EFEMÉRIDES

1912.
Es inaugurada la Escuela Libre de Derecho.


1986.
México ingresa al Acuerdo General de Aranceles y Comercio (GATT), organismo precursor de la Organización Mundial de Comercio.

LIBROS RECOMENDADOS PARA LEER: EL CONDE DE MONTECRISTO, ALEJANDRO DUMAS

Hola, como han estado, espero hayan disfrutado mucho al libro anterior que les pusimos sobre la mesa, sin duda es un tema muy enriquecedor que te invita a vivir en el presente, pues bien siguiendo con el trabajo personal que cada quien vaya desarrollando, les traemos un libro que no solo nos mantendrá ocupados en el trabajo interior, si no que ademas, al ser una novela, nos mantendrá interesados en la historia de la trama.

Si bien es cierto que resulta ser un libro extenso, también resulta ser un libro demasiado fácil de leer y que permite una lectura ágil, quiero comentarles que existen otras versiones reducidas, las cuales a mi entender, tienen el propósito de evitar que al ver un voluminoso libro y de esta forma no espantar al lector;sin embargo, el libro completo o el voluminoso, tiene la magia que dejo plasmada ese excelente autor y que al intentar recortarlo para hacerlo más apetecible a la lectura, en mi opinión pierde mucho valor.

Como siempre les dejo el link para que lo disfruten: https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/El_conde_de_Montecristo

EFEMÉRIDES

1808.
Fray Melchor de Talamantes, entrega al regidor del Ayuntamiento de México, Manuel de Cuevas, su escrito “Congreso del Reino de la Nueva España”, considerado documento subversivo por las autoridades virreinales.


1859.
Benito Juárez expide la Ley sobre Matrimonio Civil.

Century 21 Amici, CAMPAÑA GIVE ME FIVE

CITAS 23 DE JULIO

Cuando se quiere saber una cosa, lo mejor que se puede hacer es preguntarla.

Georges Duhamel

¿QUIENES ESTAN EXENTOS DE ENTREVISTA PARA VISA EN EL CONSULADO?

Denise Vergara

El Universal

Para algunos es confuso saber si deberán asistir a la embajada o consulado al momento de realizar algún trámite de visa

Actualmente el proceso de obtención de la visa de Estados Unidos es más ágil debido a que una gran parte de solicitudes es atendida directamente en el Centro de Atención al Solicitante (CAS), sin necesidad de asistir a entrevista al consulado o embajada.

Sin embargo, ¿cómo saber si califico para la exención de entrevista? Existen diversas situaciones que te ubican entre los grupos de personas que no necesitan entrevistarse con un agente consular.

El primero corresponde a aquéllas personas que ya hayan tenido un visa americana anteriormente, y se está realizando un trámite de renovación de la misma categoría. Para que esto sea posible la visa debe estar vigente o haber vencido hace menos de 48 meses. Si la visa anterior fue negada o cancelada, ya se es candidato para la exención.

El tipo de visa que es tomado en cuenta para la renovación y la exención son las tipo BCC, BBBCV, B1/B2, C1/D, F, H1, I, J, L1, M, O, P, R y TN.

El siguiente grupo es el de los solicitantes de 6 años o menos, de nacionalidad mexicana, de ambos padres mexicanos y que al menos uno de ellos tenga una visa válida y vigente.

Las personas de 80 años o más también están exentos de entrevista, aunque ésta sea la primera vez que aplican para el trámite. Lo único que se debe comprobar es que no ha sido arrestado o condenado por algún delito, o haya sido deportado de Estados Unidos o se le haya negado la entrada en algún momento.

Para llevar a cabo el proceso sigue los pasos básicos: Completa la solicitud DS-160 en línea, paga la solicitud en línea o en un banco, agenda tu cita en el CAS y elige la opción de 'Exención de Entrevista', después acude al CAS para confirmar tus datos, fotografía y huellas dactilares. Después sólo deberás recoger tu visa en un módulo de DHL más cercano.

Siempre hay la posibilidad de que cuando el CAS envíe tu solicitud para aprobación soliciten una entrevista en consulado o embajada, si esto sucede un encargado se contactará contigo para informarte.

WE'RE ALL CYBORGS?

