Slavery Inc
The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade's hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.
This is an underground economy in which a sex slave can be bought for the price of a gun, but Cacho's powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity makes it impossible to ignore the terrible human cost of this lucrative exchange.
Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the colossal scope of its enquiry, and for the tenacious bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lionhearted Mexican journalist and activist Cacho probes prostitution, pedophilia, and sex trafficking rings across Southeast Asia, South America, and beyond in the follow-up to her last investigative opus, an edition that put one of her targets behind bars. Cacho pulls back the curtain on red-light districts in both East and West hemispheres. She walks through Le Merced in Mexico City as a nun, reports on a Yakuza ceremony in Tokyo patrolled by Japanese police officers, and shares the stories of Iraqi prostitutes servicing American soldiers. Combining journalism and social activism with a problematic lack of objectivity, Cacho's narrative nonfiction storytelling unfortunately reads less like a trained journalist's writing and more like a human rights activist in need of a lesson in basic reporting. For example, the author attacks post-modern feminists without clarifying their argument until the very last pages. Writing in the first person, Cacho is overly intent on showcasing the challenges she faced as a female investigative reporter as well as ongoing death threats; her unfiltered impressions detract from what the book purports to be the story of women bought and sold for pleasure. In a book about so vital a subject, Cacho's finger-pointing and righteous sentimentality deflate these issues and the victims' stories into a "could-have-been" call-to-action.
