Trade in Truths

I took a break from narcotrafficking, and went to visit Hospital San Luis de Otavalo, Ecuador's first intercultural maternity center, where vertical delivery is practiced. Vertical delivery is a form of childbirth favored by indigenous kichwa communities. In this tradition, women either kneel or squat during childbirth. Gravity is the main midwife in the process. Parteras treat the woman with herbs and waters that speed-up uterine dilation. Doctors are on standby to address complications.

The Yachak, literally the one who knows,  oversees delivery accoridng to Andenean custom.

My morning began pouring over stats at the anti-narcotics unit with the help of Mayor Ramirez and the intelligence squad. Unavoidably, these weeks reporting on sex trafficking led to friction with other types of trafficking. I am now probing the subject of mulas, women who use their bodies to transport cocaine or heroine in and out of Ecuador.

After lunch, I visited FLACSO, the main social sciences university in Quito, to interview a researcher who worked years on the subject for her thesis. The studies are mostly qualitative and conclude that the women traffic drugs out of love.  By 4 p.m. I was armed with questions and hailing a cab towards the women’s jail, where 85 percent of the inmates are there for drugs.

At the jail, my questions quickly hit the limits of the director’s knowledge. His attitude hardened in the absence of answers. We exchanged  twenty minutes of verbal sparring and stare downs. He questioned my right to the information. I questioned his right to withhold it.  The interview was off to a bad start. While the anti-narcotrafficking unit gave me carte blanche, the women’s jail met me with resentment and red tape.   

I shut my notebook shut and apologized for wasting both our times.

“I can help you with general questions,” he relented.
The frontal fact-based approach had clearly backfired so I switched tactics. I spent the next hour spiraling in from the least relevant to the most sensitive information. Slowly but surely he opened up as I became the sympathetic cast of one to all of his jail director achievements and frustrations.

By 5:30 p.m. he had forgiven my direct ways and invited me back on Saturday to take photographs.

On our second day in Lago Agrio, at 8 p.m., Hitler picked us up at the intersection of Guayaquil and Venezuela. MHP, Amy and I scrambled into the backseat. Amy propped her camera on the windowsill while I wired Hitler. Yes. Hitler. This is the third of our nighttime cabbies with a penchant for after hour adventures and a good nose for nightclubs.

Hitler gave us the redlight district tour: La Casa de Citas, Las Munecas, El Boricua, La Pantera advertised their presence with loud graffiti, lewd murals and neon lit nudity. Some were little more than shacks. Only La Casa Blanca, a freshly painted hillside villa with an armed guard and silver SUVs outside parked, aspired to an air of distinction. Every time my camera flashed, Hitler hit fifth gear in fear of being identified.

At 11 p.m., our driver reversed his pickup truck taxi down a steep riverside road. Klo-Klong. The taxi boarded the Gavala moored in the water. Gavalas are floating metal contractions that look light but are solid enough to support the weight of several cars. We crossed the river. The only lights on the water came from car headlights and the carnival colors spilling out of waterfront clubs.

Gavala transporting passengers across the Aguarico river

We crossed over to the neighborhood of Aguarico. A few months ago a shoot out broke out between police and residents who had an arsenal of small weapons for trafficking. Now, Hitler explained, most of the crime comes from this neighborhood but they are not committed in the neighborhood. Still, he started and stopped the car with unease every time we drew near a nighttime establishment. To our surprise, many had shut down.

The area of Aguarico, unlike the rest of Lago Agrio, felt like a ghost town. The roads were rough. Petrol tanks doubled as trash containers outside rundown homes. It was hard to believe that this was narcotrafficking nexus. The occasional clue came from suspiciously high quality cars given the context. It could have been any community in the world beyond recrimination.

Pending entry.

From Colombia, Puerto Nuevo is a short boat ride across the San Miguel river. It is a FARC weekend destination. The town has approximately 250 families, seven brothels, one school and a health center that opens four days per month.

We arrived to Lago Agrio behind schedule. Valentina, our Italian guide from UNHCR, punched numbers into the phone and reschuffled the day's agenda.

Our first meeting was with a Carmelite sister that chairs the anti-trafficking roundtable. Short-haired and stocky, this Colombian woman chronicled on camera her own adventures in and out of brothels trying to pinpoint and save trafficked minors.

It is a tricky task. The brothel industry follows a "fresh faces" protocol. This means that women and girl follow a fast-paced itinerary across the country's brothels. Lago Agrio, Guayaquil, Santo Domingo, Esmeraldas, San Lorenzo are some of the traditional stop-overs.

She cried at the memory of a ten-year-old and seven-year-old working at a beer bar surrounded by seedy men. Cantinas and Chongos are teeming with minors from Colombia and Ecuador, she says. Men demand tight girls and pay for it. Police fail to interfere and pin the perpetrators with the law. Mafias target social workers and buy the men in blue.

The boom of the Petrol industry in the late sixties meant that Lago Agrio developed along the lines of an old Western Movie with bars and brothels on every block. In the last decade, the Colombian conflict an dollarization turned the town into a hub for all types of trafficking: white gasoline to refine cocaine, small arms, drugs, women and girls.

Displaced Colombian women and minors without papers are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, UNHCR representatives explain. To work in Ecuador, you need refugee status. This process takes an average of 18 months in Lago Agrio. Single moms, for 18 months, have no legitimate source of income and at least three mouths to feed.

"Sometimes you are forced to do things out of necessity," said a new arrival.

In the afternoon, we joined the Red Cross in door-to-door visits of women who fit this profile. The faces of these women scream poverty, not prostitution. Their children are pure, under five years old, and full of unbridled joy and love for their mothers. A child's moment of sickness means a night of work for medicine. The love of these single moms understands only the need of their children.