I would like to tell you all that you are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think. You're not RoboCop, and you're not Terminator, but you're cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices. So what's a good definition for cyborg? Well, traditional definition is "an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments." That came from a 1960 paper on space travel, because, if you think about it, space is pretty awkward. People aren't supposed to be there. But humans are curious, and they like to add things to their bodies so they can go to the Alps one day and then become a fish in the sea the next.

So let's look at the concept of traditional anthropology. Somebody goes to another country, says, "How fascinating these people are, how interesting their tools are, how curious their culture is." And then they write a paper, and maybe a few other anthropologists read it, and we think it's very exotic. Well, what's happening is that we've suddenly found a new species. I, as a cyborg anthropologist, have suddenly said, "Oh, wow. Now suddenly we're a new form of Homo sapiens, and look at these fascinating cultures, and look at these curious rituals that everybody's doing around this technology.They're clicking on things and staring at screens."

Now there's a reason why I study this, versus traditional anthropology. And the reason is that tool use, in the beginning -- for thousands and thousands of years, everything has been a physical modification of self. It has helped us to extend our physical selves, go faster, hit things harder, and there's been a limit on that. But now what we're looking at is not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self, and because of that, we're able to travel faster, communicate differently. And the other thing that happens is that we're all carrying around little Mary Poppins technology. We can put anything we want into it, and it doesn't get heavier, and then we can take anything out.What does the inside of your computer actually look like? Well, if you print it out, it looks like a thousand pounds of material that you're carrying around all the time. And if you actually lose that information, it means that you suddenly have this loss in your mind,that you suddenly feel like something's missing, except you aren't able to see it, so it feels like a very strange emotion.

The other thing that happens is that you have a second self. Whether you like it or not, you're starting to show up online, and people are interacting with your second self when you're not there. And so you have to be careful about leaving your front lawn open,which is basically your Facebook wall, so that people don't write on it in the middle of the night -- because it's very much the equivalent. And suddenly we have to start to maintain our second self. You have to present yourself in digital life in a similar way that you would in your analog life. So, in the same way that you wake up, take a shower and get dressed, you have to learn to do that for your digital self. And the problem is that a lot of people now, especially adolescents, have to go through two adolescences. They have to go through their primary one, that's already awkward, and then they go through their second self's adolescence, and that's even more awkward because there's an actual history of what they've gone through online. And anybody coming in new to technology is an adolescent online right now, and so it's very awkward, and it's very difficult for them to do those things.

So when I was little, my dad would sit me down at night and he would say, "I'm going to teach you about time and space in the future." And I said, "Great." And he said one day, "What's the shortest distance between two points?" And I said, "Well, that's a straight line. You told me that yesterday." I thought I was very clever. He said, "No, no, no. Here's a better way." He took a piece of paper, drew A and B on one side and the other and folded them together so where A and B touched. And he said, "That is the shortest distance between two points." And I said, "Dad, dad, dad, how do you do that?" He said, "Well, you just bend time and space, it takes an awful lot of energy, and that's just how you do it." And I said, "I want to do that." And he said, "Well, okay." And so, when I went to sleep for the next 10 or 20 years, I was thinking at night, "I want to be the first person to create a wormhole, to make things accelerate faster. And I want to make a time machine." I was always sending messages to my future self using tape recorders.

But then what I realized when I went to college is that technology doesn't just get adopted because it works. It gets adopted because people use it and it's made for humans. So I started studying anthropology. And when I was writing my thesis on cell phones, I realized that everyone was carrying around wormholes in their pockets. They weren't physically transporting themselves; they were mentally transporting themselves.They would click on a button, and they would be connected as A to B immediately. And I thought, "Oh, wow. I found it. This is great."

So over time, time and space have compressed because of this. You can stand on one side of the world, whisper something and be heard on the other. One of the other ideas that comes around is that you have a different type of time on every single device that you use. Every single browser tab gives you a different type of time. And because of that, you start to dig around for your external memories -- where did you leave them? So now we're all these paleontologists that are digging for things that we've lost on our external brains that we're carrying around in our pockets. And that incites a sort of panic architecture -- "Oh no, where's this thing?" We're all "I Love Lucy" on a great assembly line of information, and we can't keep up.

And so what happens is, when we bring all that into the social space, we end up checking our phones all the time. So we have this thing called ambient intimacy. It's not that we're always connected to everybody, but at anytime we can connect to anyone we want. And if you were able to print out everybody in your cell phone, the room would be very crowded. These are the people that you have access to right now, in general -- all of these people, all of your friends and family that you can connect to.

