Nevertheless, she admitted, the hookers in the area had been sticking to a standard price of about 650 Pesos ($50) for sex.
She then explained, putting her hands on her hips, “If the horn-dogger doesn’t pay our prices then he can’t go home with me!”
As for the tourist market to reiterate, Mexico is one of the favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists from Europe and the United States. Mexico City was one of the leading producers of child pornography videos. An estimated 5,000 children are currently involved in prostitution, pornography and sex-tourism in Mexico. Nearly 100 children and teenagers a month fall into the hands of the child prostitution networks, which are mafias or organized crime syndicates. Mexican authorities discovered a house in Acapulco where pornographic videos were filmed using children ranging in age from newborns to 18 year olds. Furthermore, Mexican police broke up an international child pornography ring based in Acapulco, which had at least 4,000 American clients and as many Europeans.
Mexicans and Americans together had set up the rotten operation.
A large proportion of the minors used in the sex industry catch sexually transmitted diseases, which leave them infertile, while others contract AIDS. Some 25 homeless children contracted AIDS in the past two years after being forced to engage in sodomitic acts. Many girls get pregnant, and are forced to have abortions. All suffered serious psychological problems. Children in Mexico City and cities along the U.S. border are at highest risk of sexual exploitation. Aracely then cried on my shoulders and told me about a sweet little girl she’d known named Rosenda who ended up sterile at age 12, and of a happy go-lucky boy named Tito, who’d always be there to help her with her grocery shopping, and ended up catching AIDS at age 14. Sadly, there were many more like them out there.
Mexico has no laws defining or sanctioning child prostitution and pornography as criminal activity. It wasn’t enough that In mid-1997 the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that forcing a spouse violently to engage in sexual relations was not rape but the “undue exercise of a right.” It wasn’t enough that on July 1991, Mexico revised its rape law, eliminating a provision that allowed a man who rapes a minor to avoid prosecution if he agrees to marry her. The terrible yet remaining fact was that the Mexican justice system is inadequate to protect children from abuse such as child pornography.
Disgraceful ... just disgraceful!
Though the demand for the goods and services of hookers remains strong, the supply has increased manifold as young hopefuls lost their jobs and turned to the time-honored profession. The consequence was increased competition. In contrast, clubs and brothels were increasingly marketing themselves either as high-class and exclusive spas, or as bargain basements of delight; to reiterate, they were barred by Law from advertising sex, so they had to skirt the issue with euphemisms and the sort. Ziticuaro’s biggest bordello, La Diana, is one of the former with a wide variety of enticements. For an entry fee of 80 Pesos, guests gain access, just like the naughty places of Morelia, to a gym, free buffet, a pool and two erotic cinemas ~ it was certain that I wouldn’t find any San Roman movies playing therein.
The sex costs extra, of course. For thirty minutes, I ... uh, I meant other prospective clients had to pay 600 Pesos, with set rates for a variety of other copulatory attentions. On any given day, the bordello had about 70 diligent women, or so a regular customer confided to me as he gorged himself on free taquitos.
Juana, 28, a soft-spoken bottle blonde who worked at the same street corner where Aracely was stationed, had left a job in hotel hospitality two years before to become a prostitute. “It wasn’t a stimulating job, and I wanted to try something more fun and rewarding,” she said, pleading that her name not be mentioned to the local police.
Aracely, once calming down and having a couple of smokes, said she hadn’t seen a decrease in the number of her daily patrons usually about 10 men but they had grown increasingly tight-fisted, except, of course, in the act of playing with her goods. She also bemoaned a drop in professional customers as fewer attended conventions or retreats at a nearby conference center ~ going to “check out the returning butterflies,” they’d tell their families, “just wasn’t worth the price and the hassle, anymore.”
Aracely just mused wistfully as she shook her pretty, swarthy head suffused with dark make-up and bright lip-rouge, “This is what the girls and I have been complaining about. The number of dicks is pretty much the same, but they only find their way to us once or twice, not three or four times like before.”
