The investigation reveals that the Yuqui, Weenhayek and Ayoreo peoples hand over minors to be prostituted in urban centers. The Ombudsman's Office asks for more attention to indigenous communities.
The Yuqui people are on the verge of disappearing. State neglect has forced this indigenous community - located in the Chapare province of Cochabamba department - to abandon their territory and engage in illicit activities. One of them is the sale of girls for the sex trade in the Cochabamba tropics. The same happens with members of two other indigenous peoples, the Weenhayek and the Ayoreos, according to a social investigation.
For the past two decades, the Yuqui have suffered strong social discrimination. The poverty in which they live and the incursion of settlers into their territories - mostly coca growers - force them to migrate to urban areas. It is estimated that now their population does not exceed 400 indigenous people. These hardships have also forced some parents to sell their girls into the sex trade in the Cochabamba tropics.
The research Dynamics of trafficking, pimping and commercial sexual violence of children and adolescents in Bolivia, published by the Munasim Kullakita Foundation, shows that in the three indigenous peoples (Yuqui, Weenhayek and Ayoreo) the sale of minors originated from various factors, including "indifference on the part of the State and society as a whole."
"This (the abandonment of the State) forces them to survive in the only way that a harsh environment allows them: begging, theft and submission to the sex trade. The research has identified three indigenous communities that are excluded in the cities where they survive, and the way they do it with the sex trade of children and adolescents", says part of the research elaborated by Elizabeth Zabala and Ariel Ramirez.
In the specific case of the Yuqui, land usurpation is the main factor that puts this indigenous people at risk of extinction. The coca growers of the Chapare, mostly colonists, invaded their lands to cultivate coca leaf. The only large Yuqui community that manages to survive is Bia Recuaté, which is 160 km from the city of Cochabamba and is part of the municipality of Chimoré. Its inhabitants were used to fishing, hunting and farming as a means of subsistence, but now they do not do so because of the invasion they are suffering and the expansion of the urban march.
Carmen Isategua was a cacique of Bia Recuaté and has now become a leader of the Yuqui people. The indigenous woman, 36 years old, asks for the attention of the State to prevent her people from becoming extinct. She puts the ambition of settlers and drug traffickers as part of the invasion of her territory.
"When I was a cacique, I fought better. With the yuras (the Yuracaré indigenous people) I fought. There was a fight because they were working with illicit things that we do not deal with, like drugs and so on. We do not allow these things to happen within the TCO. As a woman, I have traveled to Cochabamba, everywhere to defend our land," said Isategua.
From the Yuqui people
The indigenous leader also laments that poverty leads "some" members of the Yuqui people to choose to "sell" their daughters to be subjected to the sex trade. "I don't understand it, but poverty forces these decisions," she said.
Gladys Sandoval, who was part of the Ombudsman's Office, knows the situation of the Yuqui people and the sex trade to which minors are subjected.
"The Yuqui community is a community isolated by the settlers, who have entered their lands or some have sold them. All of this has meant that the Yuqui no longer know how to obtain resources. Many are dedicated to alcohol consumption and we have learned that some are selling their young daughters to prostitute them, all in order to survive. In some of the trips we made to these areas, the population told us about the presence of yuqui women, adolescents, in some brothels along the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway," Sandoval reported in the Munasim Kullakita Foundation investigation.
The same report includes the account of a sex worker in the Cochabamba tropics. The woman details that the parents of the underage girls hand their daughters over to the brothel owners so that they can be commercialized.
On the roads of the Chapare, the sex trade has increased.
"The youngest I have seen was a 13-year-old girl that her father brought her, they were from the Yuqui. She was there for a week, then her father came and took her away. I have heard that several young girls from the Yuqui work outside the Chimoré barracks. Their parents force them to do that. They don't like the yuqui here because they drink a lot, they are very drunk, they drink pure alcohol. I imagine that's why they make their daughters work," said the sex worker.
The Weenhayek, also called Matacos, live around the Pilcomayo River, in the department of Tarija. Their survival has always been based on food gathering, hunting and fishing, although today their ancestral practices have been disappearing due to modernity, the invasion of their territories by Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) and social exclusion.
These factors are compounded by the constant droughts in the Bolivian Chaco. Thus, they were forced to look for new sources of economic income and migrate to the nearest cities - Yacuiba and Villa Montes - where they survive in poverty with informal jobs or the subjugation of girls and adolescents to the sex trade.
"The number of men migrating to work in the oilfields and the new existing roads give rise to brothels operating within the Weenhayek territories, between Villa Montes and Yacuiba. The Weenhayek community - which is located between two towns where this problem is evident, and in a conflictive socioeconomic situation - easily enters the sex trade. In addition, as this is a border area with Argentina and Paraguay, the girls and adolescents of this community are highly vulnerable to being captured by traffickers," the research reveals.
Government attention
The Vice-Minister of Coordination with Social Movements, Juan Villca, announced that coordinated work must be done with sub-national governments to prevent the sex trade of minors. "We must not abandon our indigenous peoples and even less so that girls are mistreated in this way," he said.
Meanwhile, the Ombudsman's Office asked state entities to make contact with indigenous peoples to address their demands and thus prevent the sex trade of girls.
"We ask the competent state agencies to define a work agenda that aims to protect the rights of indigenous native peasant nations and peoples and take concrete and effective actions to meet the demands and needs of indigenous peoples hard hit," requested the defender Nadia Cruz.
Another indigenous people affected by the sex trade of minors is the Ayoreo. The investigation reveals that there are Ayoreo, who live in the Bolivian Chaco, who "deliver" girls and adolescents to be prostituted in the areas of La Ramada, Los Pozos and Cañoto Avenue in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
DEMANDS OF THE YUQUI
The Yuqui people demanded attention from the three levels of the State in order to have food and the necessary assistance for the extreme health problems they face. They also demanded the guarantee of the Family Basket, the payment of the Dignity Income and the access to the Juana Azurduy de Padilla bonus.
SAYS THE CONSTITUTION
Article 31 of the Political Constitution of the State establishes that indigenous peoples and nations must be protected and respected in their individual and collective ways of life.
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