And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One I'm really worried about is that people aren't taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren't slowing down and stopping, being around all those people in the room all the time that are trying to compete for their attention on the simultaneous time interfaces,paleontology and panic architecture. They're not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way,instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in -- and oh, I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. And so this is very important. I'm really worried that, especially kids today, they're not going to be dealing with this down-time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.

So if you think about it, the world hasn't stopped either. It has its own external prosthetic devices, and these devices are helping us all to communicate and interact with each other. But when you actually visualize it, all the connections that we're doing right now --this is an image of the mapping of the Internet -- it doesn't look technological. It actually looks very organic. This is the first time in the entire history of humanity that we've connected in this way. And it's not that machines are taking over. It's that they're helping us to be more human, helping us to connect with each other.

The most successful technology gets out of the way and helps us live our lives. And really, it ends up being more human than technology, because we're co-creating each other all the time. And so this is the important point that I like to study: that things are beautiful, that it's still a human connection -- it's just done in a different way. We're just increasing our humanness and our ability to connect with each other, regardless of geography. So that's why I study cyborg anthropology.

CAMPAÑA GIVE ME FIVE

Día de Campaña 

Give Me Five

Sus Amigos Inmobliarios

Century 21 Amici, FELICES VACACIONES

LE DESEA UN PLACENTERO DESCANSO EN ESTAS VACACIONES

ASÍ NACIÓ: COCA COLA

Un 8 de mayo de 1886 comenzaba la historia de Coca-Cola en Atlanta. El farmacéutico John S. Pemberton quería crear un jarabe contra los problemas de digestión que además aportase energía, y acabó dando con la fórmula secreta más famosa del mundo. La farmacia Jacobs fue la primera en comercializar la bebida a un precio de 5 céntimos el vaso, vendiendo unos nueve cada día. Era solo el inicio de una historia de más de 120 años.

Pemberton no tardó en darse cuenta de que la bebida que había creado podía ser un éxito. Su contable, Frank Robinson, fue quien ideó la marca y diseñó el logotipo. Había nacido Coca-Cola. En 1891 se fundó The Coca-Cola Company, formada por el también farmacéutico Asa G. Candler, su hermano John S. Candler y Frank Robinson. Dos años después registraron la marca en la Oficina de Registro de la Propiedad Industrial de los EEUU.

Más... https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola

CITAS

La primera Virtud es frenar la lengua, y es casi un dios quien teniendo la razón sabe callarse

Catón de Útica

EFEMÉRIDES

1855.
Los generales liberales Ignacio Comonfort y Santos Degollado toman Zapotlán el Grande, Jalisco, defendido por las tropas del presidente Antonio López de Santa Anna.


1800.
Nace en Guadalajara, Jalisco, Manuel López Cotilla, precursor de la escuela rural y promotor de las escuelas primarias de artes y o cios.


1968.
Inicio del movimiento estudiantil en la Ciudad de México, que buscaba ampliar las libertades democrá- ticas y el cese a la represión gubernamental.

CITAS

Dentro de las relaciones interpersonales, es esencial que te tomes el tiempo para comprenderlas.

Rob Goldstom 

EFEMÉRIDES

1822.
Iturbide es coronado como el Emperador Agustín I de México


1846.
Las tropas del general Mariano Arista se unen en Linares a las del general Tomás Mejía, se trasladan a Monterrey para defender la plaza del ejército norteamericano

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO REQUIERE 70 MIL VIVIENDAS

El jefe de Gobierno, Miguel Ángel Mancera, señaló que para atender la demanda es necesario dejar de politizar el desarrollo urbano

El jefe de Gobierno, Miguel Ángel Mancera, afirmó que para atender la demanda de 70 mil viviendas que se requieren en la ciudad, es necesario dejar de politizar el desarrollo urbano.

“Está muy bien que se escuchen todas las voces, nunca nos hemos cerrado, lo que menos tenemos es cerrazón a escuchar razones o a escuchar argumentos, pero tampoco podemos condenar a la ciudad de México a que no tenga desarrollo. Hoy la ciudad requiere cuando menos 70 mil viviendas, sé que es un reto mayúsculo, quizá no fácil, pero tampoco la podemos condenar a que no tenga vivienda”, aseguró.

