Another Sign of the Venezuelan Invasion

A sign in the red light district offers to wire money to Venezuela.

A window sign in a different part of town
offers to send money to Venezuela.

Venezuelans everywhere! It's not news that many thousands of Venezuelans - some guesstimate more than a million - have fled into Colombia from the shrinking economy, hyperinflation and raging crime in their own country.

As a result, it seems as tho nearly every hotel, restaurant and shop has at least one Venezuelan employee.

More notoriously, reportedly many Venezuelan women have also gone into prostitution in Colombia. That was evidenced dramatically in Bogotá's red light district the other day: I saw at least four signs offering money transfers to Venezuela on a single street.

For some, prostitution must be a rational professional choice in which the dangers, risk of suffering abuses and social stigma are compensated by a relatively high income. But many Venezuelan evidently enter the profession out of sheer desperation, to bring some food home, or to send a few rapidly devaluating bolivars home to Venezuela.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Makeover for Rita

Cyclists observe Rita in the Parque Nacional.

The long-suffering Rita's
graffitied torso.

Rita, 5:30 p.m., the sculpture by Enrique Grau on Carrera Septina in Bogotá's Parque Nacional has become something of an unlikely urban landmark. Standing at the entrance to one of the city's most popular parks, right beside its largest Catholic university, Rita is a prostitute.

Installed in the park in 2002, over the years, Rita has suffered for reasons more related to her location than her profession. Offering large iron plates on one of the city's primary thoroughfares, this Rita tempts not sexually frustrated males, but passersby in search of self expression, often without the redeeming qualities of artistic ability. Poor Rita has become defaced by graffiti and tagging. Soon, Bogotá plans to clean and renovate Rita.

Besides urban neglect and adolescent misbehavior, Rita's condition could also

A poster on a wall in the Santa Fe neighborhood's
red light district says 'Rejection.'

be interpreted as a representation of abuse against women, always a timely issue in Bogotá. And news of her repairs comes at a time when policies about sex work, which is legal in designated 'tolerance zones,' are once again under discussion in the wake of the sexual abuse of a 3-year-old girl taken from an informal day care center located in Bogotá's Santa Fe tolerance zone.

Whether she is honoring prostitution or warning against it, Rita's renovation won't come cheap: 27 million pesos, or about US $1,000 dollars, according to El Tiempo.

Still, it might be worthwhile, if not for the fact that Rita will get graffitied again soon after.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Futile Fine

Forced into clandestinity? Sex workers wait for clients
on a Bogotá plaza.

To the list of unenforceable and destructive laws, you can add the proposal by a congresswoman to impose a fine for purchasing sexual services.'

A sign in La Candelaria offers 'erotic massages.'

Prostitution has existed - legally or illegally - since time immemorial, and a fine isn't likely to change that. In Colombia, it's legal - or at least depenalized - in certain designated areas, known as 'tolerance zones,' altho that has done little to limit the industry. But fining johns will only push this already troubled and dangerous lifestyle deeper into clandestinity and give cops yet another opportunity to illicit bribes.

The fine, invented by Liberal congresswoman Clara Rojas, is supposed to finance programs to help 'victims of prostitution' leave the business, may be a well-intentioned effort to help prostitutes, many of whom undoubtedly suffer abuse and exploitation, and some of whom are trafficking victims. However, many prostitutes don't consider themselves to be victims at all, but sex workers.

"It wasn't created to help or protect sex workers," said Fidelia Suárez, president of the syndicate of sex workers. "We are not victims or disabled people, but people who made our own decisions to do this work. Fining those who pay for sexual services amounts to penalizing the whole (sex worker) population.

"It is stigmatizing and discriminatory."

'Rough Girls.' Advertising for webcam
workers on a post near private universities.

And the fines, which would start at around 3 million pesos per infracción and increase every two years from then on, would amount to a prohibition on sexual servicies - if the law were actually enforced. It wouldn't be, of course, particularly since most clients of prostitutes appear to be blue collar men who earn little. Rather, they'd find it easier to just pay off the police.

There are better ways to help sex workers who want to leave the profession, such as offering them counseling, alternative work training and help with substance abuse issues. Police and social workers might also offer assistance to the underage girls who openly prostitute themselves in some areas - and carry out sting operations to catch their clients.

Colombia's sex workers also have another issue on their hands - a reported flood of Venezuelan prostitutes who have come here fleeing their collapsing country. In response to a court case involving a group of Venezuelans working in a brothel near the border, sex worker organizer Suárez said Colombians should support their Venezuelan colleagues and opposed expelling them back home.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A (Police) Code for Corruption

Don't talk back! If this kid being arrested talks back
to the junior cops, it could cost him.

