On Dec. 6, guests gathered at the waterfront reception inside Edgewater’s Quantum on the Bay Condominium. Dressed in stylish attire and brimming with excitement, they were eager to preview one of Miami’s many Art Basel events set to take place in the coming days.
Yet unlike typical contemporary art exhibitions that invite open interpretation, this one featured powerful paintings and murals that vividly and poignantly confronted the stark reality of human trafficking.
January marks Human Trafficking Awareness Month, spotlighting the exploitation of individuals for labor or sex through force, fraud, or coercion. Miami ranks fifth nationwide for reported cases, while Florida ranks third among states, following California and Texas.
(Paloma Pimentel)
An art piece depicting the reality of human trafficking at the Human Trafficking Awareness Project Art Basel event.
Miami hosts visitors from all over the world attending renowned events such as Formula One and the Super Bowl, or Miami Music Week and Art Basel, that occur every year. These major gatherings also draw human trafficking for labor and sex work, fueling this illegal industry.
“I've been attending Art Basel events for years, but I've never seen an event like we had to bring awareness to human trafficking in a time where it’s most prevalent,” said Victor Williams, retired special agent for Homeland Security Investigations and CEO and founder of Quest2Freedom, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating human trafficking globally.
In partnership with Barry University and Tree of Life, Quest2Freedom hosted the groundbreaking event and remains dedicated to spreading the message at future Art Basel gatherings.
“Hopefully, for as long as Art Basel continues, there will be a human trafficking awareness project where artists and survivors use art to highlight this issue and keep raising awareness,” said Williams.
During the event, he passionately conveyed the message through dialogue that fostered understanding, complemented by storytelling expressed through art, where many pieces illuminated the lived experiences of trafficking survivors and their paths toward healing.
“We wanted people to not only be informed of some of the dangers of human trafficking and what it looks like, but also who to call when they see it,” he said.
One powerful painting depicted a woman revealing half her face to show a smaller version of herself trapped in a cage. Created by Gloria C. Martinez, it reflects her daughter Gloria E. Martinez’s experience as a human trafficking survivor.
Gloria E. Martinez founded the Tree of Life Center to support struggling families, and Taking Back the Girls, a nonprofit organization helping young women, many of whom are also human trafficking survivors, build independent, meaningful lives.
“My passion has always been helping adolescent girls because of what happened to me,” said Gloria E. Martinez.
FLASHBACK TO A DARKER PAST
(Courtesy Victor B. Williams)
Victor B. Williams, Founder and President of Quest2Freedom and retired Homeland Security Special Agent.
Growing up in Cutler Bay, Miami, Gloria E. Martinez, now in her 30s, uses her lived experience when she was trafficked during the ages of 12 to almost 18 by her then-boyfriend, to educate others for prevention.
“He was around my age, went to school, and seemed like a regular guy at first,” she said.
As they got closer, Gloria E. Martinez found herself involved in illegal activities, coerced by her trafficker disguised as her boyfriend, such as drug dealing, shoplifting, and sex work.
She explains how at age 12, she was too naive to understand what was really going on and the manipulation tactics she was subjected to.
“I didn’t start doing sexual favors immediately, it started with my pity and sympathy for him,” she said. “He was raised by a single mom, and they were down and out.”
She explained how she was head-over-heels for him, convinced that the small favors she was doing for him that lead to sexual favors for other males through appointments, were necessary to live a happy life together.
“This is what I have to do to make sure that we will have the life that we want and we will have a condo overlooking the water and have this amazing, luxurious life as soon as I am able to get him where he needs to be, and then it will be my turn to get to where I need to be,” she said.
She described how her trafficker used the “Romeo pimp” tactic, where he sold her a dream where they would live happily ever after as long as she followed his orders and remained loyal.
Unaware that she was being groomed, her trafficker manipulated her into recruiting other girls by encouraging her to make many female friends and bring them around him and his male friends for a good time.
She admitted there were times she wanted to escape but faced severe consequences. Once, when she refused an appointment, her trafficker ransacked her home while her family was away, instilling fear to force her compliance.