Durante la firma de un convenio con la Cámara Nacional de la Industria de Desarrollo y Promoción de Vivienda (Canadevi), el jefe de gobierno anunció que para el mes de septiembre será convocado un consejo de especialistas, académicos y autoridades para retomar la elaboración del Programa General de Desarrollo del Distrito Federal.

“La ciudad de México debe tener un crecimiento en donde puedan convivir la vivienda social que tanto se requiere, la vivienda de la gente que más necesita, de quienes están buscando ese espacio para estar con sus familias, para que no se nos vayan lejos de la ciudad, para que puedan vivir en un área que les permita una mejor condición de vida y donde también la ciudad encuentre otros usos y donde la ciudad se recicle”, sentenció.

El convenio entre el gobierno capitalino y la Canadevi permitirá que el sector de la vivienda se integre al Programa Mi Primer Empleo y brinde oportunidades a jóvenes recién egresados.

Fuente Guia De Inmuebles

EFEMERIDES

1923
Muere asesinado en Parral, Chihuahua, Francisco Villa, El Centauro del Norte, uno de los principales jefes de la Revolución Mexicana. Su acción militar fue clave para la derrota de Victoriano Huerta.

CITAS

La Lealtad Tiene Un Corazón Tranquilo

William Shakespeare

PROVERBIO CHINO

15 COSAS QUE PROBABLEMENTE NO SABÍAS DE LA COLONIA DEL VALLE

1. En 2013 fue listada como una de las zonas con mayor plusvalía de la ciudad, compartiendo sitio con la zona Polanco, la Colonia Condesa, las Lomas de Chapultepec entre otros. Sin embargo, “La nueva colonia Del Valle SA”, como se anunció hace un siglo, ya era una zona con alta plusvalía antes de urbanizarse en lo que fuera un fraccionamiento de 428 mil 408 metros cuadrados.

2. Esta es una de las colonias que se asentó en un área de ranchos y haciendas, diseñada por el ingeniero Guildebardo Cordero y promovida por la compañía Colonia California S.A.

3. “Se vendió” como una zona campestre en la que los lotes no podían ser menores de dos mil 500 metros cuadrados y en cada terreno se debería construir una habitación para el propietario y el resto se dedicara al cultivo de árboles frutales y hortalizas.

4. Parte del plan fue la implementación de un sistema de tranvías para comunicar el fraccionamiento con el centro de la ciudad en un trayecto iba de la Glorieta de Chilpancingo, por avenida Coyoacán hasta Félix Cuevas.

5. En 1919 se logró el cambio de fraccionamiento campestre a urbano con la construcción de avenida de los Insurgentes, quedando separados los barrios de Actipan y Tlacoquemécatl.

6. Se subdividieron las manzanas originales para vender lotes y se crearon calles con nombres de lugares de Europa: Escocia, Edimburgo, etc.

7. San Lorenzo Xochimanca y Tlacoquemécatl pasaron de pueblo prehispánico a haciendas –San Borja, Los Amores, o Santa Rita.

8. La tierra de esta zona daba todo tipo de frutos, de allí que las calles se llaman Fresas, Moras, Duraznos, Tejocotes y Manzanas.

9. En el Porfiriato hubo mucha presencia arquitectónica. El arquitecto que la fraccionó se fue a estudiar a Francia, por eso vemos la elegancia de las calles y las casas amplias con estilo californiano. Todavía se conservan algunas. Entre la arquitectura religiosa que se encuentra en la colonia del Valle destacan la Iglesia del Purísimo Corazón de María, ubicada en la calle de Gabriel Mancera, a un costado del parque Mariscal Sucre. Su construcción se realizó durante la primera mitad del siglo XX y en ella se filmaron varias escenas de la película de Romeo + Juliet (1996).

Sobre la esquina de calles Fresas y San Lorenzo frente al parque San Lorenzo se encuentra el Templo de Santa Mónica (1962), en la construcción de la atrevida cubierta de la cual se contó con la asesoría del arquitecto Félix Candela.

10. En los años 60, los últimos grandes terrenos fueron destinados para giros industriales, comerciales y de servicios, así como equipamiento de salud y cultura.

11. Para 1983 ya funcionaban los ejes viales y la Línea 3 del Metro con sus estaciones Eugenia, División del Norte, Zapata y Coyoacán.

12. En los años 90 abrieron dos malls, provocando concentración de actividad comercial en zonas cercanas a avenida Universidad.

13. Las viviendas unifamiliares que habitaron los primeros pobladores se convirtieron en oficinas y proliferaron los edificios de hasta seis niveles.