Notwithstanding, La Diana owners were working over-time at bringing in discerning patrons through other or additional incentives such as discount cards and lowered prices for taxi-drivers and older horny-boys. The incentives had translated into an increase in the number of regular patrons, and Aracely benefited from the “run-off” of excess trade. At the other end of the spectrum there was Las Ficheras club-bordello, which had branches in Mexico City and Monterrey. It opened in mid-2007 with a focus on the discount-minded “slam-bam-thank-you-m’am” shopper, and offered an “all you can sex” flat-rate. Thus I discovered, for my own curiosity, that for 400 to 500 Pesos, depending upon the time of day, patrons could enjoy any sexual services with an unlimited number of girls. For their work, the girls were also remunerated with a flat-rate wage.
I asked Juana about this, and she thought it grand: “All the girls get a daily wage of 650 Pesos, so they don’t have to fret over money, which is good in this working environment.”
She also noted a steady increase in “aspirants” ever since the Ficheras Club had opened, attributing this in part to the bordello’s flat-rate salary. “Many girls in other dumps aren’t earning a living wage anymore, and we offer steady, secure money.”
Yes, there is nothing like job security!
Juana further explained that the pricing structure had helped the bordello avoid any money anxieties, despite the global market downturn, and that the number of horn-doggers had not diminished.
Back at the “Presa del Bosque” Mercado, Aracely, as she paced nervously with cigarette in hand, said she was thinking of a change in location. She then bent down to retie the laces on knee-high black patent leather boots with five-inch platform heels only to reveal remarkably ample glutes worthy of handling with care. She was planning to head soon to Las Vegas, to work in strip clubs that still catered to horny truckers, saying there was still ample work there as well. She confided, “I make more in one night just dancing than on the streets here.”
Juana, meanwhile, said she would eventually return to the quieter life working for hotels, but that she was in no rush to leave the high pay and dependability of prostitution. “This type of job will always be in existence,” she shrugged. “People will always have money for a little bit of culiando (“ass-play” = sex).”
WHEN THE LIGHT
WENT OUT AT THE MOVIES
At last I made it back to Mexico City. Suddenly, I felt a presentiment of death. Suddenly, I felt I would not arrive in time to look up this strange figure that had been my object of fascination since learning of his existence. He dominated my meditations, thus totally re-directing the true purpose of my journey to this country. Fulgencio San Roman had completely occupied my spare thoughts and quiet moments since crossing the borders of Tamaulipas. Announcements of his worsening condition had made it to the international news broadcasts and were more frequent. Concurrently, I received word from Corazon that her brother Andres was getting worse and now they feared he would not recover.
Meanwhile, the attractions and distractions of the big metropolis remained the same. I would be attending a major Cinema Festival which, to my surprise, would be themed around the Gay genre, even while holding tribute retrospectives for revered antecedents such as Emilio Fernandez, Gabriel Figueroa, Luis Bunuel, Ismael Rodriguez, and, of course, Fulgencio San Roman. The first time director and movie buff Hugo de Mirlos Branco was appointed the chairman of the festival. He spoke of his inspiration, and mentioned Fulgencio in a number of (very
boring) speeches. I was surprised to learn he had tried to hold a gay and lesbian film festival in the 1990s, but it was shut down by the Federales before it even opened. When he tried to organize a gay cultural festival a couple of years later, five dozen Federales swarmed the venue, closing it.
The forthcoming Wednesday before DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, however, Branco and other organizers managed to pull off the opening to the five-day Mexico Queer Film Festival with no police and no disruptions, but drawing only a low-key but an appreciative crowd to the Garibaldi Art District in the city’s heart.
For Mexico’s gay community, that week’s film festival and an art exhibition on sexual diversity in Distrito Federal, along with the previous season’s growing gay pride festival in most of the major cities, are quiet steps forward after years of slow but unmistakable progress. Branco, a professor at the Azteca Film Academy, said the events marked a significant moment for Mexico’s fledgling gay movement. It has gone farther and faster than anything in America.
