RESPITE FROM THE STREETS: A PLACE TO RETIRE FOR MEXICO CITY’S ELDERLY PROSTITUTES

       Marisa Brigati

       Translated by Elizabeth “Mark” Ramage

       ISSUE 4.1 (2008)

Elizabeth and I have just arrived at Casa Xochiquetzal after walking through the busy streets of the Merced neighborhood in Mexico City, past stalls selling shoes, food, children’s toys, electronics, lingerie, and sex worker clothes. Merced is a central district for street prostitution in Mexico City. In 2002, it was estimated that a few thousand sex workers were operating out of the neighborhood. Casa Xochiquetzal is a home established for women over the age of sixty who are street sex workers.

We sit in a tidy kitchen and a slight, white-haired woman in a knee-length skirt approaches us. She places Nescafé, sugar, and milk in front of us and politely welcomes us to the home. It’s hard to imagine her selling sex in exchange for a plate of food or to avoid a night sleeping in a cardboard box.

Casa Xochiquetzal affords these elderly women something life has usually not provided: choice. The women are not permitted to bring clients to the home, but what they choose to do outside of it is not restricted. Some women take this opportunity to learn new skills or pursue education. They are hoping to make the house self-sustainable by selling crafts and wares.

The house is bright and cheerful, but plumbing and electricity are inadequate. More work is needed for these women to have safe living conditions. Our support and solidarity is crucial.

Carmen Muñoz, a sex worker and the founder of Casa Xochiquetzal, speaks with us about her experiences and explains why she was inspired to open this unique place.

MARISA: What inspired you to open Casa Xochiquetzal, and how did you do it?

CARMEN: Anyone who says they are a sex worker always has doors closed on them. [Before Casa Xochiquetzal opened] there were various shelters, but they treated sex workers badly, they humiliated them, so the women opted to return to the streets.

             I met a photographer, Maya Godeth, who wanted to write a book about sex work, and I discussed the idea for the sex workers’ home with her. I began writing to politicians but got no response. Then, in 2004, Maya introduced me to Jesusa Rodríguez [a prominent Mexican actress, playwright, and social activist], who promised to help us. I finally got a meeting with [politician] Andrés Manuel López Obrador and when we presented our idea and told him what the problems were, he couldn’t believe that there were women older than sixty in sex work. He said he would help us, and in November of that year we were granted this house, which used to be a museum.

             It was totally in ruins. There were cats, dead dogs, garbage. So we all came, the sex workers from La Merced, to clean, sweep, and mop. However, we couldn’t get legal ownership of the building because we weren’t an official organization, so we had to look for an institution that would do that for us. It was really hard until [feminist and anthropologist] Marta Lamas convinced [nonprofit philanthropic organization] Semillas to take responsibility of the project.

             It wasn’t until May of 2005, when [singer] Eugenia Leon gave a concert in the city theater to benefit the house, that we were able to start remodeling the doors and windows. The Women’s Symphony of Mexico City gave another concert to benefit the house and with this money we finished the doors and windows.

             We finally moved into the house in February, 2006. We were able to house fifteen women, who all slept in one giant room. And in April of 2006, the SEDUVI [Ministry of Urban Development and Housing] donated 2,000,000 pesos (about 188,000 dollars), and we were able to pay construction workers to remodel everything. In November, 2006, the house was inaugurated by Alejandro Encinas [the Mayor of Mexico City].

             Now there are thirty-five women living here. But it has been a lot of work for the Instituto Por Las Mujeres, whose name it is under, and for the DIF [Department of Family Integration], who give a weekly donation of fifteen meals. It’s not enough, but it helps.

MARISA: Are there more women who would like to live in the house? Is lack of space an issue?

CARMEN: There’s room for more women, but we haven’t been able to take in more because we lack a lot of things. For example, we sometimes run out of gas and have gone up to fifteen or twenty days without gas. The food, the medicine—we lack a lot. I would take everyone in right this second, but the point isn’t just to take them in. The point is to give them a life with dignity.

             I worry about this a lot because it’s so cold on the street and the women have to deal with so many obstacles. There are times when they walk all day to find a client and in the evening their mouths are dry and they look exhausted. It’s desperate not to have the resources to wash your mouth, no roof to sleep under. It’s something that we should all care about—not just as women or as sex workers but as human beings.

             A lot of people say “but we have good principles.” We, too, have good principles, but we also have a lot of hunger. And that hunger was what made it necessary for us to do sex work.

MARISA: How are sex workers perceived by the rest of society?

CARMEN: To most people we are lazy, good for nothing, vicious thieves; we are the worst. For them we are like ugly dolls and should be hidden in the corner [this is a reference to a children’s song]. But there are more of us every day, and it’s because the core of the problem is never addressed. Why aren’t the madrotas [female pimps] punished? Why aren’t the padrotes [pimps], who extort the sex workers, punished? The fathers who sell their daughters aren’t punished, the clients aren’t punished, none of them are punished. Instead, we are punished.

Photo of Carmen Muñoz, courtesy of Marisa Brigati.

             The government should work on getting rid of child prostitution. In some towns, fathers sell their own daughters. They have seven, eight, ten children, so they send one daughter to a pimp to get a little money every month so they can give the others something to eat. This is what the government should be addressing.

             The government should realize that a lot of us don’t have an education because our parents couldn’t pay for it, precisely because they had so many children. This is what we want people to realize and address, and to never again say that we are working because we like it, because that is false. They should do a little street work and see how things work and then they would stop saying stupid things like that.

MARISA: Are there organizations that work for sex workers’ rights in Mexico?

CARMEN: There are various organizations that say, “We are working for the rights of sex workers,” but please, they are the madrotas and they themselves charge a quota for what they are doing for the ladies. There is nobody that helps anybody here. Everyone who can screw you, will.