You can insult the president, your grandma or even a priest - but disrespect a cop and you'll pay for it: 657,000 pesos, according to the new Codigo de Policia.

Keep you mouth shut and cooperate! Police evict
booksellers from a downtown sidewalk.

No matter that 'disrespect' is a vague term, inevitably left up to the cop's own judgement - and that speaking one's mind about the police seems like a basic civil right.

And don't urinate in public, either, because that means a 736,000 peso fine.

And if you're brutish and prejudiced enough to insult a member of the LGBT community, you might have to shell out 657,000 pesos. But insulting anybody is bad, so why should LGBT people be singled out, when insulting someone for being fat, female, black or Armenian seems just as wrong?

The new Police Code, which went into effect on Monday, may be well-intentioned. But its fines seem arbitrary, out of proportion and destined to increase police corruption.

Had too much fun at the local bar, and cop spotted you pissing against a tree on the way home? Maybe that's a bad thing, except for the nitrogen-starved tree - but what's the likelihood that you'll be willing to pay close to a million pesos for your transgression? Instead, you'll reach in your pocket for a 20,000 peso bill and hand it to the notoriously malleable police officer.

And is urinating in public really twice as bad as publishing someone's intimate photos on the Internet without their consent, which means only a 325,000 peso fine? Publishing such a photo can ruin someon's career, while urinating just makes a doorway stink.

Practicing the oldest profession on a central Bogotá plaza
outside of the designated red light district.

And then there is the odd 'crime' of 'obstructing expressions of affection' (not including sexual ones), which I suppose is intended to protect LGBT people's rights to display public affection. But don't conclude that the new police code is about free love, because having sex in public and practicing prostitution outside of designated areas are also subject to fines.

Not that the new codigo is all bad -.if it were only enforceable. For exampole, selling cigarrettes to minors now carries a fine. But that's been illegal for years - as is selling loose cigarrettes - yet every corner seems to host a street vendor eager to sell a smoke to anybody with a few coins in their hand.

Colombia is not Singapore, and unless penalties are realistic, they'll only feed corruption and disrespect for the law, rather than a more ordered country.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Sex Work: From Problem to Solution?

The Cartagena Hilton, where a White House advance team member may have hired a prostitute.

In April 2012 U.S. Secret Service agents produced a huge scandal by hiring prostitutes while preparing for Pres. Barack Obama's visit to Cartagena, Colombia.

Sex workers leader Fidelia Suárez.

Bizarrely, the scandal overshadowed the international summit meeting Obama was attending - and dragged on and on, as details dribbled out about the agents' activities with the hired ladies of Cartagena.

But throughout the whole episode and after, the Obama administration repeated one point: Nobody directly employed by the White House had had a dalliance with a prostitute. Now, however, an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper finds that one minor White House advance team worker may have brought a prostitute to his room in the Cartagena Hilton Hotel.

Sen. Armando Benedetti.

The worker, a 25-year-old Yale University students, was a 'volunteer' paid on a per-diem basis, in charge of coordinating car transport in Cartagena. Hilton Hotel records indicated that he had received a female overnight guest. The worker, whose father had contributed almost $24,000 to the Democratic Party, denies having hired a prostitute in Cartagena, and in another case in Cartagena a prostitute was registered to the wrong room.

In any case, the Post's reporting suggested that U.S. government investigators had been pressured to leave out information about any White House connection to the scandal.

What two consenting adults do together is their own business, especially where prostitution is legal. But in this case, one of them was responsible, in at least a small way, for the safety of a president. And, even where it's legal, the prostitution industry inevitably has connections to organized crime.

But you can bet that if the U.S. government workers had associated with narcotic cartel leaders instead of prostitutes, the issue would have received much less attention.

The sex workers advocates in a recent march for workers' rights. 

The new polemic comes at a time when Colombian prostitutes are speaking up, at least a bit, and asking for labor protection like any other job. Senator Armando Benedetti has introduced a bill intended to guarantee benefits and protections for sex workers. A court recently ruled that sex work is a profession like any other. During a recent discussion about the issue sponsored by El Tiempo, a spokeswoman for a prostitutes' organization described abuses by police and exploitation by brothel owners.

The proposed law would, among other things, provide health benefits to prostitutes and their immediate relatives.

"The idea is that you (sex workers) have the rights of every other worker and aren't mistreated," Benedetti said.

But everything related to sex work continues to be sensitive.

