criminal structures exploit Indigenous women, trafficking them from rural areas to the capital. Dozens, maybe even hundreds, of women are trafficked from other countries to…