MARISA: Are sex workers involved in these organizations?

CARMEN: No. They say that they have been sex workers, but I believe they are sex workers as much as I believe that I’m a nun. A true sex worker would not take advantage of another sex worker, because it hurts in our own flesh, because we know what it’s like to suffer for being in sex work. But those women, no, they are just taking advantage of the pain and need of others for their own financial benefit.

MARISA: How many sex workers are there in Mexico City, and what ages are they?

CARMEN: Look honey, I can tell you the age when they retire, but the age when they start, I would get myself in trouble. Some of them retire at seventy-five, eighty, ninety years old. Some don’t even get to retire. They stay in the streets.

MARISA: How many of them live on the streets?

CARMEN: Here in La Merced there are about sixty, more or less, according to the last poll that was done, but I don’t know. Every day another elderly person arrives. I heard that in Guadalajara there are many young sex workers as well as a lot of old women, women already really old who stay in sex work and who sleep in parks.

             We all have the same needs but our heads are clouded. If we were smarter we would organize, like in other parts of the world. We should be fighting for our rights ourselves. Not the pimps, not the institutions, but us, the sex workers. We should be sharing knowledge and letting everyone know that they can be independent, that they shouldn’t be exploited. We need to get over this submissive attitude, where we don’t say anything, where we bow our heads before those who exploit us. They are not strong. We are the ones who make them strong. We need to stop helping them and start fighting for our own rights and the rights of our friends.

MARISA: They have problems of hunger and poverty. Do they have problems with violence as well?

CARMEN: Of course! There is hunger, a lot of pain, a lot of violence. Women have always been very oppressed. It starts with our fathers. We are told, “You have to obey your brother.” So when some guy comes along and says, “You have to do this,” we do it, because that is what they taught us.

             In my case, I had to support the father of my children. Right after I had a baby, one or two hours after I gave birth, he would come and rape me like I was a beast. Or he would give me his feet and I would have to lick them, otherwise he would hit me. Horrible things, but you have to put up with them because that is what you have been taught, and when you open your eyes it’s too late: you are stuck in a terrible situation, you have already been humiliated, beaten, mistreated.

             They say that the law protects the women, but I have called like fifty times because my next-door neighbor is beaten almost every day, and nothing has been done about it. The other day the abuser told me, “Stop being nosy,” and I asked him, “Why?” and he said, “You know why. They already told me that you are making calls.” I didn’t tell anybody. Who told him I was calling? The authorities, right?

             Where are the people helping women? They take the sex workers away in paddy wagons, and when the women get to the police station they are raped, in the very same police cars. Meanwhile the hotels are crowded with prostitutes who are minors.

             The problem that concerns me the most is that there are so many children in the streets, in the parks, waiting for their mothers to prostitute themselves to give them something to eat, to be able to pay for a hotel room, while there are so many people to whom the government gives four or five apartments. Why not to sex workers? The newspapers say, “The government is helping the sex workers, so they can give their children a dignified life.” Where is that help? If you ask for money they say, “No, right now there isn’t any,” when you can see them handing over money to others, but for you there isn’t any.

             So you just have to tolerate it, keep paying for your little hotel, keep tending to your kids in the street, and one day your sons are street kids and your daughters are prostitutes just like you, because they don’t see anything else. Just vice, vagrancy, prostitution.

             One day I was invited to the Assembly of Representatives for a meeting to talk about a new law. They were saying, “Look, the ceiling is made of marble, it cost so much money, the desks are all made of whatever.” They talk about how they spent so many millions of pesos on food in a few days and I say “Ay, my God, for me one million pesos would be marvelous! I would eat for who knows how many years, maybe until I die.”

             And everyone was like, “Ooh, look at the lamps, they are very expensive!” This is what was supposed to be important to us? We went to learn about the law but they said, “It is very important that you are familiar with the history.” Why do I want to know the history? I am alive and I am hungry, I am cold, I have needs. So what do I care what happened before?

             Maybe it’s better if I just don’t go to these meetings, because one day I might run out of patience.

MARISA: How can we, sex workers from the United States, help you?

CARMEN: You are sex workers from the United States?

MARISA: Yes, I am.

CARMEN: Ay, don’t tell me that! Here I am talking so much! I believe that you, too, have experienced everything I am talking about in some form, right? This marginalization and all that. So we should be working together, communicating to see what we can do for each other, and traveling to see how we work in different places. You have the opportunity to travel, to see that we are independent, that we don’t have to depend on a government or on pimps but on ourselves, and that we can teach ourselves to work for our rights. We should be working together because we are all really fucked! But we have to keep going forward, to take off these yokes. I think you already took yours off, right? That’s awesome, I congratulate you!

ELIZABETH: But isn’t there a more specific way to help? Are volunteers needed?

MARISA: Money, always.

CARMEN: Money, yes always, all the money you want. I’ll send you a trailer! We also make jewelry. There is a girl from Denver who helps with the house, and sometimes she brings me money. One time she brought me one hundred dollars, and sometimes she sends money and I buy materials to make jewelry, and then she takes our merchandise to sell so we can make a few cents. In this way we help ourselves. There are also people who come and teach us things that we don’t know, like the girl who taught us how to make jewelry.

             I won’t deny it, we have a lot of needs, but I don’t think it’s just us. At least we have this roof. There are many who don’t even have that, so their needs are greater. So I ask that, when you see an old sex worker, help her if you can. The same with the young girls who prostitute. They need us. Together we will work toward our ideals.

MARISA BRIGATI is a sex worker and anarchist. Born and bred in New York City, she has traveled extensively and is particularly interested in the intersection of radical politics, the working class, and women.