I Will Never Go to Tijuana Brothels Again
Tijuana, Mexico (CNN)Stay at dwelling house, be rubber, just get hungry. Go out, earn a living, but risk your life. For so many in Mexico, this has been the pandemic's impossible choice.
And it's a hard plenty choice if you're a shopkeeper or a cab commuter. But it'southward on another level if you're a sex worker.
"I'grand so scared for my wellness," said Alejandra, a sex worker in Tijuana, who asked we only use her first name. "I don't know if the person I'k with has the illness or non."
Welcome to Tijuana
Tijuana, Mexico's famed red-light commune, called Zona Norte, sits a stone's throw from the Us-Mexico edge. Calle Coahuila, the area's main strip, is usually teeming with a frenetic action bathed in neon light.
Women in short dresses and the highest of loftier heels stand forth the sidewalks, beckoning groups of men to spend some time and money with them. Massive strip clubs, some with hotels attached, human activity as de facto brothels.
Many specifically cater to the thousands of Americans who cross the border from California each month, looking for a kind of fun that can't exist found legally in the Usa, except maybe in some Nevada counties where prostitution is permitted.
All of it is legal here -- or, at least, it was until the pandemic descended.
Shutdown
Mexico's government shuttered its economy in late March. Not-essential businesses were forced to close, including in the land of Baja California, where Tijuana is the largest city.
That meant that all the strip clubs, bars, sexual practice hotels and even the sex workers on the sidewalks were forced to close up store, restrictions that remain in place today.
The land border between the Usa and Mexico was also airtight to non-essential travel. It was all done with the intent of slowing the virus' spread.
Only on a recent reporting trip to Tijuana, it was abundantly clear that while the sex industry isn't as vibrant as it was pre-pandemic, there'southward a lot of sexual practice happening behind closed doors.
Some follow the rules, some don't
In that location'southward something odd about standing in an empty strip society with the lights on. Just it'due south where we met Roberto Torres, who owns the El Zorro Men's Gild, just off the district's primary drag.
"I don't call up we're rubber to open yet," he told us. "So, I'yard not going to put myself at take a chance or my employees at risk either."
He had to let become of all his female employees. He says virtually of them went home but for those that didn't, he has an idea where some could've ended up.
Reopening his business would be illegal, but in Tijuana, information technology's articulate other business owners don't care. "People are opening, certain places are open, certain [sex] hotels are open," he said.
The new manner of life is to hazard your life
Nearly 8,000 workers are registered with the government merely in that location are likely hundreds, if non thousands more that aren't registered.
Many have left town or stopped working, co-ordinate to local land police CNN spoke to, only there are those that stayed because they are supplying the demand that remains.
Although the border is officially closed to non-essential travel, at that place are exceptions for dual citizens and few vehicles are stopped for checks by Mexican officials. And so it's relatively easy to make the short trip.
And some Americans are still coming hither to have sex.
They do so with people like Alejandra, whom we found working near a migrant shelter in the metropolis.
She charily agreed to speak with us somewhere private. CNN producer Natalie Gallón let her borrow some everyday clothes, so she wouldn't attract the attention of the hotel staff when nosotros arrived.
"Things are really bad for me, right now," said the several-year veteran of the manufacture, at present in her mid-twenties. "I'one thousand constantly worried, every unmarried day."
She said the pandemic has hit her in two means, watching her customer base refuse while likewise exponentially increasing the adventure of an already dangerous job.
"I just accept no idea what's going to happen, or if I'thousand going to get infected," she said, shifting nervously from side to side in her chair as nosotros spoke.
She's tried to put extra sanitation measures in identify. Her clients at present accept to shower and wash their hands before being with her. She has implemented a no-kissing dominion and uses paw sanitizer gel throughout the process.
But this is sex. Physical contact is unavoidable. Alejandra knows this simply says she has no choice. The only style she tin can provide for her six-year-old daughter is by going to piece of work.
"If I don't piece of work, we don't eat," she said. "What volition I exercise tomorrow if I end up getting sick? But I yet take to go out even though I don't want to."
Another sexual practice worker we spoke to who uses the proper noun Adanna, said she's only been able to beget not to work because two of her regular American clients send her some money each calendar month.
"Without them, I don't know what I'd do," saying that even with the payments she barely gets food on the tabular array for her 5-year-old girl.
If the regime says it's safe plenty for the businesses to reopen, Adanna told u.s. she'd become correct back to piece of work.
Jaqueline Aguilar, 34, a transgender sex activity worker in Ensenada, nigh ii hours south of Tijuana, told CNN over the phone that she returned to work because she had to brand ends encounter.
She's been a sexual practice worker since she was 13 and her solar day-to-mean solar day fears have changed since the pandemic hitting United mexican states.
"Before, my fears were of violence, that a client would kill me or injure me. Now, my fear is the pandemic, to go out and God forbid I go infected and tin't work. How would I eat?"
The government keeps rails of workers in unlike industries who have gotten the virus, in sectors like healthcare. No such data exists for sex workers.
Aguilar, who is also a founder of an organization supporting transgender women and women in the sex manufacture, says she knows of at least three colleagues who had Covid-nineteen symptoms but never got tested. Rather, she said, they isolated at abode.
'I feel completely safety'
We spoke to business concern owners and sex workers during the day in Tijuana, but the but way to get a true gauge on the state of affairs in the ruby-red-light district is to head out at dark.
This is non a identify where journalists are welcome, so we rode through the streets with Baja California State Law.
At first glance, a lot of businesses look closed. The front doors at some of the bigger and more famous strip clubs are locked. Smaller places accept metal gates pulled down over storefronts.
But a closer look prompts questions. Why, if the bigger strip clubs are airtight, did many we pass still have bouncers out front? Why, if the sex hotels are closed, did many have women out front end beckoning people inside?
"The trade is even so happening," said the police commander driving the pickup we were in. "It's just happening behind airtight doors."
That fact was rapidly confirmed by the Americans we saw and heard on the streets and one American we met, standing outside a sexual practice hotel where he'd been staying for a few days, hiring different women.
"Lots of Americans hither," said the human being who appeared to be in his belatedly 50's and asked that nosotros non use his name. "They walk across the border and they come here and do their thing."
He said he'due south existence safe, wiping his hotel room down with antibacterial wipes and not eating indoors. All very prophylactic, except for the part where he has sex with a stranger, which he says he and other Americans hither have no problem with.
"I believe I'thou pretty well educated about all of this," he said. Challenged by the fact that experts on viral epidemiology would universally disagree with him, he would only say he feels, "completely prophylactic."
His ignorance virtually the risks is what puts the lives of the women he hires in danger. But, he's also helping them put nutrient on the table.
They are the 2 sides of a very dangerous coin.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/09/americas/mexico-tijuana-prostitution-coronavirus-intl/index.html
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