Initially, Claudia* had not asked for money in exchange for her teenage daughter when she decided to get married. But seeing her so thin and deteriorating shortly after the wedding, she thought that “selling her” would make the young woman’s husband and her family with whom she lives “value her more.”
Although this negotiation is usually done before the wedding and not after, Claudia then spoke with her son-in-law’s parents and received $100,000 Mexican pesos (about US$6,000) from them for her daughter.
“If we had given it away, they would have kicked it out of the house right away and told them that it is worthless for not having paid for it,” says this convinced mother who, at only 35 years old, already has five sons and five daughters.
With the eldest of the men he experienced this practice in reverse. When he got married, they had to pay the bride’s parents $180,000 pesos (almost US$11,000). “Otherwise, her family would have discriminated against him and asked why he didn’t pay, if he was poor… That’s the custom here,” he says.
It might be thought that the sale of girls and adolescents to marry only occurs in isolated cases and distant countries. But the “here” to which Claudia refers is La Montaña de Guerrero, a region in the south of Mexico, where indigenous peoples have carried out this practice for many years based on their uses and customs.
La Montaña survives as best it can against a suffocating extreme poverty and lack of opportunities. Claudia, in fact, had to borrow money and travel with part of her family to northern Mexico to work in the fields for several months to pay the amount that her son’s in-laws were asking for.
These sales for marriage mainly affect adolescents, but cases have been recorded of even 9 and 10 year old girls. However, in some communities things are beginning to change and young women are beginning to be able to decide about their own future.
Up to US$18,000
Getting to Itia Zuti, the community in the municipality of Metlatónoc where Claudia lives, is not an easy task.
It is about a 7-hour drive from Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, along a road full of curves that breaks through the majestic mountains and in which you travel dozens of kilometers without seeing a single soul.
For a foreigner, entering the community is also not easy without first dealing with the local authorities. And much less to talk about a topic, that of the sale of girls and adolescents, which is complex and uncomfortable for many inhabitants, who mainly communicate in the Mixtec language.
Benito Mendoza, facilitator of the workshops and talks on women’s rights that the NGO Yo Quiero, Yo puede has been giving in the area since 2015 with the aim, among others, of eradicating this practice and forced child marriage, knows this well.
“We were giving a talk at a school and when an adult heard a girl say that she had the right to freely choose who to marry, they got into an uproar and ‘invited us to leave’ the community,” he remembers of these workshops where many neighbors arrive without be completely aware that this practice violates women’s rights.
Traditionally, many girls were sold to older men, sometimes even strangers, for whom they ended up performing domestic tasks in exchange for an amount for their family that could range between US$1,200 and US$18,000.
The younger the girl, the higher the payment usually is. When they are sold, they generally enter a home where they will not have any economic independence as they cannot study or work.
Today, some young people do know each other beforehand—in many cases, through the weak and expensive internet that reaches the community—and agree to get married, but their parents generally continue negotiating a financial agreement.
“With the arrival of organized crime, even people from outside the community came to buy girls. Then they leave their environment and lose track of them, which can make them end up in other phenomena such as trafficking in women, child exploitation, physical or sexual violence…”, warns Karina Estrada, psychologist and social worker at Yo Quiero, Yo Podemos. .
The sale is seen as an economic lifeline for many families who live in poverty and subsist by growing corn, beans or bananas for their own consumption. There are many who choose to migrate to northern Mexico and the United States due to the total absence of job opportunities in the town.
The municipality of Metlatónoc, in fact, was for years the poorest in Mexico. Today, 97.7% of its population lives in poverty (67.8% in extreme poverty) within a state, Guerrero, which is also one of the poorest in the country and which, for decades, was one of the main growing areas of the poppy used to produce heroin.
In recent years, however, the price of this flower has plummeted following the arrival of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, on the US drug market. Communities that survived by growing poppies saw their main and almost only source of income disappear.
But in addition to the lack of economic resources, another factor that perpetuates this practice in the region is gender stereotypes about women.
“It is not conceived that women can do anything beyond reproducing or taking care of the home. When it is decided who goes to school, the parents send the children above all,” emphasizes Georgina García, a psychologist also from Yo Quiero, Yo Podemos.
Because of these deep-rooted beliefs, the young women themselves come to normalize their sale by relating their own value to the amount paid for them. There have even been cases of women giving away their male children, as they are unable to obtain economic benefit from them by selling them.
García remembers how a woman told him that “if the sale was eliminated, they would take away their value and everything would be taken away from them, because it is the only thing they exist for in the community.”
The women of change
But some of the women in the community do not think the same and are leading a change, slow but constant, thanks to the essential support of their families.
Norma* is part of the first generation of women in her family who was not sold. “When I got together with my husband, my father said that he would not sell me because when you do, they can mistreat you or hurt you. He did very well,” she explains with a smile.
He assures that not having paid would make it easier for him, if necessary, to leave the marital home to return to his family without major problems. “But once they pay for you, you kind of can’t escape from your husband and they make you stay,” she says.
The supposed advantages and disadvantages of this practice are certainly contradictory because, at the same time, Norma says that “men who pay are supposed to respect their wives, but when they do not pay, they say that this gives them the right to leave with others or not paying attention to his wife.”
