The director of the Executive Committee to Fight Trafficking, appointed by the Government of Javier Milei, has little experience in combating this crime. Verónica Toller is a journalist, close to Opus Dei. His greatest experience in trafficking comes from promoting the controversial film in Latin America Sound of Freedomproduced by Eduardo Verástegui, the greatest exponent of the Mexican extreme right. The film had among its financiers a man, a militant of the North American extreme right, who was arrested for child trafficking. “If you were against the film online, they accused you of being a pedophile,” he told Page 12 Rolo Gallego, columnist for the program hosted by María O’Donnell, on Urbana Play. Gallego was the victim for months of a smear campaign orchestrated by libertarian haters and trolls –who even called the station asking for him to be fired–, after revealing that in Buenos Aires cinemas where Sound of Freedom It was listed as having sold out performances, in reality there were empty rooms, with just a couple of seats occupied.
Toller took office in March after the Government removed Gustavo Vera from the coordination of the Executive Committee to Fight Trafficking. Vera, founder and director of La Alameda, With extensive experience in the fight against labor exploitation and slave labor, he came from the administration of Alberto Fernández. Within the framework of the commotion caused in the country by the disappearance of the child Loan Danilo Peña, 13 days ago in the Corrientes town of 9 de Julio, Vera revealed the dismantling of public policies against trafficking by the Milei Government.
In addition to dismantling provincial delegations – there are only ten left – and dismantling the inter-institutional tables that operated in each jurisdiction, the Government decided to transfer the Chief of Staff Committee to the orbit of the Ministry of Security, headed by Patricia Bullrich. This contradicts the objective of that organization, which is to coordinate the actions of the different portfolios involved in the issue in compliance with the Biennial Plan against trafficking: Security, Justice and Human Capital. Previously, it also included the Ministries of Labor and Women, Gender and Diversity, but the first was absorbed into Human Capital and the second was directly eliminated. The Committee must prepare the new Biennial Plan. The current one expires this year. We will see what the objectives are and with what budget and resources it is carried out.
Since Milei governs, all assistance programs for victims of trafficking have been cut. They were also left alone. The message is “there are no funds.” With that hose, there were no registrations in the Accompany program, nor in the Restitute nor in the Return to Work (former Potenciar Trabajo). Nor were additions entered into any housing plan, as had been happening.
A controversial film
Toller is director of the Vulnerability Observatory of the Austral University. In her anti-trafficking agenda she has “surrogacy” in her sights, an issue that she divides feminisms. In tune with the new head of advisors at the Foreign Ministry, Úrsula Basset, the lawyer behind the reactionary turn in Argentina’s foreign policy, Toller shares the same powerhouses of the extreme right in the region. “They have close thoughts,” a lawyer who knows them told this newspaper. Both consider that Comprehensive Sexual Education is a gateway to sexual exploitation because – in their twisted minds – they maintain that CSE sexualizes boys and girls early. Under the umbrella of the fight against sexual exploitation, they always position them as victims and not as subjects of rights. Thus they come to question ESI because they understand that boys and girls are the property of their parents.
In her Linkedin account, Toller also details that between 2021 and 2023 she was communications and press director of the “Tour against Trafficking” that Verástegui led throughout the region promoting the film. Sound of Freedom. This means that he even wrote about the film in the newspaper La Nación, where he usually writes columns.
The film was a high grosser in the US. The film is supposedly based on the true story of Tim Ballard, an American agent who worked in the US Homeland Security Investigations Office, who became involved in a rescue operation. children from a human trafficking network in Cartagena.
But in October Ballard was denounced by five women, who accused him of having sexually abused them with a deceptive practice during his work as an undercover agent. “Our participation in Operation Underground Railroad was based on our commitment to fighting human trafficking. But while participating in that noble cause, we were subjected to sexual harassment, spiritual manipulation and sexual misconduct,” said Suzette Rasmussen, an attorney who represents, according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
“Apparently, Ballard would have resorted to the ‘couple’s ruse’ practice with which he would have forced the complainants to pose as their wives to deceive child traffickers. The women allege that he would have used this strategy to act in operations against pedophiles, while he allegedly manipulated, harassed and sexually assaulted them,” the newspaper reported.
The film premiered in Buenos Aires with a grand avant première at the Cinemark Palermo on August 18 of last year, with the presence of the film’s director, Javier Monteverde and several local celebrities such as: Carolina Pampita Ardohain, Flor Peña, Nicole Neumann , Camila Homs, Esteban Lamothe, Christian Sancho, Luciano Cáceres and Celeste Muriega. Starring Jim Caviezel, with the participation of Verástegui himself, the film premiered on August 31, in 223 theaters throughout the country. It became clear that a lot of money was moving behind the film. Then came the attack on the networks against the entertainment reporters who criticized her. As happened to specialized journalist Rolo Gallego, who was accused of being a pedophile and asked to be fired at Urbana Play, the station where he works.
Sound of Freedom is one of the films produced by the former soap opera actor and former Mexican model, ultra-Catholic and anti-human rights, with whom Toller has been working. Verástegui’s “pro-life” activism consolidated him, he says, after co-producing and starring in the film between 2005 and 2006 in the United States Pretty, in which he plays José, a man who meets a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and convinces her not to have an abortion. At that time he organized prayers and demonstrations at the abortion clinics in Los Angeles, the city where he lived.
During his years of religious activism, Verástegui forged alliances with various conservative politicians in the United States and Mexico. In 2020, Donald Trump himself recruited him as a White House advisor for policies related to the Latino community in that country. In July 2021, Verástegui was invited as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, where he expressed his concerns about “the expansion of socialism in Latin America” and announced his plans to organize CPAC in Mexico in 2022, where he was the host. At the last CPAC meeting, which was held in Washington, one of the star speakers was Javier Milei. That was where the famous scene of Mieli’s effusive hug to Trump took place.
Verástegui tried to run for president in the last elections in Mexico but did not obtain the necessary signatures. Anyway, he announced the creation of his political party.
