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C OV E R

PUERTO RICO

We are never prepared to see devasta- about the slavery of a new era. We don’t lives? How can I not? I’ve been doing
tion in our country or any part of the need to go as far as Dubai; we can find it this for 14 years and I am still surprised
world. Do you feel as if everything you in New York, in Los Angeles. Until very by all the testimonies I’ve heard. I sit
have experienced throughout your recently, New York had the highest inci- with the victims and say: “Talk to me,
career has desensitized you? You could dence of human trafficking in the world. tell me your story, what do you think is
also become like a rock. It’s been 14 In other words, from New York they went the solution.” To make a long story
years of hard work with my foundation, to Eastern Europe, supposedly to be short, what we are dealing with today
but it seems to me as if it was yesterday. models. Or they are brought from East- with the hurricanes [in Texas, Florida,
We have done so much and at the same ern Europe or the Midwest to New York and Puerto Rico]—and I tell you this
time I feel we haven’t done enough. under the same pretense. What I want to because I lived it in Thailand after the
say is that we don’t need to go to Cambo- tsunami, and in Haiti after the earth-
It’s a very complicated subject, one dia, we don’t need to go to Thailand, we quake—is that traffickers take advan-
that’s seldom talked about. It’s incredi- don’t need to go far. It exists here, in this tage of people’s vulnerabilities to com-
ble that you wake up one day and with- country, in powerful countries. mit their crimes. Obviously, it happened
out knowing it you have become an abo- in a case like Thailand, where so many
litionist—because this is not a movement In your humanitarian work, you have children were orphaned. It’s a very dark
I started—and suddenly I’m asked “ Are focused on the children of the world. thing, and that’s why everything is inter- FLAG: ISTOCK; OMAR CRUZ (5)
you an abolitionist?” We are talking Do you feel a responsibility to save connected—all the social problems.