SEX TRAFFICKING MUSEUM
DIGITAL EXHIBIT
The following images show actual items and photos recovered in our work fighting trafficking here in Houston, Texas.
An hour and a half north of Reynosa, Mexico, Falfurrias is the last border checkpoint before cargo can be transported to Houston or San Antonio without hindrance. This checkpoint leads the nation in the number of drugs and human merchandise caught at the border.
The phenomenon of "rape trees" are found near the Mexico/U.S. border. Smugglers mark a tree with the undergarments of women and young girls they rape while on the smuggling route. The tree is a perpetrator's way of asserting control over the victim through fear, violence and intimidation.
While some women believe they will simply be smuggled into the U.S., many of these women and girls find themselves caught in a web of organized crime. Traffickers exploit vulnerabilities and coerce them into a life of prostitution. Women quickly end up in cantinas, spas, and neighborhood brothels in Houston, San Antonio, or Dallas.
These illicit businesses pose as restaurants, bars, or nightclubs. They camouflage financial transactions involving sex as bar charges.
Depicted here is a room at The New Back Door Club, also known as “Las Palmas” in Houston. This club was raided in October 2013 by multiple law enforcement agencies. This particular club had 17 sex rooms upstairs and was trafficking adults as well as minors.
Message left by trafficker in a closed cantina: "You got my girls but not me." After The New Back Door Club was raided by police in 2013.
The average age of entry into prostitution for these girls is around thirteen years old. In a 2016 study, just over half the sex trafficking victims identified were minors. One witness described being only 14 at the time of her recruitment and being forced at gunpoint to engage in prostitution when she arrived at the cantina.
From the very beginning, women working in cantinas are trained to sell men beer and sexual services. More alcohol consumed by the customer increases the likelihood of purchasing sex. In a typical night, a woman may have to consume up to 30 beers. The average lifespan of women in the cantina trade is less than a decade.
In 2005, undercover police investigated La Costeñita, a Houston cantina suspected of trafficking and smuggling people from Mexico. One of the key leaders of the operation was Gerardo "El Gallo" Salazar.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
The undercover investigation revealed that the women's bathroom mirror doubled as a door that led to a fenced-in backyard and another building. Women working at the cantina would enter through the hidden door while buyers of commercial sex would enter the second building from the outside.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
When investigators attempted to close the business, the women refused to testify against the owners, fearing retaliation against their families in Mexico. The case had to be put on hold for lack of evidence.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTENITA
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
Later that year, the case was reopened when a teenage girl called a domestic violence hotline to report being held at the cantina, beaten and forced to work. Cases were built against five traffickers. However, Salazar fled the country and others were never indicted.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTENITA
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
Salazar's recruitment and smuggling operation was based in Mexico, where he would roam rural Mexican towns, schools and festivals in search of girls and young women he could romance into the first stages of trafficking.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
Women would initially be treated well, then threatened, raped and beaten. Salazar would then smuggle them to Houston where he would house them in an apartment complex, brand them with a rooster tattoo after his own nickname and send them to work at the cantinas.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
Salazar was finally arrested in Mexico in 2010 and other traffickers involved in La Costeñita were sentenced to prison. Several properties in Houston that had been associated with the trafficking ring were forfeited and the proceeds were used to aid survivors.
CASE STUDY: LA COSTEñITA
Couture, Tessa, and Jennifer Kimball. “More than Drinks for Sale.” Polaris Project, September 2016. https://polarisproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/MoreThanDrinksForSale_FINAL.pdf.