Zona Norte - From the street to discreet
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20041011-9...
Tijuana tries to move sex trade out of public eye
By Anna Cearley
October 11, 2004
TIJUANA ? Around the corner from the tourist strip of Avenida Revoluci?n, hundreds of prostitutes wait for clients by lining up in front of hotels and
bars at all hours.
Prostitution has been permitted for decades in the Zona Norte, a part of town where many pimps bring the women they lure from small Mexican towns. The
city allows the women to work after they obtain permits, which require monthly health checkups.
No one expects prostitution to disappear in this part of Tijuana, but city officials want to clean up the city's tawdry image by moving the
prostitutes off the streets into specially built hotel lobbies in the Zona Norte.
A recent attempt to start the process in an alley called Callejon Coahuila demonstrated the challenges the city faces in tweaking with the traditions
and dynamics of this colorful part of town, which also is known for its ties to smugglers, drug dealers and other shady characters.
Two weeks ago, police and inspectors shooed approximately 300 prostitutes out of Callejon Coahuila, hoping they would stay inside the hotels. But only
a few of the hotels have waiting rooms prepared, and the women ended up going to other streets.
Some of the prostitutes, worried they would lose access to a prominent location, threatened to protest by taking off their clothes at City Hall. After
meeting with city officials, they were allowed back into Callejon Coahuila.
"The thing is that there are six hotels in Callejon Coahuila and most of them needed to still be remodeled with the (special waiting) rooms," said
Marco Antonio Villalobos Hern?ndez, director of regulations for Tijuana. "Until the hotel areas are remodeled, we won't touch this."
Unlike American cities, where the sex industry is kept mostly under wraps, prostitution in Tijuana is negotiated on street corners as openly as
getting a shoe shine or hailing a cab.
The city has issued about 3,000 permits that allow prostitution. Most of the permit-holders are women who work in dance clubs, bars or massage
parlors, but about 500 to 600 stand along the Zona Norte's streets, according to city officials.
Though the area is sometimes visited by curious tourists, most of the prostitutes' clients are Mexicans, said Victor Clark. He is a Tijuana-based
human-rights activist who has represented the prostitutes in extortion and abuse complaints.
Other Mexican cities have moved their street prostitutes out of the public eye into hotel lobbies or waiting rooms. Tijuana officials, hotel owners
and some of the prostitutes who work in the Zona Norte had come to a similar agreement over the past two years, Clark said.
"We have always said that it's important to provide more dignity to their work and to transform the urban space," Clark said. "When they are in the
streets, they can be stigmatized and have insults thrown at them . . . and they can get cold."
But Villalobos said the discussions apparently didn't include some of the women who work in Callejon Coahuila, which contributed to the confusion last
month.
The city continues to encourage the approximately 28 hotels in the Zona Norte to set up special waiting rooms, starting with Callejon Coahuila, but no
one ventures to estimate when the rooms will be ready. Even supporters of the idea have their doubts it will work.
"I don't know if it will function or not because prostitution here has its own dynamics," Clark said. "Some of the women are worried that some of the
men will be too afraid to go into the waiting rooms. Facing 30 women in a room may cause them to flee."
Laura Fernandez Contreras, 24, a prostitute who works just outside of the Callejon Coahuila area, said many women also feel safer and more comfortable
standing outside.
"This has been going on for so many years here that I don't think it will change," she said. "When you work on the street, you don't get bothered or
hassled, and you don't have to deal with the smoke in the bars."
Fernandez said she has been working on her own, and that she sends a part of the money she earns to her parents, who are farmers in the state of
Veracruz. She is one of 12 children, she said, and she dreams one day of opening a snack shop back home.
Clark said that a few of the street prostitutes are able to work on their own, but that most end up here through pimps.
A street prostitute between 18 and 25 earns on average about $30 a day, though the younger women can make about $100 a day, Clark said. Most of the
money, he said, ends up in the hands of their pimps.
Clark said that certain small towns in Mexico's interior have become feeder communities for prostitution, but he hasn't found evidence the women are
being trafficked on a wide scale by organized crime groups.
"There are certain villages that produce pimps, and they will go look for young girls whom they deceive and bring to work here," Clark said. "A pimp
that has three girls could be making $300 a day. They use the money to build a hotel or a restaurant back home, so the village's economy is based on
this activity."
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