The Devil behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic by Steven Gregory

Author:Steven Gregory [Gregory, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780520247277
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2014-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

24. A motoconcho taxi and passenger traveling along Calle Duarte. Photo by the author.

These working arrangements engendered a hierarchy among sex workers, based on their social status and the value assigned to their services. Women not connected to a bar or similar venue were viewed by sex workers and clients alike to be of the lowest status and the poorest paid. These women, disparaged as mujeres de la calle, were also the most persecuted by the authorities. At the opposite extreme, hostesses affiliated with bars and discotheques were considered to be “higher class” and deserving of more remuneration. This hierarchy tended to correspond to evaluations of skin color and social capital, with lighter skin brokering more status, security, and control in transactions with clients and in relations with the police. Moreover, women working as hostesses at high-status venues, such as the Zanzibar Bar or Laser Discotheque, were able to inhabit broader and more ambiguous working identities and, thus, to avoid the stigma of being labeled cuervos (prostitutes). In short, the status of women involved in sex work was roughly proportional to their “epidermic capital” and to the degree to which their sexuality was mediated by male power and authority, whether of the club owners or of the police (Trouillot 1994). Women attached to high-status venues were perceived by both male clients and the police to be less settled into sex work than their lower-status coworkers and, consequently, less disposed to crime, drug abuse, and HIV/AIDS infection.

For example, twenty-eight-year-old Giovanna Pérez, a divorced mother of two, began working with tourists as a hostess at the Zanzibar Bar and Café in 2000. Giovanna commuted from the capital on weekends to supplement wages that she earned as a cook. While at the Zanzibar, Giovanna developed a reputation for being “difficult,” and she argued frequently with the bar’s owner and customers. After one such altercation, Giovanna was fired and banned from the Zanzibar and the discotheque next door—the premier venues on Calle Duarte.9 Giovanna then began working at the Madhouse, a German-owned bar with a coarse and raucous reputation. After a quarrel there with a group of German men, Giovanna and a coworker were arrested and jailed for a weekend. Though Giovanna continued to work at the Madhouse, a sergeant in the National Police began regularly shaking her down for 200-peso “gifts.”10

A few weeks after her arrest Giovanna told me, “If I were working at the Zanzibar, this would not have happened. Because, there, the police do not dare ask for money. A woman like me [she held her hair, gesturing to its straightness] should not be working in a place like this. Not a place like this. But because of that stupid man [the Zanzibar’s owner], I am here. I was betrayed.” Not long after my talk with her, Giovanna disappeared. Rumor had it that she had gone to Sosúa to work. In Boca Chica it was the tourism industry that was the sex workers’ pimp.

Boca Chica’s massage parlors served as another venue for sex workers.

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