He was quoted as saying, “The biggest change is that I’m not the only one doing this. There’s more support from the gay community. Society has become more relaxed and open-minded in its thinking.”
And, based on what I saw first hand, I would say he was most certainly NOT exaggerating. But he sounded a note of caution that progress is often accompanied by disappointments, saying promoters would not consider the events a triumph until they make it to their closing ceremony the following Sunday unspoiled by protests.
“In Mexico, we were the first to put on queer events. In those events, we’ve had harassment and that had lasting influences,” Branco went on to say. “(Now) we’ve enjoyed a successful premier and if we can also assure a successful closing to the event, it will have another kind of impact.”
Mexico has indeed eased its control over some aspects of gay life, and made strident forward moves in others. Years before, sodomy was removed from the country’s list of crimes, although homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder in some bigoted circles even though it is widespread throughout Latin-America; Latins themselves prefer to keep it a huh-hush affair for the sake of modesty if nothing else. In recent years, the gay community in Mexico has gone from being practically invisible to establishing a secure foothold in society. In large cities, gay bars are more popular than straight bars, and gay and lesbian activist and support groups have achieved a respectability in the Media. Internet access to gay groups online has helped ease the isolation for those who live in rural areas. At last the country boys could look forward to other, human partners besides chickens and goats!
Even so, many in the country’s gay and lesbian population complain of discrimination and continue to face stigmatization. Many remain deeply closeted in a still highly backward society where illiteracy and hunger are still major issues. Gay Web sites are often blocked by the competing media’s Internet firewalls.
Still, community activists see progress in the fact that gay-themed events that would have been banned outright when their parents were growing up are now being permitted.
I asked one of the curators, Salvador Mungia, who helped put together the Guadalajara art show a few years before, the first in the country to explore sexual diversity and gender issues, about the significance of the festival, and he explained, “years ago, this would have been completely impossible, it was that simple.”
Now he was putting together exhibits for the works of 16 artists, which included explicit explorations of gay and other gender issues.
The auditorium for the film festival’s opening movie, a story of a mulatto Mexican man from Veracruz who searches for the soul of his dead Gringo lover, was packed with a lively crowd of about 240 people, mostly young and proudly gay. Others who’d attended were simply curious to know more about gay issues, a segment lusted for by sponsors who sought to encourage dialogue between the gay community and the wider public.
One of Mungia’s artists, a 29-year old artist named Dora Jimenez who lived in the area, told me, “I don’t know that much about the lifestyle so I was curious. I really liked the movie. You see on-screen the raw emotions in the relationship between them. It’s a very good opportunity for the public to better understand the gay community.”
That’s not to say that everything has gone smoothly with gay Mexicans. The art show curators ran into problems with local Church opposition just before opening day.
“I used to think Mexico’s Catholic Church was becoming more and more open. On TV, movies and magazines, you hear more and more about these issues,” said Gerardo Mariscal, a second curator who prefers to be called “Gargajo.” He went on to reflect, “But before the exhibit started, they came and told us ‘You can’t do this. The Church won’t like it.’ That changed my mind a little about how ready Mexico’s traditional Catholics really were. After all, most of their priests are gay or pederasts. What’s the god-damned big deal?”
Good question. What was the god-damned big deal with them?
Accordingly, furious fulminations over the festival followed, and in the end only four works were removed including one photo showing a man holding a crucifix in one hand, a fish over his crotch in the other, and a crown of thorns on his head, as well as a painting depicting two naked men in a sexual act. Sponsors decided to leave the empty white frames hanging on the wall as a statement on censorship, and solidarity with the artist. In spite of the initial hostility, and the incumbent problems of putting it all together, the exhibit’s opening drew an estimated 3,000 people--an enthusiastic public response that left its sponsors delightfully shocked.
The sponsors remarked they’d made a concentrated effort to keep the events low profile to ward off unwanted attention from lurking narco-traffickers because they too like to hang about the Garibaldi district. There were no fliers or public advertisements for the events only announcements circulated on Web sites. And they chose to hold it during business hours when they knew suspicious figures weren’t normally around haunting the adjacent restaurants.
