on: 'Remember Bolivia' - by Lauren Crosby Medlicott
Hi friend.
It has been a manic week getting the kids back into school. We had grown used to staying in pyjamas until noon and it was a rude wake-up call to rush around to leave the house by 8:45.
In the midst of the wild, I had contact with Andrea Baker, a mother of four sons that lives in La Paz, Bolivia, working for Word Made Flesh Bolivia. She provided me with a perspective on sex workers, or prostituted women, as she calls them, in La Paz that I have relayed for you below. ‘We ask you to remember Bolivia’, were her departing remarks to me. Remember to get out of our bubbles and see what is happening around the world.
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Lauren
‘Many are questioning the validity of COVID threats, in countries with stellar health care and lower death rates. However, Bolivia is facing a severe crisis due to COVID, and honestly it is a challenge to hear complaints about missing the gym, virtual school or mask-wearing. With one of the highest regional rates of extreme poverty, the death rate in Bolivia has surged to among the worst in the world. Some have died of COVID, and others simply did not receive adequate health care, as the whole system has collapsed.’
This was the description of the affect COVID has had on Bolivia from the perspective of Andrea Baker, an American that has spent nearly 20 years in La Paz, Bolivia, working with sexually exploited women and their families. Andrea took time out of her busy schedule to communicate to me how COVID has affected sex workers in Bolivia. However, Andrea tends to use the term ‘prostituted women’, as it more accurately describes the exploitation the ladies have experienced in La Paz.
Before COVID struck, sex work bustled in La Paz brothels, hotels, and bars, where women, mostly between the ages for 18 and 60, worked to sexually appease male clients. There are approximately 22,000 registered sex workers operating in La Paz and El Alto (a slum overgrowth of La Paz). Andrea explained the legal status of sex workers. ‘Sex work in Bolivia is considered "regulated" but not necessarily legal; that means that in order for women to be "registered" in sex work they are supposed to have regular health check-ups and be over the age of 18, though the reality is that even if women are registered there is very little control over these regulations.’ And because the regulations are not adamantly controlled, there is a large amount of human trafficking that that occurs mainly amongst minors, the desperately poor, and indigenous people groups.
Many of the women Andrea works with have told her that they enter into prostitution in La Paz for economic purposes – as in, this is how they have chosen to make money. The more stories she hears, Andrea has identified that women often choose to minimise or ignore how they entered the life of prostitution. Whether it be through trafficking, childhood sexual/domestic abuse (either experienced or witnessed), domestic violence, extreme economic instability, debt, or addiction, Andrea noted that most have complicated, traumatic histories that have forced them into prostitution. Bolivia ranks as having one of the highest rates of violence against women in Latin America, no doubt contributing to the normalised culture of the sex industry, where women are viewed as commodities to use in order to obtain sexual gratification.
Just like much of the rest of world, Bolivia entered into a strict quarantine in March. Death was rampant in La Paz as infection numbers soared. Andrea relayed to me that people were dying in the streets and outside hospitals. Dead bodies decomposed for up to a week in family homes as funeral homes were too full to receive them. Cemeteries created makeshift graves to accommodate a 580% increase in demand for burials. The education system was available to some online, but those that could not afford technology went without schooling. And people resigned that they would either die of COVID or of hunger. It was a bleak, desperate situation that will affect the most vulnerable in Bolivia for years to come.
Sex work was prohibited during quarantine and many of the venues where it had been operating shut – brothels, bars, clubs, hotels. This left over 22,000 registered sex workers (and many more that were trafficked and not counted) without a steady stream of income. Women that did attempt to continue working were arrested, which placed them in precarious situations where they faced abuse within the criminal justice system. Underground brothels and private hotels have operated under the radar, but most women were forced to either stop working or attempt to get clients through street prostitution. Before COVID, there was very little street prostitution in Bolivia, due to the shame associated with being a sex worker. But desperate times have forced women onto the streets – where they are often ridiculed and have dirty water or urine thrown on them by neighbours. They are judged for simply trying to earn a wage to feed themselves and their families.
Other sex workers have used the quarantine as a chance to leave sex work. ‘Many have sought to provide for their families through alternative means, and many have expressed that this has been a real “wake-up call” for them, desiring to not return to the life,’ Andrea communicated. Most of these women can’t make the change alone. There are some government initiatives and non-profits, such as Word Made Flesh Bolivia, who Andrea works for, that are helping these ladies with emergency food, necessities, and support to find other means of income. Word Made Flesh is also continuing to run intervention and restoration projects to support the ladies of La Paz through practical and therapeutic means. However, given the discrimination against sex workers, there aren’t many others supporting this portion of the population.
Sex work in Bolivia carries it with it shame and stigmatisation. Women that have sex for money are blamed for problems such as broken homes and HIV. The Vice President of Bolivia’s sex workers’ union states that sex workers are ‘Bolivia’s unloved’. And yet, all that these women are trying to do is provide for themselves and their children. Many have been forced into a life that they never envisioned for themselves. Are exploited by traffickers. Used and discarded by male clients. And disgraced by disapproving women. What sex workers in Bolivia need is compassion, empowerment, and alternative means of income. And they need men to view them as human beings, not sexual fantasies that should be kept hidden in the dark.
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