Slavery Inc

January 27, 2014
Lionhearted Mexican journalist and activist Cacho probes prostitution, pedophilia, and sex trafficking rings across Southeast Asia, South America, and beyond in the follow-up to her last investigative opus, an edition that put one of her targets behind bars. Cacho pulls back the curtain on red-light districts in both East and West hemispheres. She walks through Le Merced in Mexico City as a nun, reports on a Yakuza ceremony in Tokyo patrolled by Japanese police officers, and shares the stories of Iraqi prostitutes servicing American soldiers. Combining journalism and social activism with a problematic lack of objectivity, Cacho’s narrative nonfiction storytelling unfortunately reads less like a trained journalist’s writing and more like a human rights activist in need of a lesson in basic reporting. For example, the author attacks post-modern feminists without clarifying their argument until the very last pages. Writing in the first person, Cacho is overly intent on showcasing the challenges she faced as a female investigative reporter as well as ongoing death threats; her unfiltered impressions detract from what the book purports to be—the story of women bought and sold for pleasure. In a book about so vital a subject, Cacho’s finger-pointing and righteous sentimentality deflate these issues and the victims’ stories into a “could-have-been” call-to-action. Agent: Andrea Montego, Indent Literary Agency.

March 15, 2014
Award-winning El Universal journalist Cacho has a history of crusading for human rights through her work. Here, she chronicles her global travels to document the world of human trafficking. Loosely organized into geographic regions first and then into the ways and means of the trafficking industry, the book never lacks for information. Cacho met untold numbers of sex slaves, pimps, law enforcement agents and rescue workers, and it's obvious she learned a great deal from all of them. This wealth of material, however, causes some problems for the author. Instead of giving detailed accounts, Cacho skims the surfaces of most stories in what seems like an attempt to include as much information as possible. This has the effect of making the book simultaneously dense and shallow, urgent and haphazard. Combined with a tendency to move on from a topic without fully supporting it, there is an underlying sense that the author had so much to say, she was unable to condense and synthesize it into something manageable. Further, many of her references are more than 10 years old, leading to questions of relevance. Directly addressing the reason for this would have been useful in allaying reader concerns about her research. Cacho also examines topics intimately related to trafficking, like money laundering, but these sections suffer the same lack of depth and clarity. What make the book palatable despite these deficiencies are the obvious dedication the author carries for her subject and her gift with words. Cacho is at her best when she loses herself in her interactions with her subjects; in those moments, the writing is so elegant that it purges memories of clunky exposition. It's clear that Cacho, with such passion for her subject, understands far more than her audience will. Unfortunately, she fails to make the connections for those who don't have her background knowledge.

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