Prostitution on the Border

Sun series to focus on prostitution and the border
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

In a three-day series starting Tuesday, The Sun will look at the prostitution industry in Mexican cities bordering Yuma County.

The series draws on months of research, with interviews from health officials, local authorities, politicians and dozens of prostitutes. The Sun will take readers into the Mexican cantinas, the health clinics and the homes where prostitution is run and regulated.

In San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., a growing prostitution industry is more visible, having moved from the town's dimly-lit outskirts to the city's main artery along the border, which some say is a pattern that is catering to an increasingly American clientele.

To the contrary, in Los Algodones, Baja Calif., the industry has shrunken with the rise of American tourism in that town. Cantinas have been closed down and converted into new businesses there, though the flow of money and tourists into that town ensures a constant demand for sex.

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Prostitution a booming industry along border
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT,SUN STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY JACOB LOPEZ/THE SUN

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — The neon lights illuminating this growing border city's main artery, Obregon Avenue, represent a thriving business: sex.

It used to be that prostitution took place on the outskirts of this border town.

Now more of the cantinas, hotels and strip clubs where sex workers ply their trade are closer to the port of entry where Americans enter the city, on and around this bustling street that runs east-west one block south of the border.

"The business does well right at the border," said Jose Palafox, who recently stepped down from his seat as mayor to run for a seat in the Mexican Congress.

Palafox said the "strong growth" in new strip clubs along the border is being driven by a clientele that consists largely of American tourists.

That, combined with poverty and a treacherous job market for women, may be why nearly 3,000 people, mostly women, have registered with the city over the last eight years to become legally-certified prostitutes.

And those are just the ones who are registering.

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In Algodones, prostitution occurs on smaller scale
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

LOS ALGODONES, Baja Calif. — As the commercial sex industry has blossomed in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., the opposite is true here.

Many cantinas were turned into shops in recent years as the city made a push to close establishments that officials felt were bad for the city's image in the eyes of American tourists, said the city's manager, Ramon Gonzalez Hernandez.

Now there's a fraction of the cantinas that there once were in Algodones, he says, but the demand for sex persists.

"Drugs, tequila, Viagra, young señoritas — we've got everything you need," shouted a street barker to American tourists recently in Mexico at the port of entry.

Some of the bars, like The Green Door, known to locals as Bar Olympico, are popular among American tourists here. Prostitutes in Algodones said about half of their clients are U.S. tourists.

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Taking steps to ensure safety
BY PAIGE LAUREN DEINER, SUN STAFF WRITER
May 9, 2006

LOS ALGODONES, Baja Calif. — Mary Carmen Martinez Herrera, who works as a prostitute, hopes this blood test will show that she doesn't have a sexually transmitted disease.

Clad in a pink sweatsuit with her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Martinez looks like a grandmother, which, in fact, she is.

The 47-year-old has been working as a prostitute for the better part of her life, and is used to sitting in the plastic chairs of this waiting room, anticipating the pinch of a blood-drawing needle.

She is also used to carrying a health card, which identifies her as a prostitute. The card, which is similar to the one issued to prostitutes by the city of San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., has her picture, name and signature, as well as the last date she was seen by a clinic doctor.

Like all of the card-carrying prostitutes in Los Algodones and San Luis Rio Colorado, Martinez goes to a city-run clinic every two weeks to be tested for STDs. She has to go — it's the law.

Mexico's system of monitoring prostitution is "a step ahead of" Yuma County, said Cesar Reta, Yuma County Department of Public Health's communicable disease investigator and STD program coordinator.

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In Mexico, many prostitutes are single mothers
BY PAIGE LAUREN DIENER AND BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITERS
May 9, 2006

LOS ALGODONES, Baja Calif. — The first time Gabriela Rodriguez had sex with a client she cried.

And recently over a beer at The Green Door, tears once again welled up in her eyes as she said the only reason she started working as a prostitute was to support her children.

"People think this is easy money, but it is a very difficult job. There is nothing easy about it," she said.

In interviews with more than a dozen prostitutes and those knowledgeable about the sex industry in border cities, The Sun found that the overwhelming majority of prostitutes in San Luis Rio Colorado and Algodones are single mothers.

Many come from poverty-stricken parts of Mexico and move to the border, they say, for pay that is higher than what they've made as cooks, house cleaners and as factory workers in the interior.

They move here, too, so that they can work out of sight of their families and communities, in a profession where pay is relatively high, but approval isn't.

Rodriguez said she entered into the profession after her husband — and his money — left her for another woman. Before becoming a sex worker, Rodriguez worked for the state of Veracruz, she said, but the salary wasn't enough for the single mother to support her children.

So she moved to Algodones.