Independent researcher. Direct work at grassroots level. Awareness. Make justice available to TIP victims. Advocating again

By 1994, I was made aware of Dominican women coming into Argentina to work in the sex industry. In 1995-1996 I had an acquaintance at the Dominican Embassy in Buenos Aires. During that period, rumors were going on around about women being brought into Argentina to work as prostitutes and the lack of interest from the Dominican consulate to help women that were approaching them to ask for help. At the end of 1997 Argentineans newspapers, TV and radio were reporting on bad cases of trafficking of Dominican women and organized crime. In 1998 I started contacting, on a part time basis and sporadically, women from the Dominican Republic that were working on the streets of Buenos Aires as prostitutes. By this time, I heard of a woman named Máxima Pérez Mato. They were allegations that she was trafficking Dominican women into Argentina . She was well connected to the Dominican Embassy and some institutions in Argentina. Over time, my research became more intense. I was planning to work the issue as a thesis for a Master’s program at FLACSO.
In September 2001, I formed and worked with a group of 15 Dominicans that had been trafficked by the same person. Eight of them filed a complaint in an Argentine court in January 2002. As a result of this, some attention was brought to the issue.
In mid April 2002 the Dominican goverment, with the complicity of other institutions, tried to cover up the TIP issue of the Dominican mission in Argentina by passing it off as a simple issue of economic migrants wanting to return home after the economic crisis of 2001. The Dominican press was misinformed. They released an article stating that Dominican imigrants suffering due to the crisis would be repatriated. I reacted by sending an open letter to a Dominican Congressman. This letter resulted in a scandal that was broadly covered by both the Dominican and the International press, further forcing institutions to focus on the issue.

I was born in the Dominican Republic. I received my law degree from the University Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU) in Santo Domingo , an LL.M. degree from the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC and I have completed the two years program of a Master’s Program in International Relations at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Buenos Aires.

I lived in Argentina from 1992 to 2007. During my time in Argentina I started to work TIP issues with Dominican migrants and victims of TIP.

I was a founding member of the Send a Child to School (SACS) program and have served on its Committee until March 2007. The SACS program has provided this school year, school supplies to close to a 1000 children in Argentina. http://www.bainnewcomers.com/sacs.html

I have tried my best to expose the problem of trafficking of Dominican women into Argentina. I have tried to work on prevention measures, informing and talking to many different people and, most importantly, to people that could be victims of TIP. I think prosecution is really important to address the issue in an effective way. Human trafficking victims talk about their experiences and give information about their traffickers, but it is hard when institutions and NGOs cover up organized crime and bad cases of trafficking. It is easier for them to say that human trafficking victims are afraid and to not listen to them or not assisting them to reach justice. I have tried to protect, as best I could, the TIP victims that I was working with. I cannot do much when IOM or COIN, the leading NGO working TIP in the Dominican Republic, publish the pictures and names of victims in major newspapers in the Dominican Republic or overseas without seeking the victim’s permission.