When Isabel* accepted a job as a saleswoman in Peru from her cousin, Catalina*, she never imagined that months later, she would be lying on a Peruvian highway with a bullet in her neck, pretending to be dead.
Isabel was 22 years old and did not want to pass up the opportunity to work with her cousin in a store located in Mollendo, a city in the department of Arequipa, in southwestern Peru. This offer was Isabel’s ticket to escape the economic crisis in her home country, Venezuela. But shortly after arriving in Peru, she discovered that the offer had been a scam, and that she was at the mercy of a human trafficking ring.
“They pay their whole way, and when they arrive here, they realize they’ve been tricked, they realize they’re being exploited.”
Roxi
Isabel was one of the hundreds of Venezuelan women captured by human trafficking networks each year. Her story is woven into the pages of a court case against at least 43 people accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a gang that began in Venezuela and has expanded throughout South America. In several cities in Peru, the group has implemented a complex system of recruitment, transportation, and sexual exploitation of women, girls, and teens.
Victims of this criminal scheme are known among sex workers as “las multadas,” or “the fined women,” in reference to the debt that victims of trafficking owe their perpetrators for the cost of their travel from Venezuela and living expenses in Peru.
“They bring [the women] here in debt,” said Roxi, a Venezuelan sex worker living in Lima. “They pay their whole way, and when they arrive here, they realize they’ve been tricked, they realize they’re being exploited.”
‘The Pink Arm’
The path to exploitation for most victims begins online. For Isabel, it started with messages from her cousin, who acted as a recruiter.
Recruiters are the first link in the human trafficking chain and are responsible for identifying and tricking victims into agreeing to travel abroad.
Trafficking networks are increasingly using other women for this process, as victims tend to trust them more. Peruvian authorities have dubbed these recruiters “the pink arm.”
“Girls arrive, often captured by other girls who are already trafficking victims — that is, they use victims to recruit other victims,” said Joel Jabiles Eskenazi, coordinator of the Protection Unit of the International Organization for Migration in Peru.
According to Isabel’s testimony and information collected by prosecutors, once Catalina had convinced Isabel to travel to Peru, she made a relocation request to an alleged leader of the Gallegos cell in Peru. The Gallegos are a faction of Tren de Aragua that arrived in the country in 2019, taking advantage of waves of migrants leaving Venezuela to expand into Peru.
After the leader approved the request, Isabel — who at this time was still convinced that the offer was a real job — began her journey to Peru. Catalina put her in contact with a supposed “travel consultant,” who took care of all the trip logistics and costs, which, according to the case documents, vary depending on the country of origin. The “travel advisors” are also paid different amounts depending on where they transport the women from — $500 for women from Venezuela, and $300 for those from Colombia.
SEE ALSO: Venezuelan Women at Risk From Expanding Trafficking Rings
Isabel’s travel consultant took her to Ecuador, where he contacted another operator, who bought her tickets to Lima. From there, she traveled to Mollendo, where Catalina supposedly lived.
But when Isabel arrived in Mollendo, she did not find her cousin. Instead, another woman met her and told her with brutal frankness that the job she had been promised did not exist and that, instead, she would have to work in nightclubs or chongos, bars where sexual services are sold in Peru, to pay off the cost of her trip.
At that moment, Isabel realized that she had been caught in a trafficking ring.
Although she tried to contact her cousin to clarify the situation and escape the nightmare she was in, she never succeeded. Her case documents state that she lost all trace of Catalina, whose Facebook and WhatsApp accounts were abandoned.
The Operation
The woman who received Isabel in Mollendo took her to a house where nine other women lived, as well as one man, who kept watch and prevented the women from escaping. There, Isabel was told that she was in debt to the Gallegos for the cost of her trip, as well as owing them for housing and feeding her in Peru.
The fees, or “fines,” the Gallegos charged varied according to the victim’s nationality. For someone from Colombia, the fine was $3,200, but for women from Venezuela, the amount was almost $4,000, according to the court documents. For Isabel, whose financial desperation had pushed her to migrate to Peru for a job as a humble saleswoman, paying that kind of money was practically impossible.
Groups like Los Gallegos use these fines to control trafficking victims, punishing disobedience with additional fines between $250 and $500.
To pay off her fines, Isabel was forced to work in a chongo. According to the case documents, the bar’s clients paid around $34 for half an hour, $40 for an hour, and $186 to spend the night with one of the women. But Isabel and the other women kept none of that money. Everything they earned was handed over to the man who kept watch on them in both the chongo and the house where they slept.
The Gallegos have many methods for controlling victims, including rape, intimidation, and psychological manipulation, like threatening to harm their relatives, even in their home countries. Tren de Aragua’s decentralized structure and its presence in several countries allows the group to find and threaten victims’ families throughout Latin America.
