Venezuela’s plight drives middle-class women into Colombia, prostitution
ARAUCA, Colombia — At a squat, concrete brothel on a muddy bank of the Arauca River, Gabriel Sanchez rattled off the previous jobs of the women who now sell their bodies at his establishment for $25 an hour.
“We’ve got lots of teachers, some doctors, many professional women and one petroleum engineer,” he yelled over the din of vallenato music. “All of them showed up with their degrees in hand.”
And all of them came from Venezuela.
As Venezuela’s economy continues to collapse amid food shortages, hyperinflation and U.S. sanctions, waves of economic refugees have fled the country. Those with the means have gone to places such as Miami, Panama and Santiago, Chile.
The less fortunate find themselves walking across the border into Colombia looking for a way — any way — to keep themselves and their families fed. A recent study suggested that as many as 350,000 Venezuelans have entered Colombia in the last six years.
But with jobs scarce, many young — and not so young — women are turning to the world’s oldest profession to make ends meet.
Dayana, a 30-year-old mother of four, nursed a beer as she watched potential clients walk down the dirt road that runs in front of wooden shacks, bars and bordellos. Dressed for work in brightly colored spandex, Dayana said she used to be the manager of a food-processing plant on the edge of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
That job disappeared after the government seized the factory and “looted it,” she said.
Seven months ago, struggling to put food on the table, she came to Colombia looking for work. Without an employment permit, she found herself working as a prostitute in the capital, Bogota. Although the money was better there, she eventually moved to Arauca, a cattle town of 260,000 people along the border with Venezuela, because the location made it easier to send food back to her children in Caracas.
The previous night, her sister had traveled by bus for 18 hours from Caracas to pick up a bundle of groceries that Dayana had bought — pasta, tuna, rice, cooking oil — and then immediately jumped on a bus back home.
“If you had told me four years ago that I would be here, doing this, I wouldn’t have believed you,” said Dayana, who asked that her last name not be used. “But we’ve gone from crisis to crisis to crisis, and now look where we are.”
With inflation in Venezuela running in excess of 700 percent and the bolivar currency in free fall, finding food and medicine there has become a frustrating, time-consuming task. Dayana said she often would spend four to six hours waiting in line hoping to buy a bag of flour. Other times, she was forced to buy food on the black market at exorbitant rates. Hunger in Venezuela is rampant.
That has fueled a scramble to earn hard currency — Colombian pesos or, even better, the U.S. dollar, which is the legal tender of Ecuador and Panama.
Dayana said that, on a good night, she makes the equivalent of $50 to $100, selling her services 20 minutes at a time.
“Prostitution obviously isn’t a good job,” she said. “But I’m thankful for it, because it’s allowing me to buy food and support my family.”
Marili, a 47-yearold former teacher and grandmother, said there was a time when she would have been ashamed to admit she’s a prostitute. Now she says she’s grateful to have a job that allows her to buy hypertension medication for her mother back in Caracas.
“I refuse to criticize anyone, including myself,” she said. “We all have to work.”
Selling sex is legal in Colombia, and even small towns have redlight districts where authorities look the other way. So while immigration police hunt down Venezuelans selling trinkets and panhandling in Arauca’s central square, the women along brothel row said they are rarely harassed.
Marta Munoz runs the Casa de la Mujer, a municipal program that focuses on women’s health and rights. She said that prostitution is something of a blind spot for local authorities, who are more focused on blatant crimes, such as child trafficking, rape and the abuse of minors.
“I know that some of them are being paid unfairly and being treated very poorly,” Munoz said of the Venezuelan prostitutes. “But how do we protect them without strong public policies?”