At 17, her trafficker was shot in the head and murdered in another state. Shortly after, Gloria E. Martinez enrolled in college in Massachusetts. Still haunted by her past, she sought therapy, only to be stunned when her therapist revealed that she had been trafficked. At first, Gloria E. Martinez was in denial, where her belief was that she had been voluntarily performing sexual favors. But, after three years of therapy, she accepted the fact that she had indeed been trafficked.
"It was really hard to understand what trafficking was back then because no one talked about it. It wasn't something that was discussed," she said, adding that her only knowledge of the issue came from movies where teenage girls are kidnapped while traveling abroad. Ultimately, she didn’t imagine that could happen close to home and by someone she trusted.
Gloria E. Martinez emphasized how the social norms she learned growing up in the early 2000s set her up to fail in romantic relationships.
“I think, given the traditional home I grew up in and the culture at the time, there’s no way I could have learned to view relationships in a healthy and equal way,” she said.
She explained how her perception of relationships was skewed by growing up in a household where the woman stays and takes care of the home and listens to the man.
“It did very much work in my household because my mom was disabled,” she said. “And so, my dad just had to provide, and my mom had no problem being Suzy Homemaker. She loved it.”
Her father put her in self-defense classes at a very young age, but that wasn’t enough to keep her out of trouble.
“I used that as much as possible to keep myself safe,” she said. “But trafficking, domestic violence, and even sexual assault was never something taught to me.”
Another factor that created an unequal perception of romantic relationships was the culture prevalent during her teenage years.
“The music at the time wasn’t helping,” she said. “It was the Uncle Luke era, and Ludacris,” she said, explaining that the lyrics devalued women, normalized explicit language about sex work, degraded women, and reinforced inequality by suggesting that men could have multiple partners while women were expected to remain loyal.
This new era is different, she said, and explained how she notices that younger generations look out for each other, and any mistreatment in relationships is more likely to get exposed.
AWARENESS AND PREVENTION
Williams explains that education on the cultural awaren
(Paloma Pimentel)
A painting by Gloria C. Martinez (left), about her daughter Gloria E. Martinez’s (right) experience as a human trafficking survivor.
ess of human trafficking is key to prevention.
“We educate communities on the cultural aspects of human trafficking because we believe culture perpetuates the problem, and people need to understand their role in it,” he said.
He added that activities like strip clubs and bachelor parties often involve trafficking victims, but we don’t recognize them because we’ve been taught to accept these situations as social norms.
Williams has spoken several times on NBC News to spread awareness of how human trafficking is often missed. He emphasizes that it is not only sexual but also applies to labor trafficking, a common form in South Florida, where illegal immigrants are forced to work long hours for minimum wages and exploited. Workers are kept in a vicious cycle and trafficked through force, fraud, or coercion, where their trafficker often keeps their legal documentation, inhibiting them from breaking free, he said.
Williams stressed that immigrants exploited under the threat of being reported to Homeland Security have rights. They can document their situation and report it to law enforcement, which opens an investigation that allows them “continuing presence” or two years of legal status in the U.S. and work authorization while cooperating with law enforcement throughout the investigation.
Once recognized as a victim by law enforcement, they may be eligible for a trafficking visa (T visa), which provides more permanent status in the country.
Additionally, undocumented victims of other crimes like rape, sexual assault, or domestic violence may qualify for a U visa, which allows them to stay in the U.S. while assisting in the investigation of the crime.
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
(Facebook.com )
Gloria E. Martinez (third to last), founder and CEO of Taking Back the Girls, attending a human trafficking awareness event in North Miami.
The goal of Quest2Freedom is to raise enough funds to be registered with the National Hotline and provide immediate care for victims when they are first identified, said Williams, adding that often, when he worked as an agent, he wasn’t able to help victims escape their trafficker because he couldn't find a place to house them, leaving them in a vulnerable situation.
Gloria E. Martinez is pursuing a doctorate in social work to create a unified tool for identifying trafficking victims and at-risk minors, replacing the varied assessments used by states.
“What I am working on in my doctorate is in getting all the tools I possibly can from all the organizations nationwide to develop one tool that we can use across the board and really say, OK, this is a victim or this is a survivor, or this is a girl or boy that is at risk,” she said.
She explains that different states use different assessment tools, and that these tools, such as surveys and strategic questions, are important because victims don’t usually know what being trafficked really means.
“You can’t ask them outright because some of them don't know,” she said.