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guatemalan oasis

Travel Carefully: Transgender Sex Workers in Guatemala The Guatemalan capital looks like a ghost town after dark. Most roads are silent and empty apart from the numerous clusters of transgender and cross-dressing sex workers in Zone One and a few other parts of town where traffic is relatively heavy and potential customers roll slowly by the kerbs in taxis or private cars. I travel in a rented van with Debby Maya (born Rafael Sandoval), who survived nine years working on these streets, where prostitutes are regularly bashed, abducted, mutilated and murdered. Despite her effeminate, almost girlish character, Debby is direct and loud in conversation and aggressive in getting her point across. She now provides counselling, moral support and health services (including HIV testing) through a Guatemalan NGO, OASIS (Organization of Support for Diverse Sexuality Confronting AIDS). I am taking photos towards an exhibition to raise funds for the organization and as I pull out my camera for the first time we are a block from the place where Paulina, Debby’s former colleague, was gunned to death a year earlier. Sulma, another friend, was shot in the face and the arm that same night but survived. Witnesses say the three attackers wore police uniforms and rode National Civil Police motorcycles. “The police are our main enemies”, Jorge Lopez, director of OASIS, told me at our first meeting. “These killings are part of what they have called 'limpieza social' [social cleansing] and they are carried out with complete impunity”. The organization documented sixty-seven crimes against gays in 2006, eleven of them murders of sex workers. No one has been prosecuted. Every night a crew from OASIS spends several hours distributing condoms and lubricant and doing a kind of roll call, checking who is on the streets so they know if someone goes missing. At first it’s difficult to believe that there could be an openly gay culture, let alone such a conspicuous transgender sex industry, in the traditionally macho and now conflict-hardened society that is Guatemala. This is a country still slowly recovering from 36 years of civil war, military terror campaigns and human rights abuses on a vast and sickening scale. Speaking to many of the streetwalkers I become aware that a large number are essentially refugees from other parts of Central America, mainly El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, where according to them the situation for non-heterosexuals is even worse. Stacey, a tall, statuesque Salvadoreсa with tightly braided hair, tells me she had to leave her town as a teenager because her family rejected her and the community would not tolerate her homosexuality. Now she shares a small place with other migrants on one of the city’s perimeters. She’d like to study but can’t afford not to work and here prostitution is her only employment option. “Travel carefully”, she advises me as we part ways on the corner where she remains standing under a yellow streetlamp. This is how everyone bids farewell: “Anda con cuidado”. It’s not surprising in a nation where almost two thousand women were murdered between 2001 and 2005, according to Amnesty International. Only five cases have gone through judiciary process. One cold Friday night Debby tells our driver, Alfredo, to pull over opposite a bar called La Estrella. “I wouldn’t bring your camera”, she says to me. “Here they will definitely assault and rob you.” I freeze for a moment as I watch Debby’s massive form stride confidently across the street. Alfredo tells me that even the ‘bandits’ fear her and will settle for a few bummed cigarettes instead of holding up the van if she is around. I follow her into the bar where she hands out condoms, mostly to incredulous looking heterosexual men in cowboy hats who listen, frowning, to her spiel about OASIS and its activities. Later she tells me that she sees it as her role to educate anyone who will pay attention: “Slowly, slowly, the attitudes of people will change in Guatemala.” We’re on our way back to base when we spot Chusita on a corner of the 12th Calle. Having met her before in casual clothes I barely recognise her in a long black wig, miniskirt and high heels. Gabriella Espanic, aka Chusita, has the legal name Mario Rene Mendez Jimenez. She is fifteen years old. Her forearms are covered in scars and scabs that she tells me are from wounds inflicted by other streetwalkers. She doesn’t know her father and supports her mother with the help of her sister, who is a private armed bodyguard. She spends her days at the OASIS building playing board games and swapping stories with friends; at night she waits for clients within these few blocks. Sometimes they go upstairs to a room but often she has to have sex in the client's car. When I ask her what she might be doing in ten years’ time, she tells me she can’t imagine a life beyond prostitution. On the night of December 17th 2006 we deviate from our usual route and stop at the house of Paulina’s family in Zone Nine. It is the first anniversary of her death and a catholic rosary is being held for the occasion. Her mother, kneeling before an altar to the Virgin Mary, weeps steadily through the prayers and songs. Family photos are surrounded by flowers and candles. Paulina, born Juan Pablo Mendez Cartagena, appears in men’s clothes, not in ‘drag’. After the ceremony Luis Zapeta, an OASIS representative, delivers a short speech and makes our farewell: “We have to go now because we’ve barely begun our night of work and have a lot of areas to cover. Tonight we’re taking Christmas presents to all our brothers and sisters working out there on the streets.” Paulina’s mother, tears streaming down her face, kisses us all goodbye outside the front door. She takes my face in both hands. “Anda con Cuidado”, she says.