The same low-key approach was taken by sponsors of the country’s gay pride festival, though the turn-out was overwhelming, something that nobody could ignore. They carefully planned a week’s worth of movie screenings, art shows and sports events all held in Garibaldi’s private venues instead of public spaces, which was just as well since I didn’t want to be recognized either.
Despite the attempt to circumvent obvious obstacles, several events still ended up getting postponed or canceled by local officials who’d claimed organizers didn’t have the correct permits, but they were just out to give the gay community a hard time (no pun intended).
The festival, nevertheless, got high praise from El Alarma, a newspaper with an internationalist perspective, and which ran a front-page article lauding organizers for sending a strong message about “greater acceptance and tolerance.”
Overall, Mexico has been gradually, surprisingly moving in a direction of more openness toward the gay community.
“I think the changing governments, the fall of the PRI party from grace in the year 2000 gave us a lot of space for the local gay community to grow and flourish,” Gargajo went to explain. “I’ve been in Mexico City for seven years and the changes in the gay scene I’ve seen in other cities around the country are tremendous. It’s a metamorphosis.”
On the other hand, the Church had to back off after a scandal erupted over the alleged abuse suffered by the secret son of one of their own: Jose’ Ramon Gonzalez Lara, the presumed son of Marcial Maciel, the founder of the religious and highly intolerant order Legionnaires of Christ. He told reporters that he had asked the Legionnaires for 26 million dollars in exchange for his silence, but he demanded they not parade about like victims because he and his brother were ruined by sexual abuses committed by Maciel himself. So, that ended the Church’s supercilious interference.
The festival went as well as anyone could have hoped, and the retrospective on Fulgencio was appropriately sentimental. They focused on Memories of Gh
osts to Come, followed by The Eagle and the Serpent, then by The Wind that Swept Mexico, then Tonantzin- Our Lady Of The Roses, next by Once Upon A Time In Old Mexico. The sponsors, oddly enough, tried to pass them off as pre-liberation Gay oriented movies. Personally, I thought the claim rather ridiculous, and if Fulgencio had been present he too would have laughed them off the stage.
Then, THUNDER stuck! A page suddenly came running in with a news-flash alert. The host interrupted, read it, and quietly began to weep.
What the Hell happened? everyone asked themselves.
He asked them for silence, for everybody to bow their heads in memoriam and announced:
“Fulgencio San Roman has just died ...”
A F T E R S H O C K
Although his impending death was a forgone conclusion, the announcement of the fact still hit me like a bolt of lightning. So, I was beaten by the clock. Damn! Would I make it in time for the funeral? Now that he was gone I felt a tremendous, indescribable void. All the horrors I’d experienced he had once addressed in so poetic a way through his movies. I didn’t know who he was until coming to Mexico, and now he meant more to me than my own parents. What could this mean?
So, Fulgencio, my friend, mentor, idol, care-taker of my dreams, was now gone forever.
What would become of me?
I dizzily went about packing my bags to take the next train to Reynosa, and totally blocked out the rest of the world from my mind. As I boarded a taxi, I received a call ~ It was from Corazon. I answered, exchanged pleasantries, expressed my delight at hearing her voice again, and then she dropped her own bombshell on me: her brother, Andres, had just succumbed to the protracted after-effects of the pig flu. JESUS CHRIST! What the Hell? The season of death had arrived and nobody told me about it? I felt ridiculous more than sad for Andres. That poor, simple soul who radiated only positivity and wanted nothing more than to do good had fallen victim to some disgusting animal virus, what the fuck? And, true to my selfish form, I couldn’t decide whether to console Corazon, or head for Reynosa to indulge in a caprice. Well, I took two extra hours to visit Corazon, and promised I would be back in time to attend the funeral ~ I never did. Then, I headed straight for the train station.
A Wetback in Reverse Page 38
