Marilu Torres’s knees hurt when they swell, her varicose veins are a constant bother and cataracts are slowly stealing her vision. Even so, the 72-year-old hits the streets looking for work every day.
”This year is my golden anniversary as a sex worker,” laughed Torres, who became a prostitute as a young widow with no other means of feeding her children. ”I’m not complaining … But the old bones are turning to dust and it would be nice to be able to stop soon.”
She was talking in an abandoned sports museum in the run-down colonial city centre, which is being adapted as a shelter for elderly prostitutes who work the area.
There are about 120 of them working the district, charging 70 pesos (about R38) a job. Many are homeless, turning tricks for the price of a meal or the cost of a night in a seedy hotel. Many are also spurned by the children they went into prostitution to provide for.
The new shelter aims to give these survivors of the sex trade a chance to retire in a country where the social security system is virtually non–existent for women such as these. It should provide beds for up to 70 of them, and food, health care and workshops where they can learn how to make things they can sell instead of their bodies.
”It is a beautiful thing to have a place to drop,” said Torres. ”We are going to make this a home.”
The rather grand, if dilapidated, building arranged around a large patio has been loaned free of charge by the city council. Renovation and initial maintenance (which will cost about 3,2-million pesos) is in the hands of NGOs and a group of prominent feminists who have taken on the project as a personal cause. They hope it will be ready in six months.
”It will be wonderful not to have to walk the streets, not to have to feel the way people look at you,” said Elena Roman (65).
With only a decade on the job, triggered by her decision to leave a violent husband, Roman is a relative newcomer to the business.
The women rely on younger men looking for maternal tenderness, grandfathers seeking familiarity or psychological therapy, and those of any age who feel mature prostitutes have more experience and are less risky than their younger competitors. — Â