In Mexico, A Refuge For Aging Sex Workers
 Reed Johnson - LATimes
| | Residence allows ex-prostitutes to live out lives in dignity |
Mexico City - Carmen Munoz ticks off the basic facts of her life in a quiet, neutral voice that belies the horrors she has known:
Married at 12 to a man 10 years her senior. First-time mother at 14. Worked as a housecleaner while her husband spent his days idling, confiscating the few pesos she'd earned and burning her with cigarettes to keep her in line.
"What he liked was money and beating me up," she says of her former spouse. "He enjoyed making me bleed."
Then someone told Munoz about a man who was willing to pay 1,000 pesos if she'd go to a certain hotel and do what she was told. Uncertain but desperate, she took the offer and began her new life as a sex worker.
"It was very difficult, but as soon as I began to see money, as soon as I saw that I had enabled my children to eat, the situation definitely changed for me," Munoz says of those long-ago days.
Perhaps the only thing tougher than being a prostitute in this churning capital is being a prostitute in what Mexicans poetically call the tercera edad, literally the "third age," or "third stage of life."
Though technically illegal, prostitution is widespread in many parts of Mexico, often poorly regulated and still a taboo subject in this roughly 80 percent Roman Catholic country. In the past, sex workers who survived to their golden years could expect to be broke and living on the streets.
But for some of them, that may not be the case.
Since November, a number of elderly, retired sex workers here have found refuge in the Casa Xochiquetzal, a group home that is believed to be the first such facility in Latin America. Opened in a renovated historic building that once housed a boxing museum, the Casa was donated by the Mexico City government, which also is paying for the women's food, medicine and utilities. To be admitted to the free facility, an applicant must be at least 65, no longer active in sex work and receiving no other aid.
For the 20 women who call it home, including two 85-year-olds, the Casa has been a godsend.
"Previously, my preferred saying was, `In the end, we all end up in jail,'" says Munoz, the home's director. "Today I say, `In the end, we all end up in peace,' because for us this house is a place of peace, because it is ours."
Accommodations at the Casa are comfortable, if spartan. All rooms are shared. The women help raise some money for themselves by making costume jewelry, and there are plans to have them make and sell baked goods as well.
Named for an Indian word for a type of flower, Casa Xochiquetzal is the fruit of an unusual collaboration involving sex workers, feminists, a prominent theater director and the city government.
Munoz says the idea for the residence first took shape when she began noticing numbers of poor, elderly prostitutes in the area around the city's historic center.
"I felt this in my own flesh, and I said, `Today it's them, tomorrow it could be me who could be in this situation in the street.'"
Eventually, a friend put her in touch with Jesusa Rodriguez, a theater artist whose El Habito space is known for its feminist-inspired cabaret-style performances.
In the summer of 2003, Rodriguez met with a group of about 70 prostitutes. The younger women were interested in forming a large, national movement to advocate for sex workers' rights, but the senior women had a more modest goal.
"The older ones, above everything, wanted a place where they could live their life with dignity," Rodriguez recalls.
Other influential figures helped to arrange a meeting with then-Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who expressed shock that there were grandmothers working as prostitutes a stone's throw from his office.
The city found a building to donate: a block-long, abandoned structure at the edge of the historic center. |
Vallarta Weddings
News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2007 
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