14. Algunas de sus calles llevan el nombre de filántropos como Luz Saviñón, Concepción Beistegui, Matías Romero y Adolfo Prieto que la mayoría nunca habitó ahí, pero aportaron con donaciones para construir escuelas, hospitales o sitios de asistencia pública, otros fueron afamados escritores, médicos, periodistas, políticos y filósofos con nombres que para los capitalinos son familiares, pero cuyas historias resultan desconocidas.

15. La Colonia Del Valle es probablemente el área mejor comunicada en toda la Ciudad de México debido a que la comunican varias vialidades importantes como Avenida Insurgentes Sur, Avenida Universidad, División del Norte, Viaducto Miguel Alemán, Circuito Interior, Río Mixcoac, Barranca del Muerto, y Los Ejes Viales 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 y 8 en sus correspondientes secciones poniente y sur. Dos lineas de metro que la rodean y atraviesan y tres lineas de metrobus que la comunican en sus inmediaciones y limites.

Fuente: http://hellodf.com

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS ALL AROUND YOU, THIS HOW IT WORKS

About 10 years ago, I went through a little bit of a hard time. So I decided to go see a therapist. I had been seeing her for a few months, when she looked at me one day and said, "Who actually raised you until you were three?" Seemed like a weird question. I said, "My parents." And she said, "I don't think that's actually the case; because if it were, we'd be dealing with things that are far more complicated than just this."

0:37It sounded like the setup to a joke, but I knew she was serious. Because when I first started seeing her, I was trying to be the funniest person in the room. And I would try and crack these jokes, but she caught on to me really quickly, and whenever I tried to make a joke, she would look at me and say, "That is actually really sad." (Laughter) It's terrible.

1:01So I knew I had to be serious, and I asked my parents who had actually raised me until I was three? And to my surprise, they said my primary caregiver had been a distant relative of the family. I had called her my auntie.

1:17I remember my auntie so clearly, it felt like she had been part of my life when I was much older. I remember the thick, straight hair, and how it would come around me like a curtain when she bent to pick me up; her soft, southern Thai accent; the way I would cling to her, even if she just wanted to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. I loved her, but [with] the ferocity that a child has sometimes before she understands that love also requires letting go.

1:47But my clearest and sharpest memory of my auntie, is also one of my first memories of life at all. I remember her being beaten and slapped by another member of my family. I remember screaming hysterically and wanting it to stop, as I did every single time it happened, for things as minor as wanting to go out with her friends, or being a little late. I became so hysterical over her treatment, that eventually, she was just beaten behind closed doors.

2:20Things got so bad for her that eventually she ran away. As an adult, I learned later that she had been just 19 when she was brought over from Thailand to the States to care for me, on a tourist visa. She wound up working in Illinois for a time, before eventually returning to Thailand, which is where I ran into her again, at a political rally in Bangkok. I clung to her again, as I had when I was a child, and I let go, and then I promised that I would call. I never did, though. Because I was afraid if I said everything that she meant to me -- that I owed perhaps the best parts of who I became to her care, and that the words "I'm sorry" were like a thimble to bail out all the guilt and shame and rage I felt over everything she had endured to care for me for as long as she had -- I thought if I said those words to her, I would never stop crying again. Because she had saved me. And I had not saved her.

3:31I'm a journalist, and I've been writing and researching human trafficking for the past eight years or so,and even so, I never put together this personal story with my professional life until pretty recently. I think this profound disconnect actually symbolizes most of our understanding about human trafficking.Because human trafficking is far more prevalent, complex and close to home than most of us realize.

4:00I spent time in jails and brothels, interviewed hundreds of survivors and law enforcement, NGO workers.And when I think about what we've done about human trafficking, I am hugely disappointed. Partly because we don't even talk about the problem right at all. When I say "human trafficking," most of you probably don't think about someone like my auntie. You probably think about a young girl or woman,who's been brutally forced into prostitution by a violent pimp. That is real suffering, and that is a real story. That story makes me angry for far more than just the reality of that situation, though.

4:40As a journalist, I really care about how we relate to each other through language, and the way we tell that story, with all the gory, violent detail, the salacious aspects -- I call that "look at her scars" journalism. We use that story to convince ourselves that human trafficking is a bad man doing a bad thing to an innocent girl. That story lets us off the hook. It takes away all the societal context that we might be indicted for, for the structural inequality, or the poverty, or the barriers to migration. We let ourselves think that human trafficking is only about forced prostitution, when in reality, human trafficking is embedded in our everyday lives.

