Humans are trafficked for two main reasons: sexual exploitation, mostly of women and girls, and forced labour, which ensnares men in mines, farms and factories. Across the Americas the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reckons 3.6m people are forced to work, generating around $52bn a year in illegal profit. The number of people tricked or forced into work increased by 89% between 2018 and 2022 in Latin American countries for which the ILO has up-to-date statistics, including Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Brazil. The UN estimates that three-quarters of trafficking cases worldwide involve organised crime.
As Latin America's drug gangs have expanded, human trafficking has become an important part of their portfolios. The cocaine economy built the infrastructure—smuggling routes, money-laundering networks and corrupt officials—that now sustains a broader web of illicit business. Illegal gold-mining is perhaps the most profitable way to deploy forced labour: criminal groups recruit men with promises of well-paid work in the gold belts of Peru and Brazil, then trap them in remote jungle camps under armed guard. In Brazil alone, traffickers are thought to be exploiting some 4,500 people in gold mines. Women and girls are also trafficked to mining zones and trapped in brothels serving the miners.
In tourist hubs like Medellín, Mexico City and Lima, gangs that sell cocaine to tourists now also market women. Since the pandemic, cheap flights and relaxed attitudes towards prostitution have helped sex tourism boom. Medellín had 1.5m visitors in 2023—seven times more than a decade ago. Traffickers offer sex workers better pay in other cities, promising to cover travel and housing; once they arrive, gangsters seize their documents and move them through a circuit of brothels. Others are tricked into sex work for the first time: job adverts on social media promise nightclub work, but on arrival victims find their passports taken and a fabricated "debt" that can be repaid only through sex.
The internet has supercharged recruitment. After the pandemic forced gangs online, they found it far more effective than traditional methods, allowing them to contact women directly, build trust and gather personal details that could later be used to control them.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, commercial sexual exploitation of under-age girls across Central America and the Caribbean has soared since 2019. Girls now account for more than half of all detected trafficking victims in the region. The US State Department calls Mexico and the Dominican Republic destinations for "perpetrators of extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation". Arrests of foreigners for commercial sexual exploitation of minors in Medellín rose 11-fold between 2023 and 2024.
More than 7.5m people have fled Venezuela and the regime of Nicolás Maduro over the past decade, most into neighbouring countries, especially Colombia. Many arrive with nothing, making them easy prey. In Colombian frontier cities such as Cúcuta, an illicit webcam industry flourishes: gangsters promise work to Venezuelan women who have just arrived, take their documents and lock them in "cam houses" where they perform sex acts for online customers.
Human trafficking remains low on governments' lists of priorities. Most victims are never found; by some estimates less than 1% of cases in Mexico are reported. Bolivia and Nicaragua identified zero trafficking victims in 2024. Judges and police often lack the training to recognise cases; courts frequently demand proof of physical coercion, overlooking debt bondage. Colombia has not secured a conviction for labour trafficking since 2018. Brazil has had an anti-trafficking law since 2016 but has yet to issue a single final conviction. Donald Trump's foreign-aid cuts have slashed funding for anti-trafficking NGOs.
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