Known in the 1990s for violence linked to drug trafficking, the Colombian city of Medellin is today an essential destination for trendy tourism and “digital nomads”. But, in a few years, the city of 2.6 million inhabitants has also become a mecca for global sex tourism, including pedophilia. “Women are the driving force of tourism in Medellin. Men come here to look for women and do drugs,” asserts Milena, one of the many sex workers who invade the El Poblado neighborhood every evening, popular with Western tourists.
If prostitution were restricted (it is currently legal), tourism “would drop a lot”, judges the thirty-year-old on condition of anonymity, saying she earns between 150 and 300 dollars in one night, the equivalent of the monthly minimum wage. But the offer is not limited to adults. “Global pedophilia is taking advantage of this to come here,” denounces Jazmin Santa, member of the NGO “Intersectoral Committee against the Sexual Exploitation of Children”.
A local human rights institution noted an explosion in three years of cases of child sexual abuse: 61 in 2021, 792 in 2022 and 1,259 in 2023. At the end of March, the arrest of an American tourist 36-year-old, surprised in his hotel room in the company of two teenage girls aged 12 and 13, threw a harsh spotlight on the phenomenon. As no offense could be found, the man was released and flown to the United States, but the case sparked national outrage.
Two decrees taken by Mayor Federico Gutierrez to try to stem “sexual exploitation”, promising to attack the “criminal gangs” involved in this trade, have in fact changed nothing, or almost nothing.
Medellin has become “an epicenter of sexual services in Latin America”, with many women coming from other countries and in particular from Venezuela, observes Jazmin Santa, who recalls that the city renowned for its “eternal spring” is also known as “ capital of the pornographic webcam.
For the president of the sex workers union in the department of Antioquia, the mayor’s response is “punitive and unconstitutional.” If the measures do not directly target prostitutes, they “undermine the free and voluntary exercise of sex work”. And they do not solve “the crime of sexual and commercial exploitation of children”.
According to the same organization, some 1,500 adults engage in the sex trade in Medellin. In Colombia, the age of consent is 14. Sometimes, perpetrators take advantage of the “fine line between consent and payment for a sexual service” with a minor, explains Jazmin Santa. At least a dozen foreigners have been arrested this year for sexual exploitation of minors in Medellin.
According to the town hall, the number of visitors to Medellin increased from 212,000 in 2015 to 1.5 million in 2023, half of them foreigners. The city seeks to focus on “health tourism, sports tourism and digital nomads.” Behind this very marketing window, the inconveniences of mass tourism. “Narco, sex and Airbnb”, headlined an article in April from the think tank La Silla Vacia, pointing the finger at “prostitution, sexual exploitation and expensive rents”, with a growing gentrification of certain neighborhoods. According to the town hall, Medellin has 14,000 Airbnb-type accommodations, including 6,000 in the El Poblado district alone.
