Pimps force Mexican women into prostitution in US

Source Associated Press

In this impoverished town in central Mexico, a sinister trade has taken root: entire extended families exploit desperation and lure hundreds of unsuspecting young Mexican women to the United States to force them into prostitution. Those who know the pimps of Tlaxcala state–victims, prosecutors, social workers and researchers–say the men from Tenancingo have honed their methods over at least three generations. They play on all that is good in their victims–love of family, love of husband, love of children–to force young women into near-bondage in the United States. The town provided the perfect petri dish for forced prostitution. A heavily Indian area, it combines long-standing traditions of forced marriage or "bride kidnapping," with machismo, grinding poverty and an early wave of industrialization in the 1890s that later went bust, leaving a displaced population that would roam, looking for elusive work.