Given how deeply rooted this practice is, eradicating it in the community will not be easy. In fact, just talking about it is complicated and Norma asks not to be photographed. “Those who do charge for the girls could retaliate,” responds her mother, present at the interview.
Soyla, a smiling 21-year-old who has just announced that she will marry a young man she met in the community, is equally satisfied that her parents will not charge for her.
“I am happy and proud because they thought of me, that I can achieve whatever I want with my partner. Because some marriages that are paid have problems, you don’t know how it can end, the man starts nagging with her… and then they get divorced,” he says.
He knows that getting married at his age is a rarity in the town, but he reiterates that it was his decision to wait. Just like her when she finished high school at the age of 15 and decided not to continue studying, even though her parents always told her that they would support her.
In her future, she sees herself dedicating herself to the home and weaving crafts while her husband works in the field. She knows that she wants to have children, and she will give them the same opportunity that her parents gave her to choose when and who to marry.
His mother Cecilia, who has just cooked chicken broth and some huge tortillas, explains her decision. “Many sell their daughters, but the consequences are for them. Some tell them: ‘Get up early, make something to eat, wash my clothes, that’s why I bought you’… That reinforced me not to sell Soyla.”
Jaime, the young woman’s father, remembers that she asked him to let her grow up and not have the responsibility of taking care of the marital home so young. “And I did it, also because she had the ability to continue supporting her. Many cannot and that is when they are sent to look for a husband,” he says.
“This sale seems bad to me because when my other two sons get married, they can apply it to me and ask for money for their girlfriends. But at least they won’t blame me for selling my daughter for so much, why don’t I want to pay now or if I’m haggling,” she emphasizes.
Some of the consequences of these sales and marriages of minors — Mexico is the eighth country with the highest rate of child marriage in the world, according to the UN — are the abandonment of school by many young women and high pregnancy rates. teenagers.
“Sex education here is total taboo. There are those who understand teenage pregnancy, and when their children get married, they bring them to plan. But they are a minority. We see many of these pregnancies in girls between 14 and 16 years old,” says Celia Ortiz, a nurse at the small community health center that does not have a doctor.
“They are the ones who generally plan. And up to that point the father-in-law intervenes a lot, because since they are purchased, his family is the one in charge,” he adds before continuing along the roads of the community under a scorching sun to vaccinate the dogs in some homes against rabies. “If not, people won’t come to the medical center.”
Divided opinions
Although in communities like this it is known that the sale of girls is very common, it is impossible to quantify the number of cases that occur in Mexico.
One piece of information to take into account would be that of the 2020 Population Census, which concluded that 4% of adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age in Mexico are or were in some type of marital union, mainly in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Yucatan.
However, given that the country’s Civil Code has prohibited marriages between minors under 18 years of age since 2019 and has punished them since last year with sentences of between 8 and 15 years in prison, organizations consider that informal unions of adolescents have increased since then, which contributes to under-reporting and that reality is not reflected in figures.
Sitting at the door of the municipal police station to cope with the stifling heat, the commissioner (community leader) of Itia Zuti, Félix Hernández, looks towards the sports field that looks completely empty right in front of the town church.
He is a 65-year-old man, although he looks older. He is hard of hearing, cannot read or write, and says not speaking Spanish makes it difficult for him to negotiate improvements for the town such as installing drainage, improving roads or building a market and a well-equipped health center.
When we visited, the town had been without electricity for three days. He acknowledges that he accepted the position—for which he does not earn a peso—because the few residents who have education end up leaving the community.
He acknowledges that the sale of girls is a “complicated” issue on which people are divided. “For me it is wrong, but when you question the families of the young women they tell you that they supported them and that only they have the ability to decide for their daughters.”
He also admits that if a young woman were to present him with a problem in the context of a forced marriage, his role along with the rest of the local authorities would be to offer advice and, only in the event that there is no solution to the couple’s conflict, advocate for for the girl to return home and her parents to return the money from the sale.
In fact, although an agreement was signed in his community to prohibit the sale of girls just a month before he took office, the commissioner acknowledges that he did not know of the existence of said document.
“The laws are there, but it is important to ground them and harmonize them with the realities of our communities. Without taking into account the context when applying the rules, we would fill the prisons with indigenous people,” reflects Martha Ramírez, head of the Coordinating Center of the governmental National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) of Tlapa de Comonfort, in Guerrero.
Furthermore, he emphasizes, it is important not only to hold communities responsible for this practice. “The State has to guarantee the fundamental rights of women to have a free life without violence. You cannot talk about eradicating forced marriage in a place where girls have neither a birth certificate nor an education…”
While things are changing very little by little, Claudia, the woman who ended up selling her daughter in the hope that it would improve her relationship with her husband, recognizes that nothing has changed and that she does not rule out bringing her back home if she sees that the Abuse of the young woman, now two months pregnant, is increasing.
“What I have is a very great sadness because she lives far from our community. And she worries me because her sister is turning 15 and she could leave too, but she tells me that she wants to go to the United States to work and make a house for myself. That she doesn’t want to get married for now.”
*Their names were changed at the request of the interviewees.
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