5:23Let me show you what I mean. Forced prostitution accounts for 22 percent of human trafficking. Ten percent is in state- imposed forced labor. but a whopping 68 percent is for the purpose of creating the goods and delivering the services that most of us rely on every day, in sectors like agricultural work, domestic work and construction. That is food and care and shelter. And somehow, these most essential workers are also among the world's most underpaid and exploited today. Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel another person's labor. And it's found in cotton fields, and coltan mines, and even car washes in Norway and England. It's found in U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

6:17It's found in Thailand's fishing industry. That country has become the largest exporter of shrimp in the world. But what are the circumstances behind all that cheap and plentiful shrimp? Thai military were caught selling Burmese and Cambodian migrants onto fishing boats. Those fishing boats were taken out, the men put to work, and they were thrown overboard if they made the mistake of falling sick, or trying to resist their treatment. Those fish were then used to feed shrimp, The shrimp were then sold to four major global retailers: Costco, Tesco, Walmart and Carrefour.

7:00Human trafficking is found on a smaller scale than just that, and in places you would never even imagine.Traffickers have forced young people to drive ice cream trucks, or to sing in touring boys' choirs.Trafficking has even been found in a hair braiding salon in New Jersey.

7:15The scheme in that case was incredible. The traffickers found young families who were from Ghana and Togo, and they told these families that "your daughters are going to get a fine education in the United States." They then located winners of the green card lottery, and they told them, "We'll help you out.We'll get you a plane ticket. We'll pay your fees. All you have to do is take this young girl with you, say that she's your sister or your spouse. Once everyone arrived in New Jersey, the young girls were taken away, and put to work for 14-hour days, seven days a week, for five years. They made their traffickers nearly four million dollars.

8:01This is a huge problem. So what have we done about it? We've mostly turned to the criminal justice system. But keep in mind, most victims of human trafficking are poor and marginalized. They're migrants, people of color. Sometimes they're in the sex trade. And for populations like these, the criminal justice system is too often part of the problem, rather than the solution. In study after study, in countries ranging from Bangladesh to the United States, between 20 and 60 percent of the people in the sex trade who were surveyed said that they had been raped or assaulted by the police in the past year alone. People in prostitution, including people who have been trafficked into it, regularly receive multiple convictions for prostitution. Having that criminal record makes it so much more difficult to leave poverty, leave abuse, or leave prostitution, if that person so desires. Workers outside of the sex sector -- if they try and resist their treatment, they risk deportation. In case after case I've studied, employers have no problem calling on law enforcement to try and threaten or deport their striking trafficked workers. If those workers run away,they risk becoming part of the great mass of undocumented workers who are also subject to the whims of law enforcement if they're caught.

9:28Law enforcement is supposed to identify victims and prosecute traffickers. But out of an estimated 21 million victims of human trafficking in the world, they have helped and identified fewer than 50,000 people. That's like comparing the population of the world to the population of Los Angeles, proportionally speaking. As for convictions, out of an estimated 5,700 convictions in 2013, fewer than 500 were for labor trafficking. Keep in mind that labor trafficking accounts for 68 percent of all trafficking, but fewer than 10 percent of the convictions.

10:13I've heard one expert say that trafficking happens where need meets greed. I'd like to add one more element to that. Trafficking happens in sectors where workers are excluded from protections, and denied the right to organize. Trafficking doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in systematically degraded work environments. You might be thinking, oh, she's talking about failed states, or war-torn states, or -- I'm actually talking about the United States. Let me tell you what that looks like.

10:46I spent many months researching a trafficking case called Global Horizons, involving hundreds of Thai farm workers. They were sent all over the States, to work in Hawaii pineapple plantations, and Washington apple orchards, and anywhere the work was needed. They were promised three years of solid agricultural work. So they made a calculated risk. They sold their land, they sold their wives' jewelry,to make thousands in recruitment fees for this company, Global Horizons. But once they were brought over, their passports were confiscated. Some of the men were beaten and held at gunpoint. They worked so hard they fainted in the fields. This case hit me so hard.

