Copy link to share with friends Copy link Because sex work is work too. To the sides of the labyrinth of passageways that run along the market stalls selling, well, everything, stand women of all ages and sizes.
Many of them play with their phones as they wait for their clients, leaning against the shops behind them to take the weight off their high-heeled feet. On a Monday in early October, it was full. Some 25 sex workers had come to hear a local politician talk about one of the initiatives being considered by the city legislature to formalize sex work and β ideally β give those who provide it more rights and protections.
As we talk, she munches on the enchiladas and corn cobs elotes passed around by her colleagues. Now, what are we going to do to change all of this? Enter La Brigada. That was when the girls started to see changes and started to act β to come here, to get together, to march for their rights.
She has received death threats many times, reliving with fiery tears in her eyes a memory of the day five hooded men came for her with guns. She escaped out the back. Another time, they beat her and her colleagues in an alleyway.
Like the people she represents, Madrid is a survivor. When she first met Madrid, she was immediately captivated. Through Elvira, I learned the need to protect myself. I know what my rights are now. A law against human and sex trafficking, she says, led to some of the harshest repression that the sex-working community in Mexico City has suffered.