"The problem with this type of project is that some think that I'm promoting prostitution, and the sex workers think that I want to end their profession," Benedetti said.

"When you talk about sex work, you talk about work," said Fidelia Suárez, representative of the Association of Women Seeking Liberty, an organization of sex workers. "We are not the problem, we are part of the solution."

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

And What About the Women?

The seemingly endless stream of stories about the U.S. Secret Service agents' antics with prostitutes in Cartagena have detailed:

How many men were involved, and how many women. 


How much they paid.


What Cartagena's brothels are like. 


The impacts on the agents' careers. 

But nobody's asked about the women whom the agents paid for sex:

A story in today's New York Times details the experience of one of the prostitutes, whose pay dispute with an agent she'd just slept with. The woman comes off as assertive, but also vulnerable: she almost left without payment, said that the episode had left her anxious and crying and had made her decide to abandon Cartagena.

The reporter apparently didn't ask how the woman had become a prostitute, altho her proud self-description as an 'escort' suggests she did it voluntarily, as does her price - several times the monthly minimum wage for a single night's services.

El Tiempo also cites rumors that some of the prostitutes were minors, which is of course illegal in Colombia. The ICBF, the child protective authority, says it will investigate.

According to the U.S. State Department's 2010 Human Trafficking Report "Colombia is a major source country for women and girls subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution." Undoubtedly, there's also domestic exploitation, as this report called Human Trafficking in Colombia: A Modern Slavery says. But, according to the report, some women who migrate within Colombia to work as prostitutes do so "on a voluntary and free way: they can decide the length of stay, type and number of clients to meet and work schedules."

I've also interviewed several prostitutes who appeared to be satisfied with their work, at which  person with limited education can make much more money than she could in a shop or as a street vendor.

When prostitution - or just about anything else - is prohibited, it just gets pushed underground, where prostitutes become even more vulnerable and fearful of seeking help.

Perhaps the best solution is for prostitution to remain legal and regulated, with assurances that women who want to leave 'The world's oldest profession' have the option of doing so.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Another Area for Legalization?

The news that a dozen United States Secret Service agents have been called home from Cartagena because at least one of them allegedly had 'contact' with a prostitute suggests another area for decriminalization.

The legal status of prostitution is a legitimate subject of debate. Legalization enables authorities to regulate and even tax prostitution, and makes sex workers feel more able to seek help from police if they're abused. But critics of legalization say that legal prostitution can serve as a cover for abuses and trafficking of girls and women, as happens in Spain, The New York Times reports. Holland, where prostitution is also legal, is also a major destination for human trafficking, according to this United Nations Report. Back when I was a journalist, I also heard horrific stories about impoverished girls being forced to become prostitutes in Ecuador, where adult prostitution is legal.

But there I also talked to adult women prostitutes who swore by their profession, with which they supported their families.

But prohibiting prostitution also turns a natural human activity and what's supposedly the world's oldest profession into a subject of scandal, giving it a far greater importance than it deserves.

Proof of that are the headlines in the Washington Post and New York Times about the U.S. Secret Service agents getting called home because at least one of them allegedly bought sexual services in Cartagena during the run-up to the Summit of the Americas, taking place this weekend. While prostitution is illegal in almost all of the United States, it is depenalized in 'tolerance zones' in Colombian cities, such as Bogotá's red light district.

Evidently, the Secret Service agents' tastes were not expensive. A Bogotá radio station sent a reporter to the supposed source of the alleged prostitutes, the 'Pleyclub' in an industrial neighborhood of Cartagena. The only sign on the entrance warned patrons to keep an eye on their belongings. The house next door offered rooms for 18,000 pesos a night - less than $10.000.

Nevertheless, the Americans apparently didn't pay for the services, causing the prostitutes to contact the police and put the affaire on the newspapers' front pages.

But the Washington Post, always keeping us abreast of Secret Service men's sexual misbehavior, reports a different story: that one of the agents took a woman to his room during a late night party at the agents' hotel. The woman turned out to be a prostitute, something which the agent may or may not have known, and she demanded payment. The agent refused, the Post reports, and the woman caused a disturbance and complained to the hotel staff, who called the U.S. Embassy.

Legalizing prostitution would have lots of impacts, positive and negative. But on the positive side would be that the naughty behavior of a few Secret Service agents wouldn't risk overshadowing the important issues being discussed at one of the Western Hemisphere's most important events.

Meanwhile, those agents may be regretting being cheapskates, which will likely cost them dearly.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Profession Like Any Other?

Prostitutes wait for clients on a Bogotá plaza. 