11:28After I came back home, I was wandering through the grocery store, and I froze in the produce department. I was remembering the over-the-top meals the Global Horizons survivors would make for me every time I showed up to interview them. They finished one meal with this plate of perfect, long-stemmed strawberries, and as they handed them to me, they said, "Aren't these the kind of strawberries you eat with somebody special in the States? And don't they taste so much better when you know the people whose hands picked them for you?"

12:05As I stood in that grocery store weeks later, I realized I had no idea of who to thank for this plenty, and no idea of how they were being treated. So, like the journalist I am, I started digging into the agricultural sector. And I found there are too many fields, and too few labor inspectors. I found multiple layers of plausible deniability between grower and distributor and processor, and God knows who else. The Global Horizons survivors had been brought to the States on a temporary guest worker program. That guest worker program ties a person's legal status to his or her employer, and denies that worker the right to organize. Mind you, none of what I am describing about this agricultural sector or the guest worker program is actually human trafficking. It is merely what we find legally tolerable. And I would argue this is fertile ground for exploitation. And all of this had been hidden to me, before I had tried to understand it.

13:10I wasn't the only person grappling with these issues. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, is one of the biggest anti-trafficking philanthropists in the world. And even he wound up accidentally investing nearly 10 million dollars in the pineapple plantation cited as having the worst working conditions in that Global Horizons case. When he found out, he and his wife were shocked and horrified, and they wound up writing an op-ed for a newspaper, saying that it was up to all of us to learn everything we can about the labor and supply chains of the products that we support. I totally agree.

13:52What would happen if each one of us decided that we are no longer going to support companies if they don't eliminate exploitation from their labor and supply chains? If we demanded laws calling for the same? If all the CEOs out there decided that they were going to go through their businesses and say, "no more"? If we ended recruitment fees for migrant workers? If we decided that guest workers should have the right to organize without fear of retaliation? These would be decisions heard around the world. This isn't a matter of buying a fair-trade peach and calling it a day, buying a guilt-free zone with your money.That's not how it works. This is the decision to change a system that is broken, and that we have unwittingly but willingly allowed ourselves to profit from and benefit from for too long.

14:48We often dwell on human trafficking survivors' victimization. But that is not my experience of them. Over all the years that I've been talking to them, they have taught me that we are more than our worst days.Each one of us is more than what we have lived through. Especially trafficking survivors. These people were the most resourceful and resilient and responsible in their communities. They were the people that you would take a gamble on. You'd say, I'm gong to sell my rings, because I have the chance to send you off to a better future. They were the emissaries of hope.

15:28These survivors don't need saving. They need solidarity, because they're behind some of the most exciting social justice movements out there today. The nannies and housekeepers who marched with their families and their employers' families -- their activism got us an international treaty on domestic workers' rights. The Nepali women who were trafficked into the sex trade -- they came together, and they decided that they were going to make the world's first anti-trafficking organization actually headed and run by trafficking survivors themselves. These Indian shipyard workers were trafficked to do post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. They were threatened with deportation, but they broke out of their work compound and they marched from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to protest labor exploitation. They cofounded an organization called the National Guest Worker Alliance, and through this organization, they have wound up helping other workers bring to light exploitation and abuses in supply chains in Walmart and Hershey's factories. And although the Department of Justice declined to take their case, a team of civil rights lawyers won the first of a dozen civil suits this February, and got their clients 14 million dollars.

16:49These survivors are fighting for people they don't even know yet, other workers, and for the possibility of a just world for all of us. This is our chance to do the same. This is our chance to make the decision that tells us who we are, as a people and as a society; that our prosperity is no longer prosperity, as long as it is pinned to other people's pain; that our lives are inextricably woven together; and that we have the power to make a different choice.

17:25I was so reluctant to share my story of my auntie with you. Before I started this TED process and climbed up on this stage, I had told literally a handful of people about it, because, like many a journalist, I am far more interested in learning about your stories than sharing much, if anything, about my own. I also haven't done my journalistic due diligence on this. I haven't issued my mountains of document requests,and interviewed everyone and their mother, and I haven't found my auntie yet. I don't know her story of what happened, and of her life now. The story as I've told it to you is messy and unfinished. But I think it mirrors the messy and unfinished situation we're all in, when it comes to human trafficking. We are all implicated in this problem. But that means we are all also part of its solution. Figuring out how to build a more just world is our work to do, and our story to tell. So let us tell it the way we should have done, from the very beginning. Let us tell this story together.

18:38Thank you so much.

FUENTE: TED TALKS