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“This is very occasional but at least it has helped us to sustain ourselves because I have no idea what my life would be like right now if we did not have this small income,” this 23-year-old girl in the room tells Efe. she shares with two other friends in Cali.
In order to subsist in a medium that was left without customers due to the prohibition on leaving the house that has been in force since Colombia on March 25, Carolina and her friends earn a living attending erotic video calls over the cell phone.
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The clients are already known and although this modality does not give them the same income as the face-to-face, it allows them to receive some money, previously transferred to their bank accounts, for “a half-hour interaction”.
Without money and with responsibilities
“It has affected me a lot because I really am a person who depends on what works daily and in the union we all have very great responsibilities to cover,” he says of the quarantine, but resigned himself because “nobody at the national level, worldwide, was prepared for such a situation, “he says, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the difficulties, Carolina cannot remain locked in her shared room waiting only for the obligatory social confinement to end because, in addition to her own expenses, she also has an eight-year-old son, parents and siblings in the southern department of Caquetá. those who should help financially.
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Her story is that of thousands of Colombian women who were pushed by poverty and lack of opportunities to big cities to become sex workers.
“It is a somewhat complex story; in my family there were not many resources to feed our house because we are enough, so when I turned 18 I simply wanted to be able to collaborate with my family” and that is how he went to Cali “to be able to exercise this”.
He clarifies that he decided to go away from home “because in the country they stigmatize this work a lot” and he did not want his family to be publicly pointed out for their way of earning a living.
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“I hope this ends soon so that our lives will normalize because income is very minimal this season,” he says, adding that he aspires to leave prostitution when he turns 25 and, with what he can save, set up his own business. of liquor sales.
General problem
The spread of COVID-19 dramatically altered the way of life and reduced the income of women, and also men, to zero, who live from sexual services and now simply do not have anything to eat, according to the founder and president of the Union of Workers Sexuales from Colombia (Sitrasexco), Fidelia Suárez.
“The government is preaching but it is not applying. They talk about subsidy deliveries and nothing has come, they talk about markets for certain localities and there has been nothing,” says Suárez.
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In Colombia, prostitution is not illegal, but the union leader regrets that there is still no legal framework that protects the rights of those who voluntarily exercise that profession, nor a census to find out how many there are.
“This crisis caused by the coronavirus is becoming more worrying every day since there is no protection, nor is there any guarantee of our rights as women and men, that we do one more job in the country and that is sex work,” she affirms.
According to Suárez, the income of the sex workers had already been affected by the arrival of Venezuelan immigrants who “have stayed with clients who were previously from Colombians.”
This week more than fifty of these women who ran out of income received aid for groceries and hygiene items through the union.
Business paralyzed
This surprising disruption to everyday life caused by COVID-19 also affects other links in the sex business, explains Elizabeth Arturo, manager of Eventos Liz, an adult nightclub.
“We are adrift, waiting for the government to say they will return, but when that happens, we do not know (…) if there will be money for this type of activity,” says the woman, but her anguish only tends to lengthen because the quarantine that was due to end on April 27 was extended until May 11.
In her opinion, the paralysis they experience affects them in a “cruel and ruthless way because, if we don’t work, we don’t eat,” she says, referring to her and the 30 girls who worked at her nightclub.
Edwin Arbeláez, owner of a swinger bar (exchange of couples), also misses the “normal times”, those days when he organized the so-called “strong Fridays” attended by up to 70 couples.
“The coronavirus is going to take souls but also large, small and medium-sized companies,” he says.
The same problem is caused by Humberto Villegas, owner of two motels in Cali, who assures that his business was going well but the measures against the coronavirus have already forced him to fire 60 of his 100 employees.
“Here we have an aggravating factor and that is that since there is no aid from the Government, another coronavirus is coming, which is the economic crisis that may be worse than the coronavirus itself,” warns Villegas.
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