IN THE TOWN
Traffickers live like kings shipping sex
TENANCINGO, MEXICO — In this s small Mexican town that sends sex x slaves to New York, little boys dream m of growing up to be pimps.
Gaudy gabled houses that rise se above gated walls are proof of the he profits to be made from funneling “delivery girls” to Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. An annual parade continingent of pimps in plumed med hats — wielding whips to settle business beefs — is evidence that cash and fear has conquered red shame here.
“Many kids aspire pire to be traffickers,” said aid Emilio Munoz Berruecos, who grew w up in the next village and runs a local human rights center. “This is a phenomenon that goes back half a century.”
The town of 10,000, about 80 miles from Mexico City, is Mexico’s undisputed cradle of sex trafficking, one end of a pipeline that leads directly to our city’s streets. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York field office arrested 32 sex traffickers last year; 26 of them were from Tenancingo.
It’s a family business, and through the decades, the pimps have perfected methods to coerce women into sexual slavery using romance, lies and the threat of violence.
Over the last 20 years they have branched out of Latin America, sending sex workers to New York and other U.S. cities, experts said.
At first glance, the little municipality looks innocent enough.
A big yellow Catholic church anchors the town square, decorated with animalshaped topiary. The main roads are gaily draped with purple and white banners.
But during a drive along the side streets, where authorities say some of the major trafficking clans live, it becomes clear Tenancingo is not the average Mexican town.
Sprawling homes painted pink, bright orange or kelly green stand three and four stories in the air, replete with pagoda-like turrets and massive finials shaped like eagles or angels.
Plaster swans decorate balconies. Windows are covered in mirrored glass etched with wolves or flowers, making it impossible to see inside.
Townspeople have long called the houses “calcuilchil” or “houses of ass” in their indigenous Nahuatl language, according to anthropologist Oscar Montiel.
“The entire community isn’t OK with it. However, to say something against the traffickers is seen as dangerous,” said Rosario Adriana Mendieta Herrera, who runs a state women’s collective.
During carnaval in February, traffickers return from the U.S. to celebrate. The streets fill with revelers as caped pimps parade their prostitutes around and whip each other.
“They try to see who can stand the most lashes,” said Mendieta Herrera.
Every Sept. 29, Tenancingo celebrates its patron saint, St. Michael the Archangel, with a procession. Some call him “San Miguel Caifancingo” or “St. Michael of Pimpville.”
Behind the pomp is a tightly organized business.
Each family sends its youngest and most handsome men across Mexico to pose as salesmen with nice clothes and fancy cars, Munoz Berruecos said.
They woo rural women waiting at bus stops or taking Sunday strolls in the park. Once the women are seduced, they are coerced into prostitution.
The women are held inside the Tenancingo “security houses” — where some say they were repeatedly raped. If they have children, the kids are kept in the town for leverage after they are dispatched to redlight districts.
Some go to Mexico City. Many end up in Queens, where johns can order them for delivery by calling numbers advertised on cards, key chains or bottle openers, authorities say.
One 24-year-old survivor said she spent two months in Tenancingo after her “boyfriend” took her there to meet his family.
He turned out to be a pimp and she wound up in New York. After escaping from her Queens apartment in 2009, she helped ICE catch the family ringleader — but her nightmare is not over.
“Sadly, we can’t talk by telephone. I don’t know if my family is OK or if those men went to look for them, because they know where I lived,” she said.
Her lawyer, Lori Cohen of Sanctuary for Families, has worked with dozens of trafficking victims from all across Mexico.
“But the pimps all come from Tenancingo,” said Cohen.
“It’s multi-generational. You have families where the grandfather, father and son are all engaged in trafficking. They pass down the tricks of the trade.” Officials said each prostitute they bring to New York — where they service up to 35 johns a day — nets the traffickers about $100,000 a year. The money is wired back to Tenancingo,