Last night I watched the movie Trade Here is the basic plot idea...When 13-year-old Adriana is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Mexico City, her 17-year-old brother, Jorge, sets off on a desperate mission to save her.
Trapped by an underground network of international thugs who earn millions exploiting their human cargo, Adriana's only friend throughout her ordeal is Veronica, a young Polish woman captured by the same criminal gang. As Jorge dodges overwhelming obstacles to track the girl's abductors, he meets Ray, a Texas cop whose own family loss leads him to become an ally.
I bought it a while ago and put off watching it because I thought it would be emotionally draining. It was very hard, but more hopeful than I had anticipated.
The movie does a great job of using a gripping story to draw the viewer into a very real world wide epidemic. As you follow the plight of a few kidnapped women as they are moved to "market," the story also diverts long enough to look at how this can happen in today's world. These diversions are quick and powerful...
A woman looks out her window and sees a little girl kidnapped, but does nothing...
A police officer in mexico allows them to cross the border in exchange for "use" of one of the girls..
One of the kidnappers kneels and prays to mary for forgiveness as he leads 4 young girls across the border to be sold...
The american police capture the man and 4 young women crossing the border, but will not believe the girls stories, but instead just dump them back across the border and leave them in captivity to the man...
The impression is given that the woman running the whole ring was herself "bought" at some point...
When a young mexican boy tries to get help from the authorities, but they do not believe his story and think he is simply another illegal immigrant...
The movie weaves all of this into a system that ends up allowing people to traffic children and women...
The ugly truth in it though is that it is based on reality to some degree... according to the website,
The State Department estimates that as many as 800,000 people are trafficked over international frontiers each year, largely for sexual exploitation. Eighty percent are female and over fifty percent are minors...
The truth is that the United States has become a large-scale importer of sex slaves... estimates that at least 10,000 people a year are smuggled or duped into this country by sex traffickers.
Makes you wonder...
