© AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
Transgender sex worker Geraldine wearing cat make-up, sits on her usual corner as she waits for clients outside the Revolution subway station, in Mexico City, Saturday, March 13, 2021. Geraldine, 30, a sex worker since age 15, says many of her regular clients have stopped coming amid the coronavirus pandemic and that seeing new clients presents new health and security risks. She is most concerned about the risk of bringing COVID-19 home to her partner, who has diabetes.
Hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic have forced former sex workers in
Mexico back into the trade years after they left, made it more dangerous and reduced some to having sex in cars or on sidewalks for lack of available hotels.
Claudia, who like most of the sex workers interviewed asked to be identified only by her first name, had stopped working the streets a decade ago after she married one of her former clients. But when her husband lost his job early in the pandemic, the couple fell four months behind on rent for their apartment.
The only solution Claudia saw was to go back to working the streets.
"It was an income in order to eat, to pay the rent we owe," said Claudia, who now owes only one month back rent. "It is hard to come back and see so many of my fellow workers from the old days, my era, going back to do the same thing ... to see all the problems out there."
Laura, a 62-year-old transgender woman who began working Mexico City's streets 40 years ago, wages a daily battle to stay housed. If she gets a client that day, she can perhaps afford a cheap hotel room for the night. If she doesn't, she sleeps on the street.
Comment: Tweets from those on the ground seem to confirm it.