A woman who worked as a prostitute in a Bogotá dance club became pregnant and was fired from her job. She sued, claiming that the firing was illegal and that the club owed her health benefits. And a court recently ruled in her favor, that prostitutes, like other employees, deserve job protection and benefits.

Even among femenists, there's debate about whether prostitution should be legal. Is it inevitably demeaning to women? Does it have to be dangerous? Can a person make a free, mature decision to become a prostitute, or are women and girls ultimately forced into it? Does legal adult prostitution serve as a cover for child prostitution and human trafficking?

In Colombia, as in much of Latin America, prostitution is legal, altho here it's supposed to be restricted to certain neighborhoods known as 'tolerance zones,' which are defined here and conditions for the sex industry here. In passing thru central Bogotá's tolerance zone, in the Santa Fe neighborhood, the women standing in the doorways and walking the sidewalks don't appear particularly oppressed to me. I see them chatting and joking to each other and waving to prospective customers cruising by on motorcycles or in taxis. 

But appearances may be one thing, reality another. And, who knows what goes on inside the buildings?

In my very limited contacts with prostitutes, as a journalist, I've heard about different kinds of cases. In Ecuador, where prostitution is also legal, I interviewed a young woman who as a teenager had been lured into a brothel and held there as a sex slave before managing to escape. With the help of an anti-human trafficking organization, she'd prosecuted the brothel owner, altho I don't recall how the case ended up in Ecuador's corrupt and disfunctional court system. When I interviewed her she was administering another brothel, where she said the women were treated well. The abuse she'd suffered still haunted her, but evidently she thot well enough of the profession as to have stayed in it.

I also accompanied the students to the shutting down of a legal brothel which had illegaly employed young girls. The adult prostitutes there were furious that their employer was being shuttered: "How will I feed my children?" one demanded  - but expressed no sympathy for the young girls forced into prostitution against their wills.

Prostitutes in Bogotá's Santa Fe neighborhood,
where prostitution is depenalized. 

In the recent ruling in Bogotá, the court pointed out that denying the legal rights of prostitutes would only favor the interests of the brothel owner, "with grave consequences for the prostitute," and "it also appears contrary to the principle of constitutional equality...and restricts fundamental rights, such as dignified treatment, the free development of the personality, right to earn a living and that to a just compensation for work."

The court said that not giving prostitutes benefits "also treats unfairly a minority social group that has been traditionally discriminated against."

Previous court rulings have also held that prostitution is a profession and that prostitutes have a right to work.

I also spoke to a young woman who works as a prostitute on a plaza in central Bogotá. It's outside of the designated tolerance zone, but the police seem oblivious of the many prostitutes. I met her thru one of the men renting cell on the plaza, whom I asked whether he knew a prostitute who would be willing to tell me her story.

"How about her?" he said, indicating the apparently healthy young woman seated beside him. I was surprised, both because of her appearance and her very normal dress. But she smiled cheerily at me, unashamed. For me, a person who believes that prostitution probably should be legal but has always seen prostitutes as stigmatized outsiders, I was taken aback by her openness about her profession.

This young woman, who is only 22, and is nicknamed Jeje, has been working as a prostitute for about three years. She had worked in a shop near the plaza, but didn't like having to fulfill a schedule or being supervised. While a shop employee, men propositioned her and so when she lost that job, she fell into 'the world's oldest profession.'

"You don't have to be at work at 7 a.m. You don't have a boss bossing you around. If you don't feel good, you don't have to work," she said. "And how else could I make this amount of money in so short a time?"

Most of the other prostitutes got there "for the easy money," Jeje says. In fact, in Colombia prostitutes are known as "women of the easy life."

Most of her clients are decent, Jeje says, altho there are exception "who treat you like garbage." Some resist using condoms, which she said she insists on, but none has ever forced her to have unprotected sex. Still, she acknowledged, condoms sometimes break or fall off.

That produces risks not only for the prostitute and client. A 2009 survey found that 41% of clients of prostitutes in Bogotá don't use condoms with their wives or girlfriends, potentially infecting them with diseases.

And there are other dangers - from the environment. While working the plaza, Jeje's sniffed glue, altho she hasn't become addicted, and smokes marijuana regularly.

"When you're amidst shit, some of its sticks to you," she says.

Jeje estimated that half the prostitutes on the plaza are drug addicts. The police sometimes harass the sex workers, she says - but not because they're prostitutes, but because of the drug use.

But Jeje can earn typically 40,000 pesos in twelve hours, altho that varies greatly. Yet, it's a decent income for a person with only a ninth grade education and no inclination for more studies.

