Authors, politicians, and others in positions of authority utilize rhetoric to control the minds of others via the use of both spoken and written words. Rhetoric is a persuasive art form in which metaphorical phrases are used to persuade an audience to alter their minds. If arguments are powerful enough, they can convince people to believe in concepts that are either genuine or helpful to society. Through rhetoric, authors can draw attention to issues that are sometimes ignored or are not clearly seen in society and uncover overlooked or hushed-up stories from the neglected layers of society.
The essay I would like to draw attention to is Mike Ceaser’s “A Dark Window on Human Trafficking”. Mike Ceaser is a journalist whose area of interest is Latin American affairs. He is based in Colombia and Bogota and writes for different periodicals, such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Catholic Reporter, The Lancet, and many others. In “Dark Window on Human Trafficking,” Ceaser dives into the underground world of human trafficking. He concentrates on young girls’ traffic across South America and North America and its border regions. Human trafficking has become an acute worldwide problem recently and thrives in many areas of the world, regardless of the efforts of the world community to prevent it. In this essay, Ceaser utilized his rhetorical skills to dive into the dark world of human trafficking, which severely hits Latin America and the USA, through the usage of images and forms of different societal levels, which is one of the best approaches to describe this type of issue.
Human trafficking is generally described as an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, and receiving individuals for profit by force, fraud, or deception. This crime can affect men, women, and children of various ages and backgrounds. Sexual exploitation is the most frequent type of human trafficking. Sexual exploitation primarily affects young women and girls, and it has become one of the American continent’s most pressing security concerns.
Human trafficking is one of the most complex and morally complicated tasks for journalists and editors since victims suffer grave risks when speaking with media and are traumatized, if not horrified. Nevertheless, it is a crucial and valuable field for journalists’ investigations, which sometimes can be more helpful than political and bureaucratical procedures, which can also be affected by bribery and outside pressure from the so-called powerbrokers.
In his essay, Ceaser explores the world of human trafficking through the experience of two students, Tracy O’Dowd and Sergio Velarde, whose story becomes the backbone of the article. From the beginning, the author gives his first opinion on trafficking and prostitution through the words of Tracy O’Dowd – “Prostitution can’t be a choice that you make” (Ceaser 3). This became the opening statement and the fundamental narrative of the essay.
Ceaser follows a top-bottom storyline, starting from the ‘peak of the iceberg’ – closing the nightclub because of the underage prostitution charges. There, the author met two students who assisted in the court procedures against the owners. They are interns in one of the non-governmental organizations concerned about human trafficking issues, Our Youth Foundation. Since human trafficking is an acute problem in Latin America, particularly in Ecuador (where the story takes place), it is vital to understand that government is not interested in solving the issue. Ceaser underlines that through the alleged revelation of O’Dowd and Velarde, “the country is corrupt, and its legal system is inefficient” (Ceaser 4). Here he adds to his first statement that things are becoming worse when people responsible are not charged and are not taken against by the state.
Ceaser buttresses this up by the fact that the first law against human trafficking in Ecuador was passed only in 2005. However, it did not bring any relief and did not offer a solution to the problem. Instead, in two years, a number of reports stated that even minimum standards are not complied with by the Ecuadorian government (Ceaser 5). Moreover, adult prostitution is legal in Ecuador, complicating things even further.
In Ecuador, as the author emphasized, the human trafficking issue is mainly connected with prostitution and forced labor. Ecuadorian context usually implies selling young girls to brothels. The most common framework for selling is linked to the relationships, where the girls are from the lower class and families affected by poverty. A striking example of how this is happening was provided by Velarde and narrated by Ceaser as an indication of the deepness of the roots of the issue:
“Young men seek out girls from poor, troubled families and pretend to fall in love with them; they do this whole fantasy couple, fantasy relationship, and then all of a sudden, “I don’t have any more money, so you have to work”, says Mr. Velarde. But the girl still believes they’re a couple, and he still kind of treats them as a couple” (Ceaser 10).
The next important issue Ceaser raises through the essay is the fact that human trafficking has become so common that it has become invisible. Stressing out this invisibility, and emphasizing it, gives the needed emotional context to the essay. As narrated by Velarde, people “do not even understand or know that such cases involve human trafficking”; moreover, they even assume that “their absent daughters would be better off” (Ceaser 11).
The most obvious symbol of this complex set of issues became the nightclub, La Luna, “a huge compound of nightclub-brothels with the billboard of a naked woman amid the moon in front of it” (Ceaser 1). Such striking branding and massiveness of construction itself (not a tiny underground cell), emphasized by Ceaser, serves as a good representation of the invulnerability of the human traffickers and the scope of the problem.
This invulnerability is further confirmed by the length of the trial of the owners of La Luna and its constant delays. Although the sentence of 16 years sounded like a relief, soon, the seeming victory turned out to be a backlash. While the owner’s sentences were cut (to 6 years), we can witness the invulnerability of the human traffickers and, most likely, the deep corruption of the system.
The scope of the human trafficking issue can be seen not only on the macrolevels, such as La Luna compounds, but also on the microlevels, such as family. La Luna is just a face, while the arteries and bones of this skeleton are hidden in the social barriers and poverty. The striking example provided by Ceaser confirms that when the father, imprisoned for sexual abuse of his daughters, is seen by the family as the only source of income. “I want you to get my husband out of jail” – this is the pledge of his wife and daughters, indicating the hopelessness of many families in Ecuador and many Latin American countries in general (Ceaser 21). Without him, the family became left on the edge of complete poverty, while the government is indifferent to it.
Another example indicating the everydayness of the issue was portrayed by Velarde and occurred during his interview with one of the lower-class families. Though the interview went fine, and Velarde was satisfied, the mother suddenly mentioned that her daughter was kidnapped by a family friend years ago (Ceaser 24). The way she mentioned it and the timing (while the bus was already waiting for the bus back) serves as a very good indicator of how normal this is for the families.
Apart from the micro level (family) and macro level (La Luna), human trafficking is also affecting the middle levels, such as schools and universities. For instance, local teachers are pushing families to choose more distance schools, meaning “a perilous walk back home every evening” for young girls (Ceaser 26). The interconnections between all these levels and spheres of society are striking and indicate how deep the roots of the problem are.
The narrative and the idea of the essay by Ceaser were to show the problem of human trafficking, its everydayness, and interconnectivity in Latin America. Ecuador is not the only country suffering from this issue; even the United States has this issue due to the enormous amount of migration from Latin America. However, the US does not even put itself in the annual trafficking report, which leaves the auditory-only with guesses about how acute the issue is in the US. Ceaser attempted to show how things are working in Ecuador, and he poses the unwritten question – is the same happening in the US?
Ceaser traced the roots of human trafficking through images and forms of different societal levels. His essay portrays the social barriers and the weakness of the governmental legal system, which only encourages human traffickers but does not stop them. The success of Ms. O’Dowd and Mr. Velarde (almost narrators of the essay) and their non-governmental organization, in the end, turned out to be a backlash and indicated how people are vulnerable to human trafficking while the culprits remain unpunished.
Work Cited
Ceaser, Mike. “A Dark Window on Human Trafficking”. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2008, vol. 54, no. 46.