“They no longer leave, they no longer run away because they know what can happen to their children and family in Venezuela,” said Ángela Villón, leader of Miluska Vida y Dignidad, an association of sex workers in Lima that has seen first-hand cases of trafficking.
The “fined” women are also constantly watched and regularly moved from street to street and city to city, to prevent them from seeking help or forming connections.
“[They] move them here one week, [they] move them there another week, … they even take them to the provinces,” said Liliana, another Venezuelan sex worker living in Lima.
A Maze With No Exit
Weeks after Isabel arrived in Mollendo, one of the women who lived with her managed to escape and go to the authorities. In response, the Gallegos moved Isabel and the other women to the city of Arequipa. There, they forced them to work in the streets, while an armed man on a motorcycle watched them from afar.
Isabel tried to escape twice. The first time she was caught, she was locked in a room on her own. The second time, she made it to the bus station, but again, they caught her. Under such constant surveillance, it was not easy to escape.
Some women pay off their debt by recruiting others to take their place, but most never escape. Even if Isabel had managed to pay off the fines she owed the group, it was highly unlikely she would be set free.
“There are cases where they pay and [the criminals] continue to exploit them, (…) they don’t let them breathe at all. They have to do what they say,” said Roxi.
Court documents tell the same story. With no support networks to help them leave, many women who paid their debt had no choice but to continue working and paying $40 a day to stay in the Gallegos’ territory.
What’s more, in interviews with InSight Crime, members of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Human Trafficking Division of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) commented that the majority of women rescued during anti-trafficking operations eventually return to the networks that exploit them.
Of 2,500 people rescued in 2023, only 5% have open investigations, according to PNP data In some cases, sex workers are incorrectly registered as victims of trafficking. But the Peruvian judicial system only begins an investigation when a person makes a formal complaint. According to authorities and officials from international and human rights organizations, victims do not seek help for fear that the threats of violence against them or their families will materialize, or they distrust the authorities.
SEE ALSO: How Risks Facing Migrants in Latin America Have Multiplied
“Our ability to continue [the investigations] is limited because we often have to look for other evidence to determine that these are victims of trafficking because the women don’t admit it,” General Aldo Avila Novia, head of the PNP’s Human Trafficking Division, told InSight Crime. “It is very difficult for them to admit that they are victims because of their [violent] circumstances,” he added.
Still, reported cases continue to increase. Although it is difficult to estimate the total number of women and girls who fall into human trafficking networks, the numbers, which represent the authorities’ ability to detect trafficking cases, are not encouraging.
In 2020, the PNP registered 372 reports of human trafficking in the country, according to Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics. By 2022, the figure was 631, of which 538, or 85.3%, were women, and 153 were Venezuelan. In the first six months of 2024, the PNP recorded 458 complaints, of which 78.7% of the alleged victims were women and 54 of them were between 13 and 17 years old.
“They made her put her hands on a table and hit them with the handle of a pistol, saying ‘you just had to do it, but we told you, you belong to us’”
excerpt from court documents
The second time Isabel tried to escape, the punishment was swift and brutal.
“They made her put her hands on a table and hit them with the handle of a pistol, saying ‘you just had to do it, but we told you, you belong to us’,” the court documents reported.
After that, things got worse. The criminals beat Isabel regularly, took away her cell phone to read her conversations with her family, and even told her that they had sent people to Venezuela to look for her relatives.
A Light at the End of the Tunnel
One afternoon, around 2:00 p.m., two men came to Isabel’s room. They told her to get up and gather her things, that she had to leave with them.
Not long before, a member of the group had been captured. The court documents are unclear, but it appears that the police also arrested Isabel at that time and then released her.
The two men escorted Isabel to a car and drove off. They told her that they were moving her to a place where she would be better off, and asked her what she had told the police. She replied that she had said nothing.
After driving for about three hours, they made her get out of the car. One of the men handed her a cell phone, while the other pulled out a gun and shot her.
Isabel fell to the ground — the bullet had only grazed her. One of the men kicked her, to make sure the job was done right. She knew that if she moved, they would shoot her again, so she endured the pain. The last thing she heard them say was “Let’s go, let’s go, quick, this one’s done.”
Minutes later, she heard the car drive away, and began to call for help. Someone helped her to the police station, where they took her report and transported her to the hospital.
Isabel managed to escape the exploitation network that had entrapped her, and today the legal case against her perpetrators is advancing in the courts of Arequipa, but her story is the exception. Meanwhile, Tren de Aragua and its factions continue to earn large sums of money by exploiting the women and girls who, desperate for a better future, remain trapped in their criminal clutches.