A Peñitas man has pleaded guilty to sex trafficking undocumented Mexican women and girls for more than two decades out of two Mission bars.
As part of a plea agreement, Genaro Fuentes, 40, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking a minor girl identified as “Victim 1” during a hearing in McAllen federal court last Thursday.
Fuentes admitted to sex trafficking the girl, who he knew was under age 18, between August 2001 and 2005.
He further admitted to sexually assaulting the girl while she attempted to pay off a smuggling debt that she had incurred with Fuentes’ mother, Rita Martinez.
According to prosecutors, Fuentes and his mother coerced scores of undocumented Mexican women and girls to perform commercial sex work in order to pay off exorbitant smuggling debts.
Martinez allegedly lured the women and girls by promising their families that she would employ them to clean houses or do restaurant work, according to court records.
Fuentes admitted that women and girls were sold out of a Mission bar that his mother owned called Rita’s Lounge or Rita’s Sports Bar. Later, the sex trafficking operation expanded to include a second bar, Brindis, operated primarily by Fuentes.
His mother has pleaded not guilty to the 11-count indictment, which charges her with sex trafficking 10 Mexican women and girls from Durango and Coahuila between 1996 and 2019.
Fuentes, meanwhile, has admitted that he worked as a bartender at Rita’s Lounge, where the victims were forced to sell commercial sex services under the guise of being bar employees.
As part of his duties there, Fuentes shuttled the women and girls from the bar to his mother’s home — where they were forced to live — or to nearby hotels where they would perform sex work.
Sometimes, the women and girls were forced to perform sex work in trailers behind the bar, or in clients’ cars, prosecutors said.
As for Victim 1, the girl lived at Martinez’s Mission home on North Francisco Street and was “working” at the bar by 1999, when Fuentes returned to the Rio Grande Valley after living in Indiana, prosecutors said.
“He was aware that Victim No. 1 — even though she was still a minor — continued to work at the bar, including engaging in commercial sex at Martinez’s direction,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Garcia said while reading a statement of facts Thursday.
Sometime later, while Fuentes was handling the sex trafficking operations at Brindis, Victim 1 went to live with him, according to the statement of facts.
But Fuentes did more than just drive the victims and tend bar at his mother’s bar. Fuentes would have sex with the victims he and his mother trafficked — even before he became an adult.
“The defendant occasionally engaged in sex acts with the undocumented adult females and — when he was a minor himself — the minor females whom Martinez had brought over from Mexico to work at the bar,” Garcia said.
Fuentes felt he was entitled to have sex with them.
“Fuentes would sexually assault women and girls who were newly arrived at his mother’s home, telling them that he had a right to try them,” the indictment states.
Garcia said Fuentes, Martinez and others at the bar even had a term for newly arrived trafficking victims: “carne fresca,” or “fresh meat.”
Martinez allegedly “would send females who worked at both bars to live with the defendant,” Garcia said.
Fuentes further admitted to witnessing his mother negotiate with “clients” over the price for the forced sex workers, and gave them permission to take them out of the bar, according to the statement of facts.
He helped his mother by collecting payment from the johns, and keeping records of the transactions in Martinez’s absence.
The victims were also made to earn money by selling customers what prosecutors referred to as “pony beers.”
According to Fuentes, a portion of the proceeds from the beers — which cost $5 — went to pay off the smuggling debts, though Fuentes admitted he never saw the victims get paid.
Fuentes also observed his mother fighting with the women and girls — pulling their hair, berating them and calling them “whores.”
If a victim tried to leave before satisfying the smuggling debt, “Martinez would look for that female to try to recover the debt,” prosecutors said.
In all, Fuentes participated in the sex trafficking scheme off and on for 23 years.
U.S. District Judge Randy Crane accepted Fuentes’ guilty plea.
In exchange for Fuentes’ admission of guilt, prosecutors have agreed to recommend a 20-year prison term and up to $50,000 in fines.
They are further recommending that Fuentes be ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution to Victim 1 and forfeit two homes in Mission, one in Peñitas and two commercial properties in Mission, including Rita’s Sports Bar.
Fuentes is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
His mother, Martinez, is next due in court in late March.
