Pandemic, hunger forces thousands into sex work in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Deprivations caused by the coronavirus pandemic have forced former sex workers in Mexico back into the trade years after their departure, making it more dangerous and reducing some to sex in cars or on sidewalks for lack of available hotels.

Claudia, who, like most of the sex workers interviewed, asked to be called by her first name only, had stopped working on the street a decade ago after marrying one of her former clients. But when her husband lost his job early in the pandemic, the couple was four months behind on renting their apartment.

The only solution Claudia saw was working on the street again.

“It was an income to eat, to pay the rent we owe,” says Claudia, who now owes just one month of rent in arrears. “It’s hard to come back and see so many of my colleagues from the past, my time, go back to do the same … to see all the problems out there.”

Laura, a 62-year-old transgender woman who started working on the streets of Mexico City 40 years ago, struggles daily to stay in her home. If she gets a client that day, she might be able to afford a cheap hotel room for the night. If she doesn’t, she’ll sleep on the street.

Laura said many of her clients have lost their jobs and can no longer pay her. At one point, she had to pawn her phone, her only contact with some of her regular customers.

“Some days you have nothing to eat. … Maybe you eat one day and not the next, “said Laura. As for coronavirus avoidance, “I have faith in God” and hand sanitizer. “

It’s even more difficult for older sex workers like Laura, as thousands of new sex workers have been pushed into the streets as the pandemic forced restaurants and shops to close.

Elvira Madrid, who leads the Street Brigade activist group in Support of Women, said her group found 15,200 sex workers on the streets of Mexico City in August, about twice as many as before the pandemic.

“The surprise was that there were more. On every street corner – it was surprising, ”she said.

Madrid estimates that 40% of people on the street are now women who had left the trade but were forced to return by the pandemic, another 40% are new to the profession and 20% are part-time or occasional sex workers.

“Many of the others – the other 40% – were waitresses who had never worked in the sex trade,” she said. “You know, when they close the restaurants, people have to eat and give their kids what they need. And then the single mothers – most of them worked in stores, clothing stores, bars, cosmetics. ”

“They cried because they said, ‘I don’t want to do this, but I have to feed my kids,'” Madrid said. “But there was another 20% that surprised us more. They were housewives, women with shopping bags who did it for 50 pesos, or whatever they needed to buy food. They did not protect themselves (use condoms) because they did not consider themselves sex workers. “

Madrid said she knows 50 sex workers in Mexico City have died from COVID-19. She and her longtime companion, co-organizer Jaime Montejo, caught it themselves and he died from it last May. The sex workers who congregate outside a metro station believe Montejo contracted the coronavirus while helping them, and Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday last fall they erected an altar for him in the square where many of them work.

Madrid estimates that sex workers have lost 95% of their income due to the pandemic.

Conditions that have always been difficult for the women who trade in Mexico City – violence by clients and gangs hunting prostitutes and shakedown by corrupt police – got worse during the pandemic.

Partial lockdown rules forced many hotels to close, and others increased the prices they charge sex workers. As a result, some made the equivalent of just $ 3 or $ 4 from each customer.

Madrid said that after closing hotels or increasing prices, some people started renting out rooms or storefronts to sex workers, who found that the landlords tied them up with customers and demanded payment in exchange for not posting the videos on the Internet.

Now, Madrid said, the women should take customers wherever they can.

“Everyone finds wherever they can to have sex, in cars, on the sidewalks,” she said. “They have been looking for a safer place to work because the hotels are closed.”

Most of the hotels have reopened, but many have increased their prices.

Despite fewer customers, lower revenues and more risks, thousands of women during the pandemic see no choice but to stay on the streets of the capital, waiting for hours in the hot sun or in dark corners. And many days they still go home to hungry families with no income.