But she knows she can't be a prostitute forever; "When I'm 50, who's going to ask for me?" So she says that, besides raising her son, who is three, she's saving money to open a business one day.

Jeje feels pity for the older women working the plaza - and for the many underage girls. She'd never want a young relative of her own to become a prostitute. For that matter, she doesn't let her family know her profession and hopes that her three-year-old son never finds out.

If his friends knew "they'd call him an hijo de puta (son of a whore)," a common insult in Colombia.

And, when evangelical Christians have accosted her and the other prostitutes, she says "I know it's wrong."

Men walk near the El Oasis brothel in the Santa Fe neighborhood. 

Yet, from this young woman's experience it's not clear to me why her profession is wrong - except from a religious perspective. Certainly, it has many particular dangers. But if prostitution were completely regulated and prostitutes given psychological and health support, then they might be more assertive about protecting themselves from disease and violence. As a prostitute, she's also been exposed to drugs. But is this because of prostitution's inherent nature or because, as a stigmatized profession, sex workers are pushed into such an environment?

Jeje acknowledged that if she could earn as much in a formal job, she'd prefer it. And if Jeje had more education, then she might be able to obtain such work. But Colombia is a long way from educating everybody.

And, if it did, I suspect that prostitution would continue - just more expensively.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Santa Fe Neighborhood

Today, Santa Fe is one of the man slum areas in central Bogotá. But Santa Fe has special claim to notoriety as the site of the city's main red light district, or Tolerance Zone, giving the area a reputation for vice and degeneracy. A half-century ago, however, the neighborhood was wealthy - and then the wealthy moved further north, to the Teusaquillo and then the Usaquen neighborhoods.

The La Piscina brothel in the background

Many garbage scavengers bring their gleanings to scrap dealers
in Santa Fe.

Once-grand homes are now brothels.

One of the neighborhood's few well-maintained older homes.

Children line up outside a church-run social services agency.

An apartment building

Santa Fe is also a neighborhood, with families and children.
But what a place to grow up!

Scrap scavengers often use horsecarts. 

Several years ago, leftist university students working with a guerrilla group were building a bomb in this apartment building when it exploded by accident, killing them, the neighbors and a woman walking past. The government has a policy of rebuilding things destroyed by terrorism. But when they discovered that the building had been bought with drug money, they left it as it is. Nobody else has bothered to repair it, either.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours.

Bogotá's Red Light District

 

Bogotá's red light district, known formally as the 'Tolerance Zone,' is sleazy, down-market and, late at night, dangerous. But the place is honest, and, hopefully, the world's oldest profession is practiced here more safely and with less exploitation than it would be if it were prohibited. Tragically, there are also children who prostitute themselves around here, often to support drug habits. Here's a news report about a police sweep which detained five underage girls working as prostitutes in the Santa Fe neighborhood.

A transvestite prostitute prances on Carrera 16 and Calle 20

Bogotá has several other designated tolerance zones, where prostitution is legal. But in no others are the prostitutes permitted to work the streets - as they do quite flagrantly here. The Santa Fe neighborhood is even informally divided between female sex workers and a smaller number of transvestites, each group with its own area. In a recent decision, the city decided not to legalize expanded street prostitution, pending more evaluations of Santa Fe's situation, and to try to tone down exhibitionism there.

In Bogotá, lots of illegal prostitution also goes on outside of the designated areas. High class prostitutes are callede 'pre-pagos,' because they charge in advance by credit card. Don Juan magazine recently did a story about the city's prostitution. Colin Post chronicles his adventures in some of these establishments on his blog.

Related posts: A Profession Like Any Other?

The Red Light District's Guardian Angel

Exhibitionism - a transvestite shows off his stuff to bike tourists.

Many prostitutes at least seem quite satisfied with their profession. But critics of legalized prostitution say that many of them were tricked or forced into the profession while still minors.

Not all those working the streets are women, or at least born women, anyway. 

The children of Patos al Agua (a local school?) planted these plants full of love and friendship. Help us to protect this gift we give to the neighborhood.' A few weeks later, the note and plants had disappeared. 

La Piscina (The Swimming Pool), a famed brothel.

So celebrate! For its anniversary, La Piscina is throwing the bed out the window!

El Castillo brothel, and beside it Dolls House

El Castillo's building has been designated as having 'architectural patrimony,' which is probably the main draw for clients

Waiting in a doorway

Related posts:

The Red Light District's Guardian Angel

Selling Sex: Colin's Career in Bogotá's Brothel Trade

A Profession Like Any Other?

Bogotá's Red Light District

Not Such a Glamorous Profession

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours