En esta ocasión, presentaremos un liguero a un portal de juris-prudentia de nuestro hermano país del sur Perú . En este portal publicaron hace ya un tiempo un texto sobre la Historia de las Putas. Este texto es interesante por el escrutinio jurídico que hace de la actividad prostibular, de sus actores y actrices. Sírvanse en visitar y disfrutar este texto lleno de referencias clientelares y apologéticas al servicio comunitario.
Nuestras editoras Virgi y Marga nos preparán un delicioso texto sobre la virilidad fatal y cuando el marido se convierte en un soberano estorbo.
Piden a AMLO derogar la Ley de Cultura Cívica Fin a extorsiones y golpes de la policía demandan sexoservidoras del DF * Reclaman su derecho a trabajar sin ser víctimas de violencia * Proponen retomar los convenios de tolerancia con los vecinos
Nora Sandoval
“No somos una minoría y estamos dispuestas a llegar hasta las últimas consecuencias; no pedimos nada más que lo que nos corresponde por derecho: trabajar sin ser extorsionadas, golpeadas, maltratadas o apañadas, porque no estamos cometiendo un delito”, dice Yesica, trabajadora sexual y participante activa del movimiento de sexoservidoras que busca el derogamiento de la Ley de Cultura Cívica (LCC), vigente en el Distrito Federal desde el primer día de agosto, y que a la fecha ha derivado en una violencia inusitada contra mujeres (y hombres) dedicadas a esta actividad, en que sean multadas e incluso sean recluidas por varias horas.
“Pongámonos de acuerdo; regresemos a los convenios con vecinos y trabajadoras con respecto al horario de trabajo, las condiciones para estar en la vía pública, y definamos calles específicas. Hagamos puntos de tolerancia y cuando alguien cometa un delito o infracción, que se aplique la ley, pero que no nos extorsionen ni golpeen. Ninguna compañera está aquí por gusto, ninguna; estamos por necesidad. Hay quienes vivimos en hoteles; hay amas de casa con hijos en la escuela”, afirma esta mujer de 34 años, con más de 10 en el oficio.
“No tenemos nada, seguimos en la lucha y en el movimiento; palabras son sólo palabras”, expresa Yesica, después de reunirse, junto con un grupo de sus compañeras trabajadoras sexuales, con el jefe del gobierno capitalino, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), al que le pidieron derogar la Ley de Cultura Cívica, a lo que él se negó, pero se comprometió a dar una “solución integral” al trabajo sexual.
Las sexoservidoras le presentaron a AMLO un documento en el que le plantean, además, otras nueve demandas básicas, entre las que destacan: un albergue para sexoservidoras adultas mayores, en el edificio del Curato de la Iglesia de La Soledad, que está vacío actualmente; la apertura de un centro de atención médica, jurídica y psicológica, en el que haya también talleres de capacitación en diversas áreas; un programa de vivienda en el que se les considere; apoyo a madres solteras; programas de salud por zona, y becas para sus hijos.
Con el comienzo del año la violencia contra las trabajadoras del sexo se recrudeció mediante operativos realizados con camionetas pánel , con 8 o 10 patrullas, así como con uniformados y policías de civil caminando por las calles de las zonas donde trabajan estas mujeres y hombres: las áreas aledañas a los metros Hidalgo, Revolución y Tacuba, La Merced, las calles de Guatemala y Loreto, en el centro; la Plaza de San Fernando, así como la delegación Iztapalapa, denuncian representantes de las sexoservidoras.
Ahora, la LCC considera como falta administrativa ejercer o invitar a la prostitución, y la sanciona con entre13 y 36 horas de arresto, además de una multa de entre 11 y 20 días de salario mínimo. Todo esto siempre y cuando exista queja vecinal. Sin embargo, “a veces nos imponen la primera vez 13 horas y nos cobran 678 pesos, que supuestamente es el equivalente a 18 salarios mínimos, ya que éste lo fijan en 52 pesos. La segunda vez no hay derecho a pagar multa, y nos quedamos las 24 horas. Y a la tercera viene la fichada con huellas dactilares y fotografías”, advierte Carmen. “En Iztapalapa nos exigen mil 200 pesos, cuando que a las que bien les va sacan en promedio 300 pesos diarios; pero de ahí muchas tienen que pagar el hotel en el que viven, que cobra cien pesos por día, más sus alimentos”, se queja Sonia.
“Son trabajadoras que no tienen madrota ni padrote, que estaban cobijadas por el desaparecido Centro Integral de Atención a Sexoservidoras (CAIS) (que apoyaba la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del DF) que empezaron a reconocerse e incorporarse a una vida diferente y se fortalecieron en el sentido de no dejarse extorsionar. Son mujeres y hombres que construyen su identidad fuera de las mafias de las madrotas”, explica Margarita García Arteaga, asesora jurídica de las trabajadoras sexuales independientes.
Las otras –continúa García Arteaga- siguen entregando su cuota diaria a quienes las explotan, y con la entrada en vigor de la Ley de Cultura Cívica, “ha habido operativos en contra de ellas en algunos lugares, pero no tan violentos; yo creo que porque dan dinero. En cambio con las independientes son a diario y en todo momento”.
Con la nueva ley, los golpes, los jaloneos, las amenazas y las extorsiones se recrudecieron: “entran a los hoteles por las compañeras y esto provoca situaciones violentas con los clientes. Hay algunas que se tienen que hacer amantes de los policías para que por lo menos les avisen cuando viene el operativo”, explica Carmen, que tiene a la zona de La Merced como su centro de trabajo.
Por si fuera poco, las quejas vecinales –argumento para levantarlas- son “un machote que llenan los mismos policías, con un nombre y un apellido sin domicilio, y una firma ilegible; o bien, a algunos formatos que ya tienen llenados les cambian la fecha con lápiz, les sacan una fotocopia y ya tienen el documento actualizado. Esas quejas no tiene ninguna legalidad porque no sabemos ni quiénes son porque no se nota el nombre, además de que no se establece quién está cometiendo la infracción”, asevera Margarita García.
La asesora de las trabajadoras sexuales agrega que algunos de los vecinos “son mafiosos, ya que piden servicio gratuito para que no presenten la queja vecinal. O se dan casos, como en la colonia Tabacalera, donde los mismos policías pasan a tocarle a los vecinos para que firmen, y con cuatro o cinco rúbricas ya es suficiente para ellos; además, el papel no es presentado en la delegación: Pero eso sí, empiezan a levantar gente”.
Dispuestas a negociar
Para frenar esta situación, las trabajadoras sexuales han emprendido acciones en varios frentes. Primero en lo jurídico, para ampararse contra la LCC. Manuel Fuentes, de la Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos, asegura que la mencionada ley viola los artículos 123, 13, 14 y 16 de la Constitución. En el 123 se establece que es el Congreso de la Unión el que deberá expedir leyes sobre el trabajo, “de tal manera que la Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal no está facultada para reconocer y sancionar el trabajo sexual”.
Explica que el artículo 13 de la Carta Magna “prohíbe establecer leyes privativas para determinadas personas, y la LCC tiene estas características”. En tanto, el artículo 14 determina que nadie puede ser privado de sus derechos si no es mediante juicio ante tribunales previamente establecidos y de acuerdo con normas legales; es decir, “las trabajadoras sexuales no pueden ser recluidas sólo por el señalamiento de terceras personas, como está sucediendo, ya que no es posible verificar el dicho de los acusadores”, enfatiza Fuentes.
El artículo 16 de la Constitución indica, además, que “nadie puede ser molestado en su persona sino en virtud de mandamiento escrito de la autoridad competente, que funde y motive la causa legal del procedimiento”, explica el abogado.
Por otro lado, las trabajadoras sexuales presentaron ya una queja colectiva ante la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal, esto pese a que ellas mismas reconocen que el titular del organismo, Emilio Álvarez de Icaza, sólo se ha manifestado en lo general en contra de la ley -particularmente en el caso de los franeleros, argumentando que la nueva legislación viola garantías individuales-, pero no lo ha hecho en el caso de las trabajadoras sexuales.
A todo esto, las trabajadores sexuales señalan en voz de Samanta: “habíamos avanzado cuando el CAIS funcionaba; habíamos hecho convenios con vecinos de casa habitación o de comercios para que permitieran el trabajo sexual, siempre y cuando nosotras cumpliéramos reglas como cierta vestimenta, horarios determinados y buen comportamiento. Si alguien de nosotras violentaba ese acuerdo, perdíamos el convenio. Eso funcionó muy bien”.
“Uno de los requisitos que se establecía en el reglamento es que no podíamos escandalizar, drogarnos, emborracharnos o cometer algún delito. Esa fue una posibilidad y una solución; los vecinos nos tenían identificadas y sabían qué podíamos hacer y qué no, y nunca violentábamos los convenios”, expresa Yesica, quien agrega que hoy quieren la vuelta a ese pasado, una negociación con la autoridad en la que desaparezcan los abusos y las dejen trabajar.
Queremos –piden- una posibilidad de estar de manera digna en la calle y buscar la salida a esto con la capacitación en talleres; queremos el reconocimiento social a nuestra condición de mujeres, con respeto, sin golpes, malos tratos o extorsión.
Modelo, astronauta, cantante de western, presidenta, deportista, bailarina clásica, estrella de rock, enfermera militar, maestra de primaria, madre y otros casi ochenta rostros en más de 600 muñecas conforman a la mítica Barbie, un juguete nacido en los años cincuenta del siglo XX cuando Ruth Handler miraba a su hija creando personajes de papel con distintos oficios pues hasta esa década casi todos los monigotes eran bebés. La última noticia candente de Barbie es que se ha separado de su pareja Ken y la compañía que la posee —Mattel— puso a la venta su versión de soltera.
“Es hora de que pase un tiempo de calidad por sí misma”, comentó el jefe de negocios de la multimillonaria compañía que calcula que en el mundo alguien adquiere una Barbie cada dos segundos. Se han vendido, hasta la fecha, más de un billón de ejemplares en más de cien países. Los rumores en torno a su separación van más o menos así: aparece Barbie Model Cali con una sonrisa más gozosa que las anteriores, un nuevo color en la piel y una visión existencial, de acuerdo a lo que se puede deducir por lo inscrito en la caja que la contiene, mucho más hedonista.
Rompiendo con su aspecto de maestra comprometida se adorna con largos aretes, un bikini sensual y una piel con un bronceado notable. A la vez aparece en los aparadores de las jugueterías un joven galán llamado Blaine, un surfista (de boogie no de tabla larga) australiano en apariencia mucho más fresco y relajado que el clásico Ken. Los mechones güeros de su pelo son el resultado de tantas horas en el mar y en los gimnasios playeros. Después sucede lo que tiene que suceder, se conocen y se atraen mutuamente. ¿Pero qué pasa con el comprometido Ken, con la casa donde vivían, con sus sueños compartidos y el enorme patrimonio (las lanchas, los autos de lujo, las casas de dos pisos con elevador, los gimnasios, etc.) que han comprado juntos?
El índice de ventas de esta nueva faceta de Barbie parece andar bien aunque, al igual que otros muchos ejemplares, ha causado no poca polémica. En Irán, por ejemplo, salió a la venta un par de juguetes que personifican a dos niños; Dara y Sara, la reacción en contra de las actitudes de Barbie que desde la visión musulmana atenta contra las buenas costumbres. Los juguetes iraníes vienen con su ropa tradicional (velo incluido) y se acompañan de historias grabadas que promueven los valores nacionales.
Está claro que el temperamento de cada sociedad se expresa directamente en sus juguetes, el mundo lúdico, parte integral de toda infancia, conlleva en sí la construcción de un modo de pensar y la antigua maestra que nunca envejece ni engorda —al parecer sólo una vez, debido a las protestas de un grupo en lucha contra la anorexia, subió unos cuantos kilos— demuestra que todo juguete cumple también una misión cultural dentro de su contexto.
El apoyo de los grupos feministas a Barbie tras su decisión no se hizo esperar pues de acuerdo a ellos ella tiene todo el derecho a trazar su porvenir marital y esto le debe quedar también claro a los niños. Los hombres, por su lado, no han protestado pero el asunto seguramente no seguirá así de no aparecer una nueva amiguita que complete la vida de Ken. Otra pregunta es si se irán a juicio, si aparecerá el muñeco abogado, si dividirán sus bienes o si Ken la demandará por adulterio. A todo esto su “representante”, el jefe de ventas, sabiendo que la presencia de los reporteros en su oficina es el mejor comprobante del éxito de su estrategia de mercado, evade las múltiples preguntas con una sonrisa sarcástica y una frase sencilla pero sospechosa: “Seguirán siendo buenos amigos.”
***
Recuadro: Chiste en torno al divorcio de Barbie
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THE
GEOGRAPHY OF PROSTITUTION IN AN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY URBAN CENTRE:
Montreal,1810-1842
Mary Anne Poutanen
Introduction
In
January 1838, Mrs. Blanchard was arrested for keeping a common bawdy
house on the second storey of a house located on St. Paul Street. One
of the residents of the house, not associated with Blanchard’s
business, alleged that the floor separating the two levels was in
such a dilapidated state that he could hear the lewd practices of the
men and women who frequented the brothel! {1} Nearby, at the corner of Bonsecours and St. Paul streets,
streetwalkers and drunken soldiers routinely rioted. During one
fracas, a prostitute was assaulted at the door step of a house,
belonging to a justice of the peace, which was discovered “saturated
with blood.” {2} The suburbs were not exempt from similar mayhem. In the Recollets
suburb, police raided the brothel of Etienne Billet and his wife
Marie Mattée after receiving a complaint from three neighbours
that Billet and Mattée kept a disorderly house where they
received guests “de mauvaise vie et moeurs” at all
hours of the day and night. {3}
These
stories, all garnered from the court records of the Quarter Sessions
of the Peace, illustrate how prostitution was integrated into all of
the city’s neighbourhoods,
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touching all social classes, from
the elites who worked and lived along Notre Dame and St. Paul Streets
to the popular classes who inhabited the suburbs. In this paper, I
argue that Montrealers shared the same streets, public spaces, and
houses with sex trade workers who were often tolerated until the
inmates of local brothels and streetwalkers breached some sort of
community enforced code of conduct. {4} The porous boundaries between the household and the street and the
public nature of everyday life meant that prostitutes and their
neighbours shared experiences and social networks which had certain
implications for prostitution. Brothel-keepers needed the acceptance
of their neighbours to keep their establishments open for business.
Without this endorsement, madams risked police raids, and in the
instance when police failed to respond to prosecutors’
complaints, neighbours rioted in the offending houses of
prostitution. Similarly, the street was also a place where
individuals who exceeded the bounds of acceptable behaviour, by being
drunk, noisy or indecent, might be arrested. {5} Street prostitutes were often left alone unless they drew attention
to themselves by some sort of annoying, disruptive behaviour. For
refractory prostitutes, neighbours disciplined them by complaining to
the authorities, or the police intervened directly. Thus, the
operation and location of Montreal brothels and street prostitution
was not mediated by geographical containment, but by the relations
that sex trade workers established with their neighbours and by their
ability to maintain good will.
Until
recently, historians have not considered the relationship of
prostitution to public space and to the social geography of the
city. {6} Rather, the concept ‘red-light’ district, an area known
to the public where prostitutes congregated, either seeking or being
sought out by clients, has been employed to signify segregated,
distinct area of the urban landscape, detached from the daily lives
of most of a city’s inhabitants. In earlier studies, historians
of prostitution tended to centre their research on the beginning
decades of the twentieth century and the reformers campaigns to
concentrate prostitution in red-light districts when it became
apparent to them that the eradication of the sex trade was out of the
question. As a consequence of this focus in the historiography, we
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have the idea that red-light district meant segregated areas. More
current work by historians such as Mary Ryan, Timothy Gilfoyle, and
Marilynn Wood Hill, which grew out of studies on the gendered use of
nineteenth-century urban public space, show that red-light districts
were an integral part of city neighbourhoods. {7}
Although
Montreal prostitutes practised their trade throughout the urban
landscape, certain areas of the city were identified by the public as
red-light districts for their clusters of brothels and concentration
of street prostitutes. These districts were blended into urban
neighbourhoods, as the three examples at the beginning of this
discussion reveal. For instance, within the fortifications of the old
city where Montreal’s elite lived, a red-light district existed
around the Quebec Barracks near the waterfront. This district drew
prostitutes to this locality where they worked on the streets or out
of brothels, taverns, and other public buildings. {8} This was similar to London, England, where Penelope Corfield
describes the streets as having become more differentiated in
function over the eighteenth-century. She argues that red-light
districts developed for the first time near streets that specialized
in various forms of entertainment and which lured crowds, expediting
meetings between prostitutes and their clients. {9} This way of defining a red-light district works better than Timothy
Gilfoyle’s much stricter one. He argues that in New York City
before 1820, prostitution was a private affair; little streetwalking
took place outside informal, spatially defined areas of prostitution.
This “spatially defined areas of prostitution,” according
to Gilfoyle, did not mean red-light districts. It was only after 1850
he contends, that Soho, with 40% of the city’s prostitution,
became a new large-
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scale primary centre for prostitution and thus, a
red-light district. {10} Gilfoyle defines red-light district too rigidly according to
quantitative features and as the end result of some process, unlike
Corfield who emphasises the process of differentiation and lived
experience in the urban streets. Moreover, the public perception of
and behaviour toward informal areas of prostitution and the red-light
district of Soho are outside Gilfoyle’s analysis.
In
Montreal, women moved easily among the various sites of prostitution.
Sometimes brothel prostitutes solicited in the streets bringing men
to the brothel where they worked or to houses of assignation. On
other occasions, street prostitutes sought out abandoned houses to
service soldiers, where they lingered until compelled to leave by the
authorities. Numerous street prostitutes searched for clients in
public spaces only to return to their lodgings with the men. Thus,
brothel and street prostitution were not always distinct operations.
Although brothel-keepers and street prostitutes did essentially the
same thing, sell sex for money, the criminal justice system treated
the two sites of prostitution very differently. For this reason, I
will examine the nature of the brothel and its association to the
city and streetwalking separately. Before taking a closer look at the
relationship of Montreal brothel-keepers and streetwalkers to the
urban landscape, I will focus briefly on the socio-economic context
in which the prostitutes worked.
In
this period, Montreal was a prominent commercial, manufacturing, and
administrative center which underwent significant transformation and
turmoil. Both the War of 1812 and the Rebellions of 1837-1838, in
themselves important political markers, drew greater numbers of
soldiers to the barracks, providing patrons for city’s brothels
and clients for street prostitutes. Major public work projects, like
the redevelopment of the port and the construction of the Lachine
Canal, upgraded the city’s infrastructure and conferred upon
Montreal an important transportation system which could ship to and
from markets further west. {11} These projects also furnished city prostitutes with a clientele. The
decades of the 1820s and 1830s were characterized by social
dislocation in the countryside, the decline of the fur trade,
epidemics of cholera, and growing immigration of Irish, Scottish and
English people. {12} These features had significant repercussions for many popular-class
Montrealers and new immigrants. Every day life was fraught with
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seasonal unemployment or under-employment, inadequate wages,
competition for the few remaining jobs, and a constant struggle to
provide food and shelter at ever rising costs.
In
the decades leading up to the industrial revolution, Montreal
experienced a transformation in its economic, social, and demographic
fabric. Between 1825 and 1844, the city’s population nearly
doubled. A third of Montreal’s inhabitants in 1825 was
comprised of immigrants and, by 1832, anglophones made up the
majority in the city {13} .
Its urban geography reflected this metamorphosis: Montreal spread
out past the demolished city walls into the quickly expanding
suburbs. {14} By the early nineteenth century, two-thirds of the inhabitants lived
outside the old city fortifications in the suburbs where cheaper
housing could be procured. {15} Women who had incorporated brothel-keeping into their household
economies essentially delivered sexual services to the clients who
lived in their neighbourhoods.
Montreal
women and men organized brothels in a variety of living arrangements
throughout the city, occupying entire dwellings, a part or a floor of
multi-family houses, taverns, cellars, and single rooms. The type of
housing they chose can tell us something about the class nature of
the brothels and their clientele. For instance, some women and men
operated houses of prostitution in more substantial buildings made of
stone like those on Craig Street, or along affluent St. Paul and
Notre Dame Streets. This contrasts sharply with the taverns or
tippling houses found along the waterfront in the same area that
catered to prostitutes, sailors, and soldiers. Occasionally women
kept brothels in abandoned houses, some described as uninhabitable.
Certain other establishments attracted a particular clientele as in
the “balolots et domestiques” who frequented one
brothel in St. Mary’s suburb {17} or the unskilled Irish men who may have preferred the “cabanes
de planches” along the Lachine Canal. Those who provided
sexual services out of a single room obviously operated a rather
small enterprise. Similarly, some brothel-keepers rented
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cellars at
the new market or in private homes, reputed to attract a more
impoverished consumer group. An entire building could be utilized at
different times for prostitution: from the attic to the cellar and
everything else in between. One madam kept a brothel in the attic of
a house belonging to notary Jean-Marie Cadieux who often observed
“monter au grenier des hommes avec des filles ou des
femmes.” {18}
Court
depositions reveal that brothel-keepers operated their enterprises
over the entire urban landscape. Maps 1, 2, and 3 {19} show the location of brothels {20} over three periods: 1810-1829, 1830-1837, and 1838-1842. {21} Since the site of these brothels was
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based on legal complaints made
by Montrealers, the actual numbers of houses of prostitution are
under-represented. Obviously, brothel-keepers operated establishments
which did not receive any complaints and are therefore not depicted
on these maps. Herein lies an important weakness in this source which
limits the reconstruction of Montreal prostitution. Yet these very
documents can give us a sense of how some of these establishments
extended into the suburbs and can tell us something about neighbours
growing displeasure with brothels in their neighbourhoods. Thus,
these maps demonstrate that men and women were denouncing brothels in
their neighbourhoods in ever increasing numbers over the span of this
investigation. For example, in the first period 1810-1829, no
depositions were made against a brothel specifically identified on
St. Mary Street in the Quebec Suburbs; one complaint was made in the
second period; and by the third period, 1838-1842, at least nine
complaints had been made. Similarly, by 1838 neighbours and policemen
were prosecuting brothel-keepers on William, King, and Queen Streets
in the St. Anne suburb for the first time.
These
maps also demonstrate that while madams set up their houses of
prostitution throughout the city, some concentrated them near public
areas of the city where people gathered, such as the markets,
military installations where large numbers of men were quartered, and
in particular zones: between Lagauchetière and Craig Streets
on the west side of St. Lawrence suburb and Chenneville and
Bonsecours Streets in the east; and in the Quebec suburbs from the
Quebec Barracks to Salaberry Street. Of the four major routes to the
countryside, St. Mary, St. Lawrence, St. Joseph, and St. Antoine, at
least two underwent a significant growth in the number of brothels
over the period. While setting up houses of prostitution close to
areas where men congregated or in quarters reputed to be red-light
districts made good business sense, maintaining brothels in city
neighbourhoods also brought sexual services closer to the
popular-class men who utilized them.
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-109-
After
1830, Montrealers were more likely to protest the presence of houses
of ill repute in their midst by prosecuting the keepers of these
establishments, some of which had been operating in their
neighbourhoods for as long as ten years. Residents in certain areas
of the city made a concerted effort to “clean up their
neighbourhoods.” The notorious Vitré Street, located in
one of the city’s red-light districts, is a case in point.
Between 1830 and 1837, Montrealers complained about ten brothels on
Vitré Street and from 1838 to 1842 at least five complaints
were received. In one of these depositions, Etienne Benêche dit
Lavictoire objected to four houses of prostitution which were
accommodated in two wooden dwellings. {22} In a raid that followed from his complaint, 37 men and women were
arrested in the five brothels: five madames, twenty prostitutes and
twelve clients. The brothels on Vitré Street were also the
subject of at least one grand jury
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complaint, {23} one petition, {24} and numerous police raids. {25} In April 1835, for instance, police stormed five brothels on Vitré
Street. {26}
Not
all of the known brothels were raided by the police. Constables who
were cognizant of the location of brothels on their beats, walked
passed some of them without arresting the inhabitants. {27} Sometimes constables conducted other police business in brothels
without closing the establishments. For instance, brothel-keeper
Marie Lamarche requested police assistance to quell a disturbance
that had taken place in her house of ill fame. {28} The police departed without laying charges of keeping a disorderly
house against Lamarche and her inmates. Perhaps the most telling
example involved a young man who complained to police that while on
business at the popular Madame Lavictoire’s, he was assaulted
with a poker. He was told to make his complaint at the Police Office
in the morning and “to prevent accidents to keep better
company in future.” {29} As long as brothel-keepers maintained a certain degree of decorum in
their establishments, then neighbours were less likely to complain
and police were more likely to tolerate them, since past experience
had revealed that the regulation of known brothels was a more
realistic goal than abolition.
Some
brothel-keepers kept businesses at the same addresses for years until
something happened which prompted neighbours to seek legal recourse.
It could have been a particular incident that led to a complaint or
an effort to rid their neighbourhoods of all remnants of
prostitution. Their efforts were not always successful. A few
brothel-
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keepers had the audacity to re-open their brothels while on
recognizance to keep the peace until the next meeting of the Quarter
Sessions, when their cases would be heard. Following a raid on a
brothel on St. Peters Street, neighbours complained that the
found-ins had returned to the house and “renewed their
misbehaviour worse than before.” {30} Other brothel-keepers moved around the city closing their businesses
in one place just to reopen in another location. This is most
apparent in the personal history of Mary Ann Davidson’s foray
into prostitution. In a space of five months, she set up brothels on
three different streets.
As
brothel-keepers relocated within the city and brothel prostitutes
moved from one establishment to another, the sex trade as a whole
continued to center around certain streets. We have no way of knowing
however, if the same buildings were employed. In New York City, for
instance, while madams may have relocated their businesses, changing
addresses did not disrupt the city’s sex trade since the same
quarters continued to lodge brothels. {31}
The
territory around specific military installations was a popular site
to operate houses of prostitution. Montrealers established brothels
on streets near the Quebec Barracks, like St. Paul Street where one
widow of a soldier rented a room in a house to service men from the
barracks, {32} or on Dubord Street where pedlar Mary Martin, kept a house of ill
repute to entertain a similar clientele. {33} The Quebec Barracks quartered a large number of single men who liked
to drink and have sex, both of which prostitutes provided. {34} Similarly, some city tavernkeepers and innkeepers also catered to the
military crowd by keeping women of ill fame in their establishments
to dispense sexual services to
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the barrack soldiers. {35} Sometimes, madams employed young girls as prostitutes to entice
soldiers to their unlicensed tippling houses located in the cellars
of St. Anne’s Market. {36}
Several brothel-keepers disguised their businesses as boardinghouses
as in the case of one man who kept a disorderly house on St. Mary
Street which served both the civilian and military populations. {37} One of the boarders, complained that men and women “resort
there for the purpose of drinking and indulging in vice and
dissipation.” {38} Similarly, houses of assignation, taverns, hotels, and lodging houses
served as brothels in antebellum Philadelphia. Women solicited in
theatres and taverns then brought their customers to rooms in some of
these establishments. {39}
It
was not only the activities of a particular house that annoyed the
neighbours, but the bedlam that spilled out into the streets. One man
protested that the lives of passersby were endangered in front of one
brothel by the ill treatment of men who frequented the house. Only a
few nights previously, he had been assaulted and robbed. {40} Another neighbour complained that he lived so close to a brothel
where large numbers of young men gathered, that one night some of
these youths forcefully tried to enter his home. {41} Prostitutes from particular brothels solicited men immediately
outside their establishments, calling out to passersby to enter. One
pedestrian, James Gainer, complained of being accosted by women
coming out of a brothel in his neighbourhood, having been
‘indecently’ propositioned by two women. {42} Neighbours also complained about soldiers discharging their weapons
while frequenting known brothels.
Many
neighbours seemed to tolerate the presence of brothels if they were
quiet or until some incident occurred to raise their ire. For
example, George Mackin abided the proximity of a neighbourhood
brothel until he got into an altercation with one of her prostitutes.
One Saturday afternoon in August, an acquaintance of Mr. Mackin was
rudely insulted by one of the brothel inmates who made some reference
to this acquaintance and the deponent’s wife. Irritated by the
language, Mr. Mackin struck the “notorious harlot” across
the cheek. The following evening she threw stones at his house and
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threatened “to run a knife through his guts.” {43} When Mr. Mackin resorted to making a legal complaint, he effectively
banished the women from Salaberry Street. Having lost their
neighbours’ endorsement, they were arrested, imprisoned, and
charged with keeping a disorderly house. {44} Sometimes it was the grand jury which raised the problem of
prostitution. In January 1840, grand jurors suggested that in order
to better regulate the sex trade, the cellars of St. Anne’s
Market be leased only to individuals sanctioned by the Police
Magistrate in order to curtail the debauchery that was occurring
there on a regular basis. {45}
We
know little about the life of prostitutes within the brothel walls.
Lower court records do not lend themselves very easily to
descriptions about the physical environment, the brothel culture and
practices, sex, and payment. However, we are at times permitted
glimpses into the interiors of some brothels. Moreover, when John
McCord was a justice of the peace in the Court of Quarter Sessions,
from 1846 to 1853, he kept personal accounts of the cases he heard.
Although he served after the period under study, his descriptions are
extremely useful. These documents reveal the very public nature of
brothel life. For instance, to the perplexity of neighbours, some of
the men and women who frequented city brothels walked about the
brothel and back yard partially or completely nude. One of Josephine
Mainville’s neighbours accused her of indecent exposure; he
claimed that she was “always naked in the upper part of person”
whenever he saw her in her yard. {46}
Brothel
prostitutes offered sexual services in an assortment of different
ways: two sex trade workers spent the night together with client John
Sparling. {47} Sometimes a prostitute worked with a single client in the seclusion
of a private bedroom, other times less privately. One client
attempted to have sex with Jane Dunn in full view of the household
and on the kitchen floor surrounded by three inmates, three policemen
and the madam of the brothel who held a candle. Being too drunk, Dunn
and the man were unable to succeed. {48}
Although
we know little about how solicitation took place within the brothel,
one madam accused a “gentleman” of approaching her in her
house on St. Constant Street
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saying “se serait rendu maître
et taisez-vous ou vous allez avoir affaire à moi.” {49} As I have already mentioned, brothel prostitutes congregated outside
some of their establishments, appealing to men who passed by. In the
case of two sisters, Marguerite and Félicité Bleau who
worked together in a brothel, an American client claimed that he was
accompanied to the establishment by one sister but spent the night
with the other sister. {50} Another prostitute, Angèle Normandin, went three times a week
to Goyette’s house of “rendezvous” to meet men and
make money. She was always directed up to a bedroom with the men
chosen by Mr. Goyette, the keeper of the establishment. {51}
Brothel-keepers
offered a variety of entertainment in their enterprises from
gambling, as in the case of John Trimble’s disorderly house
where soldiers and civilians amused themselves “at playing
cards and knocking on the table,” an early form of gin rummy,
to drinking and dancing. Court records reveal that dancing was
popular recreation in some brothels. Music and dancing were customary
forms of amusement at Pierre Lafrance’s house of ill fame. {52} Another couple held bi-weekly balls at their “maison de
débauche” located on Bleury Street attended by
“filles de joies” and young men. {53} In Halifax, brothels offered a variety of services such as dancing
and entertainment, providing food and drink, retail selling of
ready-made clothing or groceries or service shops offering barbering
or pawnbroking. {54} Certainly brothel-keepers were astute in initiating a number of ways
to attract clients and increase revenue.
Alcohol
consumption played a significant role in the workplace of
prostitution. Numerous depositions describe Montreal’s brothels
as establishments where illicit “carnal connexion” and
drinking took place. Soldiers and “filles prostituées”
passed their time in Alexandre Vallée’s brothel,
drinking and ‘whoring.’ {55} Sometimes clients conveyed their own beverages as in the case of
civilians and soldiers who brought “bottles of liquor” to
Catherine Jordan and Margaret Chisholm’s brothel. {56} Usually men purchased alcoholic refreshments at the brothel. As a
lucrative source of income, {57} brothel-keepers sold liquor
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to attract customers to their disorderly
houses. They also provided liquor after hours when local taverns had
closed, in which case they could depend upon volume sales, or they
took advantage of the beverage service they provided and charged
higher prices for drinks. Even policemen were served alcoholic
beverages at local brothels. Subconstable Charles Ellis was
discharged from the police for requesting liquor at one of the city’s
houses of prostitution. {58} It is very likely that in Montreal madams charged higher prices for
drinks as in New York City where brothel-keepers sold liquor to
clients at two to three times the cost to them. {59}
Another
characteristic of some of the Montreal brothels was the violence that
erupted within the brothel walls between a number of different
people: between madams and the prostitutes, between men and the
prostitutes, and between the patrons. One prostitute accused a
brothel-keeper and two clients of cruelly beating, scratching,
bruising, and ill treating her while in the establishment. {60} Occasionally physical assaults ended in the death of a prostitute.
Three years before the beginning of this study, a pregnant prostitute
was murdered in John Griswold’s brothel after being assaulted
and punched during a brawl. Griswold had a reputation for the melees
that occurred with regularity in his disorderly house, which was
described as a “très mauvaise maison.” {61}
Brothel-keepers
also endured the violence of patrons. On two separate occasions in
1838, madam Euphrosine Auger accused clients of assault and battery.
In one instance,
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she denounced tailor James Nicholson claiming he
threatened to break down the door to her house when she refused him
entrance. Fearing that he would smash it, she allowed him to enter,
whereupon he punched her. {62} Later that same year she also accused carter Antoine Galarneau of
assault and battery. Auger said that because Galarneau was
intoxicated when he came to her house, she permitted him “de
coucher chez elle.” The next morning “étant
dans une parfaite état de sobrieté” he
brutally assaulted her and threatened to kill her or in the event
that he failed, to burn her house down. {63}
Brothel-keepers also accused men of assembling at their residences
to commit riots. Ellen Labrie denounced six men for rioting and
assault with intent to murder at her disorderly house. {64} Brothel-keeper Lucie Lenoir dite Rolland reported to the police that
her residence had been assailed with stones thrown by four men,
resulting in broken windows. Furthermore, Rolland maintained that one
of the culprits had been disturbing the peace at her house on a daily
basis, and had struck her on at least one occasion. She implored that
these men give security to keep the peace. {65} That brothels could be dangerous places to live and work is
demonstrated by these few examples. The opportunity to make brothels
safer by hiring men to protect the inmates and by leasing better
buildings served to reduced the risk. For Montreal streetwalkers,
survival could be more tenuous.
Streetwalkers or That “Horde of Female Profligates” {66}
Life
for prostitutes on the Montreal streets was difficult and dangerous.
Streetwalkers, especially those who were homeless, had to contend
with violence, hunger and cold. In late fall 1832, Ellen McGuire, “a
prostitute of the lowest grade,” was discovered dead, lying
nearly nude in an abandoned government building adjoining the
Commissariat forage yard, across from the Quebec Barracks. Two of her
colleagues were located alive, resting in a cart in the street
without any covering and wearing few clothes. {67} In February 1842, Mary Beers, a “woman of ill fame,” {68} was found by Constable Adams, frozen to death in a canal boat. Having
no home to return to after her discharged from the Common Gaol just
two days previously, Beers had been “compelled to find shelter
for
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her body in a canal boat.” {69} The death of Ellen McGuire and Mary Beers serve as a sharp reminder
of how difficult it was for some women to survive the streets of
Montreal. For other prostitutes, incarceration provided an attractive
alternative to death by starvation and hypothermia. They committed or
threatened to commit petty crimes in order to be arrested or they
requested lodging at the Common Gaol or at the Watch House. For
others, the Common Gaol served as a place to die. Occasionally some
humanity could be shown toward an inmate, as in the case of Lydia
Corneille. A well-known prostitute, vagrant, and unreformed alcoholic
who was frequently incarcerated in the city’s Common Gaol, the
Sheriff permitted Corneille to drink wine and beer during her final
imprisonment when it became evident that “her days were
numbered.” {70}
Homeless
prostitutes sought out certain areas around the city where they could
find food and lodging. For instance, the prolific orchards and
farmers’ fields furnished prostitutes with shelter and food.
They were sometimes accused of picking apples, milking cows, and
pillaging gardens. One farmer complained to the police that soldiers
and “improper girls” habitually broke into his orchard,
where they stole apples and damaged his fruit trees. {71} Prostitutes also sought shelter in a number of different places, such
as abandoned buildings, barns, stables, and haylofts.
Like
their brothel counterparts, streetwalkers also had to contend with
violence. In 1832, prostitute Amable Breton accused a man of
attacking her while she attended high mass. Apparently he “l’aurait
saisi par les cheveux et l’aurait frappée à coups
de pieds et de poings et aurait dechiré ses hardes.” {72} When constable Pierre Poitras investigated a complaint about a
disturbance of the peace in the St. Laurence suburb, he discovered a
crowd of people gathered around a prostitute who had been violently
beaten by two men after they apparently caught her in the act of
stealing from one of them. {73} The violence encountered by Montreal prostitutes was not unique.
Susan Harsin found that Parisian street prostitutes were often
victims of violence. She argues that their vulnerability to brutality
was associated with the type of work that they did, which brought
them in contact with criminals, the dangerous streets that they
frequented late at night, and the notoriety associated with their
trade. {74}
Certain
other conditions contributed to the dangers of the streets. At night
most of the roadways in the city were dark; lights were added to some
of them in 1815 at the
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initiation of the residents of the western
section of St. Paul Street. They began a collection to purchase and
maintain street lamps for the area between the Old Market and
Griffintown Bridge. {75} Two months later, inhabitants of the eastern section of the same
street from Mr. Lilly’s corner to the Bonsecours church
commenced a similar collection. {76}
Some
of the lanes and alleys leading off St. Paul Street were so narrow
that pedestrians had to shrink up against the walls of buildings to
avoid contact with any horse and cart passing by. {77} City officials neglected many of the city’s streets, allowing
them to become rundown. Commissioners Street, a potentially agreeable
promenade, was “covered with heaps of rubbish, stagnant pools,
and deep ruts, and in some places half covered with logs of timber.” {78} In rainy weather, unpaved city streets became very muddy. {79} Sherbrooke Street for instance was only passable in day light, during
the spring and fall rainy season, when pedestrians could see where to
step. {80} In the winter, Montreal streets could contain ice as much as two to
three feet thick. {81} In 1820, plans to reduce the amount of sand on the city streets
during the winter months provoked criticism in an editorial in the
Montreal Herald which suggested this would render both the
streets and sidewalks dangerous. {82}
Maps
4, 5, and 6 show the location of arrests of some street prostitutes.
Since the precise location where streetwalkers were arrested was
seldom recorded, at the very least, the maps demonstrate their
pattern of movement over the three periods. The old city remained an
important area for street prostitution, especially where large
numbers of men congregated such as the old and new markets, the Champ
de Mars, and the Quebec Barracks. For instance, in 1836 a Grand Jury
complained that respectable Montrealers were prevented from utilizing
the Champ de Mars as a promenade because it was infested by “filles
publiques” who committed “scènes
dégoutantes” at night. {83} Another favourite spot
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was the old market, “a low, wooden
shed-like building” {84} situated beside Capital Street which carried on a brisk business
providing visitors with alcoholic libation at its eighteen taverns. {85} By the third period, prostitutes and loose, idle and disorderly women
were increasingly arrested in all of the city suburbs and in the
fields and farms around the city. Perhaps when police patrols were
extended to the suburbs in the 1830s, streetwalkers sought out other
green spaces, such as fields and farms, to avoid arrest by staying a
few steps ahead of the law. Many of these women were arrested in the
company of clients who were often soldiers.
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-121-
Streetwalkers
solicited or were sought out by clients by asking for or by offering
to buy them a drink. Like the brothel, alcohol consumption played a
crucial role in street prostitution. A small window into the street
culture of prostitution was provided by the Montreal Herald in
its reporting of a larceny case involving the theft of a watch and
chain. During the September session of the Court of Kings Bench, John
West testified that in May 1826 on his way back from the St. Lawrence
suburb where he had picked up a pair of shoes for his master, “he
fell in” with Marguerite Miron. Miron requested that he “treat
her with some drink.” West obliged. On returning to his
employer’s house, the door was locked; not wanting to disturb
the family, he went to an out-house to sleep. Shortly thereafter,
Miron and a man approached him, asking for more liquor. Since he had
none, nor did he have any money, West suggested that she search his
body to verify what he had told her. Not long after they left he
noticed that his silver watch was missing. On cross-examination, West
denied that he had offered Miron a drink but admitted that he knew
her “by her walk.” He also denied that he asked her to
sleep with him, arguing he had had no “connexion” with
her, and denied that he gave her his watch in pledge for money. The
jury did not believe his story and found Miron not guilty. {86}
Solicitation
of clients took many different forms, from the conspicuous in which a
streetwalker exposed herself or openly pursued men, to more covert
forms which involved particular symbols or coded behaviour. A woman
might be identified as a prostitute by frequenting certain city
streets at night, by her manner of gait as in the case of Marguerite
Miron, or by wearing particular clothing in a distinctive way. One
prostitute was apprehended when she “shamelessly and indecently
exposed her nakedness in the public street to all the people
passing.” {87} Perhaps the red shawl and a plume of black feathers worn by
streetwalker Catherine Ryan while promenading at eight o’clock
one evening near the Bonsecours Church served as a sign of her work. {88} While I have no evidence that streetwalkers followed a particular
dress code, prostitutes in Victorian England did so as a way to
overtly reveal their occupation to men. Judith Walkowitz described
streetwalkers as “bonnetless, without shawls, they presented
themselves ‘in their figure’ to passersby.” {89}
Some
women were accused of being loose, idle and disorderly for purely
subjective or circumstantial reasons. By the 1840s, Montreal women
walking alone at night on particular streets risked their reputation
and safety. Barbara Hobson contends that in some American cities, the
presence of women on certain streets became a way to
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identify
prostitutes. {90} In one case, a servant by the name of Mary wrote in a letter to the
editor of the Montreal Transcript that she had been stopped by
a policeman one evening while running an errand for her mistress.
This policeman accused her of being out on some “bad intention”
which necessitated her removal to the Watchhouse. Eventually, because
of the intervention of some gentlemen, Mary was escorted back to her
mistress’ house who then verified what Mary had already stated
to the policeman. {91} Mary Elizabeth Williamson may or may not have been a prostitute at
the time that she was caught having “carnally known”
George Hamilton on a butcher’s bench in the New Market Place.
This was her first arrest. She was charged with being intoxicated. {92}
Prostitutes
often solicited clients in city taverns. Chief Constable Fitzpatrick
accused one tavernkeeper of allowing soldiers and common prostitutes
to drink in his tavern in St. Mary Street and to assemble outside of
his door and “shew [sic] the most disgraceful conduct on the
public street.” {93} Another tavernkeeper, who kept a pub on Commissioners Street,
permitted prostitutes and soldiers to drink and gather there,
moreover, allowing them to “sit and drink in his barr [sic]
room exhibiting a public scandale.” {94} In the first half of nineteenth century Horncastle, B.J. Davey found
that some pub-keepers openly encouraged prostitutes to use their
facilities. {95}
Disreputable
characters reputedly frequented certain areas of the city. Notorious
taverns located around the wharves in the old city served as a
meeting place for soldiers, prostitutes, and others. {96} Licenced tavern keepers, concerned about the rioting, drunkenness,
and types of characters admitted to these places, formed an
association to suppress these establishments. {97} Capital Street was considered such a notorious area that it became
the subject of a petition presented to the House of Assembly in 1816.
Petitioners demanded that the taverns be closed along with part of
the street itself. {98} Since alcohol consumption played such a major role in solicitation,
some Montreal prostitutes who spend long periods in drinking
establishments became alcohol
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dependant. Similarly, in Paris,
drinking became a problem for some prostitutes who passed long
periods in cafes and cabarets soliciting clients. {99} In Montreal, a number of streetwalkers died in public institutions
from the effects of chronic alcohol abuse and poverty. Many others
were described by arresting police officers as intoxicated or given
to drink. High Constable Benjamin Delisle apprehended three
prostitutes at the old market who were intoxicated and disturbing the
peace by fighting and quarrelling. {100} Watchman Joseph Auger detained another prostitute who was “adonnée
à la boisson et dans l’habitude de courir les rues ça
et là.” {101}
Following
the Rebellions, the growth of the city’s police force coincided
with a concerted effort to clean up certain parts of the city. Police
arrested more and more street prostitutes which was a direct attack
upon vagrancy in Montreal. In New York City too, middle-class
citizens organized new charities to reform and relieve the poor,
motivated partially by their attack upon the way that propertyless
New Yorkers used public space which was in direct opposition to what
the middle-class wanted. For the urban middle-class, “ordered
streets,” free of prostitution, maintained their personal
safety and enhanced the convenience and value of their private
property. The urban poor, in contrast, sought to eke out a living or
at the very least to supplement an inadequate one on the streets.
This realm provided an economy without rents and with spontaneous
encounters. {102} Street prostitutes depended upon access to streets and to other
public spaces in order to subsist.
Montreal
prostitutes travelled in the streets and in green spaces in and
around the city. As we have already seen, the fields and orchards
were popular places for streetwalkers to congregate and meet men. {103} One such place was the Priest’s Farm, the property of the
Seminary of the Sulpicians, which consisted of many buildings,
gardens, and orchards. {104} The police made occasional raids to round up these women. In one
instance, following complaints that soldiers and women of loose
character had broken into Mr. Brechenridge’s garden and orchard
located at the end of St. Joseph Street, the officer on duty
proceeded there to arrest the women. On arrival, he discovered three
well known prostitutes and approximately thirty soldiers. He refused
to arrest the women
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“under these circumstances.” {105} From the perspective of the police, Chief Constable Jeremie knew how
dangerous these excursions could be. He had been stabbed by a soldier
with a bayonet, on a similar foray to arrest soldiers and women of
‘loose character’ who had taken possession of a barn near
Gregory’s Farm, {106} another property of the Sulpicians.
While
we do not know the circumstances which resulted in the rendezvous of
three prostitutes and thirty soldiers, the ratio of women to men at
Brechenridge’s garden begs several questions. Would it have
been a bonanza in remuneration for these three women to service
thirty soldiers, despite the hard work that such a venture would
entail? Or would it have been considered by them as a potentially
dangerous predicament which required particular skill and tact to
prevent harm to themselves?
Like their brothel counterparts, streetwalkers often consorted with
soldiers. Prostitutes might frequent military buildings, as in the
case of Louise Dandelin who patronized the military stables near the
St. Antoine suburb, {107} or areas of the city where soldiers worked. Another prostitute made a
habit of passing nights close to the “corps de garde”
where, in watchman Antoine Caspel’s opinion, she seemed
“chercher à débaucher les soldats.” {108} Moreover, prostitutes usually solicited and serviced soldiers in the
public spaces of the city. John Daly, a soldier in the artillery and
Catherine Brodeur were arrested after committing “une
offense contre les moeurs dans la rue près du marché
Ste. Anne.” {109}
What effect did the presence of gangs of armed soldiers have on the
gender politics of public space? What consequence did this have on
policing and for the women involved with soldiers? Any restriction
to the streetwalkers’ access to the public had certain
consequences. The public streets served as an obvious venue for the
women to eke out a living. It was also in the streets, as Christine
Stansell’s study of New York popular-class women shows, where
women performed domestic duties such as “pinching and saving,
of cleaning and borrowing and lending, of taking – and of being
taken,” {110} where they helped each other, raised their children, and voiced their
pleasures and grievances. {111} Thus, the separation between private and public spheres was not part
of the everyday experience of women in early nineteenth-century
Montreal. The police registers provide a small window of opportunity
to examine these questions. While we do not
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know what discipline
befell these men in the military courts, at least some of the
soldiers’ behaviour suggest that they acted above civilian law.
Their involvement with prostitutes, for example, appeared to be
overlooked. Unlike male civilians found with prostitutes in the
city’s public spaces who could be charged with being loose,
idle, and disorderly, or vagrants, soldiers were never charged, but
rather they were escorted back to barracks. In instances involving
other violations of the law, some soldiers seemed to act with
impunity, which perhaps the carrying of weapons allowed. After all,
policemen only toted a stave and rattle. {112} In 1840, a prostitute was “rescued” from Constable John
Bowles, by two soldiers of the 66th Regiment. {113} Civilians also interfered with police business. Donald Fyson contends
that Montreal constables, watchmen, and bailiffs launched numerous
legal complaints against city inhabitants who apparently insulted,
threatened, or assaulted them. {114} Civilian hindrance in police activity has been noted elsewhere. In
nineteenth-century Birmingham, police intervention in popular-class
street life, such as informal assembly, loitering, noisy private
quarrels, and boisterous drunken behaviour was viewed as an
unwelcomed attempt to regulate behaviour. Widely considered
non-criminal matters, their interference met with acts of defiance
and hostility from assaults to the rescue of prisoners apprehended in
the streets. {115}
The
relationship prostitutes established with soldiers was complex.
Prostitutes depended upon soldiers as an important source of
remuneration in a job which they knew was potentially fraught with
danger. They could reduce the peril by soliciting in groups and by
cultivating relationships with these military men. It is obvious from
court documents and police records that Montreal streetwalkers
implemented these strategies. Some prostitutes helped soldiers who
wanted to desert. Mary Marois was fined £20 in 1810 for
concealing and assisting a deserter from the 41st Regiment. {116} Paradoxically, they were also dependent upon soldiers to protect them
from the physical abuse of other men, from arrest, and from
Montreal’s harsh climate by providing food, shelter, and
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companionship. {117} The association between prostitutes and soldiers has been well
documented in a number of important international studies. {118} In Halifax, soldiers made up twenty-five percent of the male
population. Although the army sanctioned marriage for only six per
cent of the soldiers, the remainder sought out sex through unofficial
marriages to local women or through prostitutes. {119} Prostitutes and soldiers publicly fraternized in the taverns located
near the citadel. {120}
Street
prostitutes were arrested and incarcerated for any number of reasons.
The sexual services that they provided to men had a very public face.
At least three women were caught in “flagrant delit,”
one on the beach, another under a street light, and a third one on a
bench in the market place. Ann Taylor was discovered by a watchman at
midnight sleeping on a bench in the New Market after having
“forniquer (sic) avec un soldat.” {121} Others solicited and serviced clients in groups. Adelaide St. André,
Henriette Hamelle, and Peggy Dollar were incarcerated for committing
on Papineau Road what Charles Picard described as “en plein
jour les derniers actes d’indécences avec des hommes.” {122} For other homeless streetwalkers like Elizabeth Austin and Elmire
Perrault, they preferred a more private setting. Accompanied by two
soldiers, Austin and Perrault broke into a house on St. Catherine
Street by forcing open a shutter. {123} Prostitutes also brought clients to their lodgings. Adélaide
Menard who leased a room in a house on St. Paul Street, admitted men
into her apartment through a window. {124} This situation seems similar to eighteenth-century England, where not
only did prostitutes bring clients to brothels and
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rented rooms, but
they also provided their services in the parks, streets, and
alleyways of London. {125} In Halifax, too, in the 1850s and 1860s, streetwalkers serviced men
in yards, porches, military installations, and rented rooms. {126}
Streetwalkers
could also be arrested for committing offences such as loitering in
the streets, begging, disturbing the peace, keeping company with
other people of ill fame, throwing stones, drunkenness, and being
homeless during inclement weather. Two streetwalkers were arrested in
November 1835 when they were discovered sleeping in a hayloft. {127} Some of the women were apprehended as vagrants when they settled
their differences publicly. Prostitutes Margaret McGinnis and
Margaret Carr were arrested after being discovered in a field behind
the Champ de Mars, in a drunken state and “in the act of
fighting together.” {128} Similarly, Haligonian prostitutes were arrested for any number of
infractions such as drunkenness, blasphemy, larceny, and assault and
battery. {129} By the end of the period under study, many Montreal women were
arrested simply for wandering in the fields and loitering in the city
streets.
Conclusion
Prostitution
flourished throughout the Montreal urban landscape. Streetwalkers
exercised their trade in the old city as well as the suburbs, in
fields, and on roadways around the city. Brothel-keepers set up
houses of ill fame in the old city and in the suburbs, Côte à
Barron, and Pointe à Callière, spreading out to the far
reaches of some of the suburbs. Streetwalkers were arrested in ever
greater numbers by constables who expanded the area where they
patrolled, to include the streets of the suburbs and the green spaces
in and around town.
While
Montrealers shared urban space with brothel-keepers and their
inmates, neighbours complained about houses of prostitution if they
wanted to rid their quarter of the sex trade or whenever inmates of
these establishments broke with the prevailing code of conduct.
Prostitutes and their clients made too much noise, offended their
neighbours in a variety of different ways, or threatened the safety
of the neighbourhood. The permeability of households with public
spaces and the intimate nature of neighbourhoods encouraged close
contact with neighbours and a variety of relationships with each
other. Thus, offenders could be disciplined or banished from their
neighbourhoods.
-128-
Streetwalkers
lived large parts of their lives in the public streets of the city.
Many of them had to eke out a living in the harshest of environments,
where daily survival was dependent upon finding lodging and food. The
streets could also be a place for them to die. Alliances with men,
many of whom were soldiers, were forged to facilitate making a living
and to establish companionship.
4. This mixture of land use, from the presence of brothels in
residential areas to the very public nature of prostitution in their
streets had important implications for community relations. Bill
Bramwell who has examined the relationship between the use of public
space and the community in nineteenth-century Birmingham, argues
that local communities were made and reshaped by people in conflict
as well as by what people held in common. Both conferred a localized
geographical coherence upon the neighbourhoods. Bramwell, “Public
space and local communities: the example of Birmingham, 1840-1880”
in Gerry Kearns & Charles W.J. Withers (eds.), Urbanising
Britain: Essays on class and community in the nineteenth century (New York, 1992), 32-39.
6. I wish to thank Tamara Myers for sharing some of her ideas on the
gendered use of public space, especially in relationship to street
prostitution and red-light districts. Myers, Criminal Women and
Bad Girls: Regulation and Punishment in Montreal, 1890-1930 (Ph.D., McGill University, 1996).
7. Early nineteenth-century American cities were characterized by their
amorphous nature, with unlimited accessibility to both women and
men. The beginnings of gender differentiation emerged between 1825
and 1840 with the development of so-called male space in the form of
public halls, theatres, and merchant exchanges. By mid-century,
class became the means to differentiate public space. Virtuous
middle to upper-class women, to prevent an affront to their
sensibilities by encounters with so-called “dangerous”
women, limited their public space to “safe” areas.
Working-class women on the other hand continued to share public
space with prostitutes. Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between
Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore, 1990), 64-79. Both
Timothy Gilfoyle and Marilynn Wood Hill contend that the integration
of prostitution in the neighbourhoods of all social classes did not
occur until 1820. This wide spread dispersal of the sex trade was
short lived according to Gilfoyle, culminating in the development of
Soho as a red-light district. Gilfoyle, “The Urban Geography
of Commercial Sex: Prostitution in New York City, 1790-1860,”
Journal of Urban History 13:4 (August 1987), 383-384. Wood
Hill on the other hand suggests that despite the dispersal of
prostitution, certain areas of the city gained notoriety as centers
of prostitution. Wood Hill, Their Sisters’ Keepers:
Prostitution in New York City, 1830-1870 (New York, 1993), 184.
8. Court depositions in 1798 show that this quarter of the city was a
popular area for Montreal prostitutes. Nine street-walkers were
named in a Grand Jury presentment, who were in “the daily
habit of frequenting the ramparts near the powder magazine”.
QSD, 30-4-1798.
9. Corfield, “Walking the City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in
Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Urban History 16:2 (February 1990), 141-149.
10. Gilfoyle, “Urban Geography of Commercial,” 375-388.
11. Phyllis Lambert, “Removing the Fortifications: toward a New
Urban Form,” in Lambert and Alan Stewart (eds.), Opening
the Gates of Eighteenth-Century Montréal (Montreal,
1992), 85.
12. Fernand Ouellet refers to these socio-economic changes as “adverse
economic conjunctures” in his book, Economic and Social
History of Quebec, 1760-1850: Structures and Conjunctures (Ottawa, 1980), 280.
13. Jean-Claude Robert, Atlas Historique de Montréal (Montreal, 1994), 79.
14. According to W.H. Parker, Montreal had developed beyond the old city
into seven suburbs located to the west, north and south. Parker,
“The Towns of Lower Canada in the 1830’s,” in R.P.
Beckinsale & J.N. Houston (eds,), Urbanization and Its
Problems (Oxford, 1970), 398.
15. Alan Stewart, “Settlement, Commerce, and the Local Economy”
in Lambert and Stewart (eds.), Opening the Gates, 45-46.
16. Registers of the Court of Quarter Sessions of the Peace, (hereafter
QSR) 19-7-1823.
17. I am referring to Marie Millette, Marie Euphrosine Metthote, and
Marie Livernois’s brothel in the St. Mary suburb. (QSD,
31-8-1814)
19. Court depositions offer a way of determining where women and men
kept brothels in the city. Nearly three-quarters of these documents
noted the street on which the brothel was situated; less than a
tenth of the total mentioned only the suburb. A street number was
rare. Sometimes the clerk of the court provided pertinent details in
the depositions such as the names of the intersecting streets if a
particular brothel was located on a street corner or some other
characteristic as in the case of a brothel which was described as
situated at the end of College Street.
20. Since specific street numbers were not usually recorded in the legal
sources, I have represented the total number of brothel complaints
issued by prosecutors on corresponding city streets. Certainly this
depiction of brothels is problematic for a number of reasons. First,
we do not know anything about those brothels which existed but for
which no legal objection has been found. Second, we do not know if
certain houses were utilized repeatedly as brothels. Third, my
argument that brothels spread over the period based on my
representation of them on these maps is tentative at best. At the
very least I would posit that these maps tell us two things:
firstly, the legal grievances recorded in depositions reflected the
geographic location of the complainants; and secondly, policing
practises influenced the numbers of brothel-keeping complaints and
prosecutions. With the establishment of the watch system in the
suburbs in 1836 and 1837, and the re-organization of the Montreal
police in 1838, the number of complaints, which were increasingly
made by constables themselves, grew.
21. These periods were chosen for a number of reasons which primarily
reflected changes in the policing practices of the city. Before 1830
a professional police office had been established which operated
daily out of the court house, with special police constables
attached to it. The police office, managed by two salaried
magistrates who also acted as chairmen of the Quarter Sessions, took
over much of the business of the clerk of the peace, where they were
to “receive depositions, issue summonses and warrants, and the
like”. Donald Fyson, “Criminal Justice, Civil Society
and the Local State: The Justices of the Peace in the District of
Montreal, 1764-1830,” (Ph.D., Université de Montréal,
1995, 73. Thus, the office of the clerk of the peace served a less
important position in the everyday business of city policing.
Rather, the clerk of the peace curtailed his activities, according
to Fyson, to the administration of the city and to the more serious
criminal cases handled by higher criminal courts. (Ibid., 75.) By
the end of the 1820s, the police office was under attack. The two
salaried magistrates, Thomas McCord and Jean-Marie Mondelet were
dismissed and replaced by a single magistrate, Samuel Gale. In 1829,
the Police Office was disbanded and the post of chairman of the
Quarter Sessions was abolished. The Police Office and its funding
was transferred to the Peace Office and thus became the
responsibility of the clerk of the peace. (Ibid., 79.) The “new”
system that was installed was an attempt to return to an older one
in which the justices were voluntary and non-salaried, operating out
of their homes. (Ibid., 80.) In addition, an internal reorganization
of the watch was made in 1832 and completely restructured by 1836,
with watchmen regularly patrolling the suburbs. Following the
Rebellions of 1837-1838 and under the recommendations of Lord
Durham, the police force was reorganized by an 1838 edict from the
Special Council which augmented the complement of constables and
designed changes in the method of patrolling.
24. A group of 24 prominent men, the likes of Thomas Bagg and lawyer
Samuel Monk, petitioned an 1834 Grand Jury to rid their
neighbourhood of a house of ill repute which had been operating on
Vitré Street for ten years. Divided into two flats, both of
which were deemed brothels by the petitioners, the building was
owned by Mrs. Lemery and leased to women characterized as lewd and
disorderly. According to the authors of the petition, the brothels
disturbed the public peace by operating at all hours of the day and
night and by the assaults and riots that occurred there with
regularity. Moreover, residents and visitors publicly exhibited
obscene behaviour to the “great moral danger” of the
neighbours. The Grand Jury agreed with the petitioners that their
complaint merited immediate attention. QSD, 29-4-1834.
25. In the city of St. Louis, police sweeps or raids yielded dozens of
prostitutes and a few clients at a time. Jeffrey Adler argues that
these raids were instituted for a number of different reasons: in
response to moral crusaders, to control the nonsexual activities,
such as larceny, which took place in certain brothels, to regulate
those brothels which became unusually disorderly, and to remind
madams of their implicit arrangement with city authorities.
(“Streetwalkers, Degraded Outcasts and Good-for-Nothing
Huzzies: Women and the Dangerous Class in Antebellum St. Louis”
Journal of Social History 25:4 (1992): 741-742)
26. QSD, 4-4-1835, 16-4-1835, 16-4-1835, 16-4-1835, and 21-4-1835.
27. Policemen communicated this information in police books.
28. National Archives of Canada (hereafter NAC), RG4 B 14, Police
Records, vol. 64, 22-12-1841.
29. NAC, RG4 B 14, Police Records, vol. 38, 15-2-1837.
34. Elinor Senior acknowledges that the favourite haunts of soldiers
tended to be the grog shop and the brothel, yet argues that the
routine of barracks life curtailed their involvement in brothel
activities. Late-night passes for soldiers were, she suggests,
conservatively handed out or forbidden in times when tension existed
between the community and the military. Senior, British Regulars
in Montreal: An Imperial Garrison, 1832-1854 (Montreal, 1981),
149-151. However, court records clearly show that soldiers were
often caught in brothels after tattoo at 8 o’clock in the
evening. Either late passes were in reality easy to obtain or
unnecessary to leave the barracks. There is certainly a gap between
what was prescribed and what was practised. In Halifax, a port and
garrison town similar to Montreal, some merchants who catered to
soldiers and sailors competed with other establishments by offering
them an array of services from selling liquor and sex, to using
their daughters to lure customers. The availability of women
attracted customers for food and liquor or whatever else was
normally on sale and gave a marginal shop the edge over its equally
unstable neighbour without such extra services. Judith Fingard, The
Dark Side of Life in Victorian Halifax (Porters Lake, NS, 1989),
101.
39. Marcia Carlisle, “Disorderly City, Disorderly Women:
Prostitution in Ante-Bellum Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography 110:4 (1986), 554-556.
46. McCord Archives, McCord Papers, vol. 692, QS, 18-1-1847. I thank
Brian Young for bringing this source to my attention and for
providing photocopies of some of the cases.
57. I have not found any evidence of what it cost to buy a drink in a
Montreal brothel. Most of the depositions were simply too vague. Of
the ten depositions concerning the infraction of selling liquor
without a licence which I identified in the Special Sessions bundles
for the years 1841 and 1842, only three of them recorded the cost of
refreshments at unlicenced establishments. None of the individuals
charged were associated with prostitution. The first one involved
pastry cook and confectioner Susanna Smith. Apparently Arthur
Gilmore bought two glasses of wine at her house and paid 3 pence for
each (SSD, 8-11-1842). The second case implicated widow Josephte
Archambeault and Jean-Baptiste Morrin both innkeepers in Longue
Pointe who were charged with selling liquor without a licence after
another tavernkeeper, Pierre Monette, complained to the authorities.
He claimed to have drunk four glasses of rum at Archambeault’s
establishment with David Duford who paid 6 pence for the beverages
(SSD, 25-2-1841). The last case involved a trader by the name of
Petronelle Sabourin who sold Pierre Lafontaine a half glass of rum
for “5 sols” (SSD, 12-10-1842). Outside of legal
complaints, the only other reference that I have to the price of
alcoholic beverages is in travellers’ accounts. Thomas Fowler
wrote about the cost of purchasing drinks in the various taverns and
inns of the city:
The
cheapest which I saw sold, in the various places we visited, was
four pence per glass, and some as high as six pence. A glass of soda
water, lemonade, beer, and cider, is the fill of a small tumbler
containing about half an imperial pint; but a glass of spirits or
wine, is only the fill of a wine glass. Few kinds of spirits or wine
in this country exceed one penny per glass wholesale, and some kinds
not so much. However, in the ordinary taverns they generally charge
four pence a glass for any kind of liquor; but in the hotels they
charge six pence per glass, and for some particular kinds more.
Thomas
Fowler, The journal of a tour through British America to the
falls of Niagara.... (Aberdeen, 1832), 124.
58. NAC, RG4 B 14, Police Records, vol. 32, 1-8-1842.
61. NAC, RG4 A 1, (“S” Series) Civil and Provincial
Secretary, Lower Canada, vol. 95, 7-7-1807. I would like to
thank Alan Stewart for bringing this letter to my attention.
81. Isaac Fidler, Observations on professions, literature, manners,
and emigration in the United States and Canada, made during a
residence there in 1832 (London, 1833), 141.
102. Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca,
1989), 170-171.
103. It was customary in Victorian Halifax for police to arrest offenders
in the common land around the city where homeless people lived.
Judith Fingard reports that next to taverns, these common lands
account for the second highest level of arrests of all offenders
with respect to locality. The wharves, vessels, and markets came
next, followed by military installations. Fingard, Dark Side of
Life, 39-40.
112. The police registers provide numerous instances whereby soldiers
showed little regard for civilian law. When Sub-constable Thomas
Dalhanty came to the rescue of a young woman being “illused”
by soldier Patrick Prindle, he was bayoneted in the thigh by
Prindle, who then ran to the guard gate where he was “admitted
and protected from arrest by the Sergeant of the Guard and all the
men under his command” (NAC, RG4 B 14, Police Records, vol.
64, 28-10-1841). Similarly, when a soldier of the 23rd Regiment drew
his bayonet on Sub-constable Bowen in Commissioners Street and told
him to go about his business, the sergeant on guard refused to give
Bowen the soldier’s name. For Sub-constables Dalhanty and
Bowen, these lawbreaking soldiers were beyond their reach.
113. NAC, RG4 B 14, Police Records, vol. 53, 5-8-1840.
117. More than a thousand soldiers were quartered at the barracks every
year between 1839 and 1854. These men were for the most part single
or separated from their wives by virtue of the army regulations
placed upon their private lives. According to Elinor Senior, only 6%
of them were permitted army rations and barrack lodgings for their
families. Most could not afford to bring their families to Canada
and support them at their own expense. For those who wanted to
marry, permission had to be obtained from the captain of their
company who apparently inquired into the character of the woman
before passing their request for marriage on to the commanding
officer who had the final decision. Senior, British Regulars in
Montreal, 148-149. Many of those who did not marry, turned to
prostitutes for sex.
118. Frances Finnegan’s study of York prostitutes shows that
unofficial provisions for visits by prostitutes to the barracks most
likely occurred although there is no evidence in military records.
However, there are numerous newspaper accounts of prostitutes found
in the company of soldiers. Finnegan, Poverty and Prostitution: A
Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (New York, 1979), 26-27;
see also Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society.
La imaginería bicéfala del submundo de lo delincuencial y la prostituta se extiende en una larga línea literaria y artística que - desde Europa hacia el resto del mundo - transita por las cimas románticas, se engalana en la radicalidad decadente que impulsa Charles Baudelaire, adviene a las experimentaciones descriptivas de la urbe como un gran órgano en las novelas de Emile Zola y se corona en el amplio repertorio de las mujeres fatales de fines del siglo XIX. Como se sabe, el origen y el trayecto de esta fantasmática se hunden en el sedimento de los miedos, angustias y deseos masculinos.
En las imágenes de tal submundo hay una arqueología de saberes e influencias que demanda su examen en un intercambio dinámico entre la historia metropolitana y las otras historias sujetas a coloniales diversos.
Charles Bernheimer apunta que la prostituta se vuelve ubicua en la narrativa y el arte de aquel periodo no sólo por su fuerza en tanto fenómeno social, sino porque estimula estrategias artísticas que controlan y disipan su amenaza contra el orden masculino: porque la prostituta fascina al grado de que el hechizo puede producir estructuras que contienen, subliman o metaforizan la descomposición contaminante de su fermento sexual.
Contra tal fermento se impuso una normatividad precisa - llamada reglamentarismo - que acabaría por triunfar no sólo en Francia, sino también en otros países europeos y del continente americano, como México. De allí emanó una fotografía de control prostibulario que implicó una estrategia compulsiva, sistemática y de dominio de género.
Sin embargo, en México ya se dudaba de la eficacia del reglamentarismo como método de control a principios del siglo XX. En 1908, Luis Lara y Pardo escribió:
en consecuencia, si por una parte los beneficios que la salubridad pública obtiene de la reglamentación actual son ínfimos, si la propagación de las enfermedades venéreas no se combate eficazmente por ellos; si los resultados prácticos son nulos, y si, por otra parte, la moral pública y los intereses sociales quedan gravemente lesionados con la tolerancia en que se basan esos reglamentos, es indudable que no deben subsistir, que debe suprimírseles cuanto antes.
No obstante, será a partir de 1940 cuando entre en vigor otro enfoque sobre el trato prostibulario en el país: el abolicionismo, que consistirá en un combate del lenocinio, campanas sanitarias contra las enfermedades venéreas, la educación preventiva y el empeño de rehabilitar a las prostitutas. A partir de estas medidas - que forman parte del reordenamiento de los espacios urbanos y su proceso modernizador - se buscará destruir las llamadas "zonas de tolerancia".
El efecto inmediato será el auge de prostíbulos tolerados o clandestinos y el incremento de la venta del cuerpo en las calles. Así la prostituta tiende a dejar lo claustral y surge a la plenitud del cielo abierto, en sincronía con el auge de lugares de dispersión nocturna - cantinas, cabarets, salones de baile -. A contracorriente de las fundaciones urbanas de lo público y lo privado, de la moral burguesa y sus llamados a la industriosidad, el matrimonio monogámico y el recato doméstico, se perfilarán las realidades de los bajos fondos.
Desde un punto de vista estetizante que prosperó en la historia metropolitana desde mediados del Siglo XIX , la prostituta y sus atributos de perversa, contagiosa, histérica, al igual que el delincuente - su contraparte estereotípica -, encarnan la idea de autoesculpir un Yo siniestro que incluye el vagabundeo de lo público a lo privado por los prostíbulos y los antros, la vida bohemia, el desgaste del alcohol y las drogas, los asesinatos pasionales.
El cuerpo se vuelve el mundo sobre el que se tatúa una escritura de riesgos, y la existencia una aventura volátil que obliga a un itinerario de contrastes entre lo diurno o normal y lo nocturno o proscrito. El mapa urbano se convierte entonces en una más de las prolongaciones íntimas donde lo real se fantasmagoriza y lo espectral se objetiva. La ciudad se entrega como el escenario preciso de esa "belleza de las cosas siniestras", que Jacques Prévert, hacia los años treinta, insistía en mostrarle al fotógrafo Brassai.
La celebridad de las fotografías del París de los bajos fondos capturada por Brassai en los años treinta, se debe a su tino para aproximarse a una matriz fantasmagórica, la que culminó con la estética expresionista del cine alemán entre la primera Guerra Mundial y 1933, a través de directores como Robert Weine, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Paul Wegener, F.W. Murnau, entre otros. Se trata de lo que la crítica alemana Lotte H. Eisner llamó la génesis de la "pantalla demónica", y donde la calle se construye como una atmósfera perfecta:
La calle representa la llamada del destino, sobre todo por la noche, con sus esquinas desiertas en que se sumerge uno como en un abismo, con su tráfico fulgurante, con sus farolas encendidas, sus letreros de luz, sus faros de coche, su asfalto reluciente por la lluvia, las ventanas de sus misteriosas casas iluminadas, la sonrisa de esas niñas de rostro pintado. Es la atracción enigmática, la seducción voluptuosa para los pobres diablos que, cansados de la monotonía de su vida, van en busca de aventura y evasión.
El París secreto de los años treinta de Brassai representa la síntesis fotográfica de la estrategia de ubicar a la prostituta -ya fuese cautiva o callejera- y al prostíbulo como núcleo de los bajos fondos urbanos. ¿Por qué resulta oportuno ahora citar el paradigma fotográfico de Brassai? Porque auxilia a comprender -por simpatías o diferencias- aquella materia que en México exploraron -y repitieron una y otra vez como auténtica "fijación"- los Casasola, Juan Crisóstomo Méndez, J. Devars, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Enrique Díaz, Nacho López, Ricardo Salazar. O, en los últimos años, fotógrafos como Víctor Flores Olea, Fabrizio León y Marco Antonio Cruz; este último, a mediados de los años ochenta, capturó el grosor aciago de las prostitutas de la ciudad de México y sus protestas contra el abuso policiaco.
El paradigma sintetizado por Brassai permite intuir una verdad representativa que identifica el acto de elegir a una prostituta con el acto de tomar una fotografía de ella; el acto de reiterar la mirada sobre la prostituta y el acto de añadir una capa más -mediante tal "fijación"- a la arqueología de las imágenes y representaciones de la prostituta: ambos casos se deciden por una doble estrategia de fantasmagorías de dominio y de decisionismo masculino, contiguos a lo que Linda Williams llamó "el frenesí de lo visible", en que vive la cultura contemporánea.
El mundo contemporáneo y su plétora de imágenes han intensificado el triunfo de tal frenesí, donde el cuerpo femenino construye un catálogo abierto al control y al mercado ubicuos, a sus espejismos y a sus riesgos. En síntesis, la prostituta - un cuerpo/mercancía de carácter universalizable - coagula mitos, representaciones e imágenes, que vale descifrar en su trayecto moderno para comprender el trasfondo de su hechizo.
Un mito consiste en el lenguaje o las representaciones que lo constituyen. La naturaleza y el alcance de un mito se medirían por la cantidad y la diversidad de tal explosión lingüística e imaginal. La prostituta es uno de los grandes mitos mexicanos por una razón evidente: tenemos un repertorio vasto para referirnos a la importancia de la prostituta en nuestra vida pública y privada, que incluye manifestaciones lo mismo literarias que fílmicas.
¿Cómo se ha gestado semejante trazo en nuestra cultura? Lo prohibitivo M intercambio prostibulario, normado en términos modernos en México desde 1865, como se verá enseguida, entronizó a las "hetairas", las "mesalinas", las "princesas del placer", las "clandestinas", las "rameras", las "meretrices", las "hijas del vicio", las "aquellas", las "hijas de la noche", las "prófugas", las "hijas de la alegría", las "banqueras de la sífilis" -de acuerdo con el habla decinomónica-, y las convirtió en una extraña mezcla de figuras venerables por la magia que sacralizaba el objeto del pecado para mejor lavar las culpas de su contacto
El hecho de que la prostituta más famosa de la historia moderna mexicana -creada por Federico Gamboa y prolongada en el imaginario colectivo por varias versiones en cine- se llame Santa, no sólo muestra un recurso de inversión religiosa en un país de acentos tradicionales; tampoco se reduce a una ironía exitosa, sino que revela el triunfo de un enfoque masculino que hegemoníza el lenguaje mitificador mediante un dominio exclusivista contra el género femenino. Mitificar es prolongar al hombre en sus anhelos múltiples, hegemónicos.
Malinche, madre venérea de los mexicanos y desvelo teórico de Octavio Paz, no sería la Chingada suprema sin la existencia de Santa. Y Santa no sería tal sin el aplomo de una sociedad de incipientes valores modernos, donde el hombre es rey y quiere serlo siempre mediante la prolongación de sus valores y dominios. La pregunta es: ¿qué tienen las prostitutas que obligan a la mirada, que obligan a la memoria?
Una vía para comprender los fundamentos del mito y las representaciones de la prostituta en México reside en el estudio de sus orígenes como imagen. Ahí han confluido las apropiaciones de otros ámbitos; descifrar su trazo genealógico implica atender el reverso de las certezas y símbolos nacionalistas, que quisieran verse a sí mismos desde la amnesia de las mixturas culturales, estáticos en el tiempo, autorreferenciales. Un giro centrífugo - acaso postnacionalista - conduce a examinar los contrastes o las influencias del caso, y a rebasar la historicidad anecdótica y afirmativa de dos de los grandes relatos que han constituido a nuestro Estado-nación y su círculo discursivo: la identidad a partir del origen histórico y los valores consustanciales a ésta. Edward W. Said afirma:
Todas las culturas practican la autodefinición: se trata de una retórica, un juego de ocasiones y autoridades - fiestas nacionales, por ejemplo, o tiempos de crisis, padres fundadores, textos básicos, etcétera - y un tipo de vínculos familiares que les es del todo propios. No obstante, en este mundo nuestro, ligado por lazos tan estrechos como nunca antes a causa de las exigencias de la comunicación electrónica, el comercio, los viajes, los conflictos de medio ambiente y de regiones capaces de extenderse con tremenda velocidad, la afirmación de la identidad de ninguna manera es únicamente un problema ritual.
En efecto: no sólo es un problema ritual, sino ante todo un imperativo crítico. Al menos desde mediados del siglo pasado, los poetas y los periodistas, los moralizadores y los intelectuales, se han ocupado en nuestro país de aquella mujer que es como nuestras madres, como nuestras esposas, como nuestras hermanas, como nuestras hijas, pero a la vez es muy diferente a ellas. Y en el sueño de la accesibilidad, de la posesión extrema, de la esclavitud última, el hombre se arriesga a vincularse con la prostituta.
En una primera instancia, se trata del hallazgo de un puente entre el cuerpo deseado y la moneda que lo posibilita. La mujer y el dinero: los términos de la equivalencia moderna que transparenta al conjunto de la sociedad, como lo anticipó Georg Simmel un siglo atrás, cuando precisó que la prostitución es ni más ni menos un producto : directo de las condiciones sociales. Y, en consecuencia, podría añadirse, de nuestras fobias y temores. ¿Por qué? Porque, las prostitutas suelen representar lo patológico y lo perverso del cuerpo social, y el trato acostumbrado hacia ellas alcanza rasgos cercanos al racismo, cuya idea del predominio de una raza sobre otra se basa en la abominación del otro.
Para esclarecer el aspecto racista que implica el entendimiento de la prostituta en la cultura moderna, podría recordarse la tipificación que Alain Corbin estableció sobre las imágenes que a ella se asocian, y que impulsaron la urgencia de regular la vida y los intercambios sexuales con ella: 1) la prostituta es la puta, la pútrida cuyo cuerpo huele mal y simboliza la corrupción moral; 2) la prostituta permite al cuerpo social excretar el exceso de fluido seminal - su cuerpo se asocia a un enfoque organicista -; 3) en tanto cuerpo / atarjea / drenaje, la prostituta mantiene un vínculo directo con lo mórbido, lo cadavérico; 4) la prostituta encarna el riesgo venéreo y el poder del contagio mortal; 5) la prostituta se integra a una cadena de cuerpos femeninos, provenientes de clases desposeídas que se hallan a la disposición de las necesidades físicas de los hombres pudientes. Cabe apuntar que este último atributo, expuesto, a las contradicciones históricas entre colonizador y colonizado, adquiere un agravante adicional.
De acuerdo con el propio Corbin, aquellos cinco puntos produjeron, desde el siglo XIX en Francia, cinco respectivas facetas de la política hacia la prostitución: 1) la tolerancia a la prostitución en términos de higiene social; 2) el impulso de aislarla y circunscribirla; 3) el imperativo de ocultamiento, clausura, vigilancia y control de tal; tráfico; 4) la mejor eficacia laboral al respecto bajo el recinto del burdel o prostíbulo; 5) el desarrollo de la prospección clínica relacionada con el examen del cuerpo prostituido. La política de lo prostibulario ha sido, bajo la perspectiva moderna, un disfraz racista que incluye sus propias imágenes y representaciones mitológicas.
En este punto, conviene deslindar dos ideas que detalló Andrea Rodó respecto al cuerpo femenino. La primera se refiere al carácter complejo de la representación social - que previó Emile Durkheim -, en tanto zona en que se confunden lo individual y lo social, lo subjetivo y lo objetivo, lo interior y lo exterior. La segunda incumbe al hecho de que la representación del cuerpo - y en particular el femenino - "se inscribe en la historia personal y social de cada individuo; en el caso de la mujer, es expresivo del enorme peso de las normas, valores y estereotipos referidos a su condición genérica, que la atan a culpas, a miedos, y le niegan gran parte de las posibilidades de autonomía y placer".
Andrea Rodó acota que, en lo que se refiere a la mujer popular - y en este sentido, no sería inexacto ubicar a la prostituta bajo ese rubro, en virtud de su estatuto minoritario, no sólo porque tal oficio suele absorber a mujeres desposeídas, sino porque el mismo se identifica con el signo universal y fetichizado de la mercancía, el dinero - "el carácter social del cuerpo resulta más evidente aún, por la enorme permeabilidad e indefensión de ese sector frente a las instituciones socializadoras (médicas, educativas, religiosas y medios de comunicación)"
En estos términos, una plataforma para descifrar las imágenes y las representaciones mitológicas de la prostituta es el caso de la fotografía que retrata su cuerpo. Para este desciframiento, y debido a la complejidad del asunto, son insuficientes los recursos convencionales del análisis iconológico, y su observancia de referentes y vinculaciones con las tendencias del arte y la fotografía de los distintos periodos. Por el contrario, se impone otro enfoque de mayor dinamismo y acaso de mayor alcance cultural: el examen de la puesta en escena fotográfica que posibilita tales imágenes y representaciones.
En la fotografía de prostitutas se distinguen al menos dos estrategias descriptivas: la primera se refiere a la fotografía de control prostibulario; la segunda remite a la fotografía de la prostituta y el prostíbulo como núcleo de los bajos fondos urbanos, y encrucijada (le los usos y costumbres sexuales en la cultura moderna. Ambas estrategias resumen las implicaciones arriba descritas.
Cada una de estas estrategias posee su catálogo: un conjunto o universo de fotografías específicas. Dentro de un catálogo hay varios portafolios fotográficos. En México, el tipo de fotografías que obedece a dichas estrategias ha estado presente desde el siglo pasado y se prolonga hasta nuestros días.
La fotografía llegó a nuestro país poco después de su despunte en Europa en 1839, y su arraigo y desarrollo aquí se vincula al descubrimiento del rostro individual. En una sociedad de acentos tradicionales, la presencia de la fotografía se incorporó al escenario de los asombros que arrojaban las máquinas, su impulso adventicio de progreso y promesa civilizadora. El trayecto de la fotografía mexicana resultó paralelo, y a veces se traslapó, con el rumbo inaugural de las normas, las costumbres y los usos modernos, que provenían de Europa y Estados Unidos.
Por lo anterior, resulta imprescindible situar aquella encrucijada cultural desde una perspectiva que rebase cualquier riesgo de incurrir en un nativismo histórico, en un encierro endógeno que soslaye la profunda red de connotaciones culturales que está de por medio. Edward W. Said lo explica así:
En cambio, si desde el principio reconocemos la existencia de historias masivamente entrecruzadas y complejas pero no por eso menos superpuestas e interconectadas -de mujeres, de occidentales, de blancos, de estados nacionales y de culturas- no existiría una razón particular para conferir a cada una de ellas un estatuto ideal y esencialmente separado. No obstante, queremos preservar lo que es único en cada una de ellas si al tiempo podemos guardar el sentido de la comunidad humana y la lucha real que contribuye a su formación: de esa comunidad todas son parte.
Durante el siglo XIX, la búsqueda de un rostro propio de afirmaciones nacionales frente al porvenir ilustrado, liberal, progresista, se entregó en México también a través de aquel mecanismo productor de imágenes que encontraba y multiplicaba, por primera vez, el mosaico de los contrastes patentes, ineludibles, testimoniales y ubicuos de los mexicanos ante sí mismos.
El auge de los escritos costumbristas en México alrededor de la identidad nacional a mediados del siglo XIX, reprodujo la tendencia fisiologista que fue tan exitosa en países europeos como Francia. Pero el afán de nuestros escritores y periodistas por describir un perfil distintivo del "espíritu del pueblo" en sus rasgos vernaculares, el gusto de glosarlos al carácter del mestizaje -0 del protomestizaje en el caso de los indios, cuya única identidad legítima sería su futuro mestizo-, se desenvolvió hacia un vínculo que buscaba unir una moral industriosa y un cariz irrenunciable a partir de las ocupaciones y los oficios colectivos.
El libro Los mexicanos pintados por sí mismos de 1855, en que colaboraron Hilarión Frías y Soto, Ignacio Ramírez y Niceto de Zamacois, entre otros, sintetiza tal proyecto liberal: el retrato del individuo se justifica de cara a la fundación de la patria, a su horizonte de mejorías lineales y ascendentes, a sus ornamentos románticos que construyen un didactismo cívico y proselitista.
La existencia de la persona forma parte del destino patrio, ya sea que ocupe un lugar en el ámbito centralizador de la religión, de la familia, del trabajo, o de su individualidad tributaria de un orden paternalista, donde los valores morales comienzan a fundir las secularizaciones del código de conducta católico con las ideas ilustradas. Si por una parte se desea una civilidad formal que procure semejantes intenciones, por otra parte se carece de un entorno real que las realice: el país se rige aún por los esquemas y las inercias del Antiguo Régimen colonial. Los trazos de la fisonomía de la mexicanidad se resisten al cambio; el retrato se sostiene por su entereza tradicional y por el servicio al orden establecido.
En estos términos, la fotografía como efecto de identidad se somete a una moral y a una estética cuyo eje será el anhelo nacionalista, como bien lo ejemplificó en 1845 Guillermo Prieto, al establecer a los "cuadros de costumbres" como los fundamentos culturales de México. En un gozne en que los tiempos se abren alcambio, llega a México el empleo de la fotografía para fines de control social, ya que, en 1855, el gobierno de Antonio López de Santa Anna emite un reglamento para asegurar la identidad de los reos cuyas causas se sigan en la ciudad de México. Así se introduce en nuestro país una técnica moderna que sirve para identificar, discriminar, clasificar, prevenir, dominar, perseguir y castigar.
El interés por este tipo de método moderno colinda con la previa y monumental propuesta de 1836 sobre el control prostibulario para evitar el contagio venéreo, que concibió el especialista francés en hidráulica y drenaje Alexandre Parent-Duchátelet. Esta propuesta higienista estaba obsesionada con la identificación y el aislamiento de las prostitutas, y de los sitios en donde ellas ejercían. su oficio.
Alain Corbin ha escrito en Les filles de noce que, para aquel especialista, la prostituta simboliza e incluso encarna el padecimiento que testifica: más que un olor desagradable, la infección de la estructura social: la sífilis. Asimismo, el higienismo buscaba justificarse por la "evidencia de los resultado?, y el prurito cuantitativo recurría al levantamiento de cuestionarios y a la apertura de expedientes distintivos que engrosarían archivos generales. Su estrategia se libra a la transparencia, como hizo notar Corbin: "Más interesante todavía se revela la multiplicidad de esclarecimientos a los que somete el medio prostitucional; su análisis de principio a fin antropológico, etnológico, lingüístico, sociocultural, sociogeográfico, y médico, no deja nada a la sombra."
Debe recordarse que, en México, la primicia de controlar la prostitución mediante métodos de cariz duchateliano, se registra al menos desde 1851, en que se da a conocer un proyecto de decreto y reglamento al respecto, donde se establece dejar atrás 1a tolerancia tácita" de las leyes españolas". En "lupanares", en "carrozas" o a pie, las prostitutas citadinas alternaban su trabajo y su vida cotidiana con el resto de las personas. Debía plantearse un control al respecto.
Arturo Aguilar Ochoa ha estudiado la estrategia en tomo de la imagen que desplegó la empresa de instaurar el Imperio de los Habsburgo en México, entre 1864 y 1867. Se podría conjeturar que dicha empresa implicó la segunda gran guerra de las imágenes colonizadoras que vivió México; la primera habría sido la implantación, en el siglo XVI, de los ¡conos cristianos en Mesoamérica a partir de la Conquista, como lo ha mostrado Serge Gruzinski."
"Maximilano y Carlota", escribe Aguilar Ochoa, "son los primeros gobernantes de México que difunden su imagen masivamente gracias al retrato fotográfico". En esto consiste la trascendencia de aquella empresa colonialista: se imponía un dominio político y un paradigma cultural e incluso racial -representado por la figura monárquica y rubia de los Habsburgo-, que contrastaba en un país de mayoría india y mestiza.
Pero, en particular, la imagen era una mercancía novedosa que, en su cariz técnico -muestra de progreso y utensilio artístico- traería también un poderoso desarrollo de la fotografía en México: es la primera vez en que se construye la representación de la realidad mexicana desde lo alto hasta lo bajo -en otras palabras, desde los prohombres hasta las prostitutas- por una táctica integral, con sus paisajes, monumentos, edificios, protagonistas y rostros Populares: la fotografía sirvió desde entonces para igualar -al menos en la imagen, aunque en realidad el derecho se revertía hacia lo contrario: el sello de lo desigual- a la aristocracia con los desposeídos; el retrato generalizaba también la posibilidad de la memoria.
Si es cierta la idea de Martin Heidegger de que la modernidad puede situarse en el momento en que la representación del mundo se convierte en un hecho más importante que el propio mundo, en la estrategia imperial alrededor de la imagen podría ubicarse el punto de quiebra de la modernidad en México. Los artífices, de tal suceso histórico serán los fotógrafos mexicanos y extranjeros que se entregan al frenesí de hacer (re)visible el país.
La fetichización de la imagen en esa época sirve -sobre todo por el auge de las cartas de visita o minirretratos- para el juego de réplica/contrarréplica que caracteriza las banderas políticas de líberales y conservadores, de su pugna por el poder. Asimismo, la fotografía multiplica sus funciones de testimonio, noticia, propaganda, identificación y prestigio social (el retratismo de rostros y pórticos de edificaciones prolifera como toma de conocimiento/ reconocimiento colectivo). Y, sobre todo, auxilia a profundizar el sentido del tiempo -instaura otro dispositivo de la memoria distinto a la voz oral y a la letra impresa-. También marca una dirección de la vida en que los símbolos, las representaciones y las alegorías de la realidad vistas por la imagen suplen las carencias del analfabetismo.
Escribe Olivier Debroise:
entre 1864 y 1867 ocurre lo que podríamos llamar el primer boom fotográfico en México: se inauguran en la ciudad de México más de veinte estudios dedicados a la producción de tarjetas de visita y de tarjetas imperiales. Esta repentina explosión se debe a la particular situación política: la instauración del estricto e inédito protocolo imperial que significó reafirmar las actitudes sociales, actos de representación en los que la fotografía tendría una función determinante.
Con el Imperio de Maximiliano, la inercia normativa respecto del trato prostibulario será transformada: para evitar el contagio entre los soldados del ejército extranjero, el emperador ordena reglamentar la prostitución y constituir un registro de mujeres públicas conforme al reglamento expedido por S. M. el Emperador el 17 de febrero de 1865. Los datos consignados en el registro eran: el nombre y la fotografía de cada mujer; su edad, su oficio previo, su domicilio, su categoría (primera, segunda y tercera, que se jerarquizaban de acuerdo con su fisonomía agraciada o no, a juicio de los funcionarios, médicos y policías sanitarios); su forma de trabajo (en prostíbulo o -aislada", es decir, independiente); enfermedades padecidas, cambios de estado civil, muerte o retiro del oficio por casamiento o fuga.
En el Registro del Imperio se incluyeron 598 prostitutas hasta el año de 1867. con sus respectivas fotografías que en sí configuran un portafolios específico y distinguible. Existe evidencia de que en 1860, las autoridades del Ayuntamiento intentaron retomar la fotografía criminológica, y en 1863 la Regencia del Imperio ratificó al prefecto de la policía restablecer el reglamento que prevenía ,el que por medio de retratos fotográficos se identíque a los reos de causas criminales".
Varios fotógrafos ofrecerán sus servicios para el caso: en 1860 y 1863, José María de la Torre; en 1861, Joaquín Díaz González; -n 1865, Manuel M. Fernández; en 1866, Dámaso Híjar. El mismo año Alberto Serralde ofrece sus servicios en la cárcel de Belem. Entre estos fotógrafos quizá se encuentre el autor o autores de las imágenes -o portafolios, podría decirse ahora- que acompañan al registro de prostitutas del Imperio.
Este retratismo prostibulario y de perfil criminológico carecía aún de la urgencia cientificista que más tarde desarrollará Alphonse Bertillon, y su sistema policíaco de caracterología delincuencial en que resuenan los enfoques frenológicos y patologistas, sus clasificaciones y variantes minuciosas sobre la fisonomía del transgresor nato, tal como lo teorizó Cesare Lombroso.
Lo que se observa en las imágenes prostibularias del Imperio es el desfasamiento entre un propósito criminalista y sanitario, y una tarea fotográfica de retratos convencionales: tomas en estudio, con un muro de fondo y una cortina al lado, algún objeto escenográfico mínimo, una silla, un pedestal, un taburete, un espejo de atril. Olivier Debroise precisa lo siguiente:
Ellas fueron retratadas en los estudios de la ciudad, por lo cual se observa una variada mezcla de formatos, técnicas y decorados, sin contar las vestimentas, las poses en que, aun cuando semejan damas de sociedad (algunas están vestidas con enorme cuidado y lujo) delatan su condición: cierta desnudez en los brazos y las pantorrillas, un porte significativo de la cabeza, el peinado apenas exagerado o la abundancia de joyas, a no ser, en los casos de las más humildes, una extraña austeridad que revela como oposición cierta coquetería manifiesta en una extraña -casi diría exagerada- pulcritud.
Las mujeres, de pie o a veces sentadas, miran de frente a la cámara: oblicuas, tímidas, agresivas, impávidas, plácidas. Las tomas son de cuerpo entero: reproducen el cariz totalizador de las imágenes étnicas, donde la mirada colonizadora domina lo visible, como si se viera en panorama el paisaje colonizable.
La mayoría de aquellas prostitutas viste su mejor indumentaria. Varias de ellas representan una respetabilidad burguesa, al grado de convocar la pregunta circular que llegó a ser un lugar común decimonónico: ¿será o no será esa mujer una prostituta?
La apariencia incierta de las prostitutas las sitúa en el marco de una identidad pública: la hipocresía del control y del aislamiento, de la doble moral del reglamentarismo prostibulario que las fotografías patentizan y develan a la vez. Pero, sobre todo, las enclavan en una política colonial, que va desde el dominio de un ejército de ocupación hasta las medidas reglamentaristas de control y vigilancia sobre su cuerpo, cuyo rasgo básico es la procedencia desposeída.
La fotografía prostibularia de la época del Imperio de Maximiliano significó la implantación de un recurso reproducible una y otra vez: la puesta en escena fotográfica que encubría una empresa colonialista. Esta puesta en escena dependía de un propósito integral de dominio en que accionaban prácticas y discursos específicos. Al examinar la función simbólica de las postales colonialistas de mujeres de harem de Medio Oriente, Malek Alloula devela también el juego de género que se esconde en la fotografía prostibularia:
Sumariamente, y en su acostumbrado idioma brutal, la postal colonial dice: estas mujeres, que son reputadamente ocultas o invisibles y, hasta ahora, situadas más allá de la mirada, son en adelante públicas; por un puñado de monedas, su intimidad puede ser violada en cualquier sitio. Ya no tienen nada qué ocultar, y lo que ellas muestran de su anatomía -"erotizada" por el "arte" del fotógrafo- se ofrece en una invitación directa. Ofrecen su cuerpo a la mirada como un cuerpo a ser poseído
La diferencia significativa entre las postales de harem y la fotografía de control prostibulario consistiría en lo siguiente: en ésta, la mirada que posee el padrón -portafolios o catálogo- realiza un desplazamiento, por vía de los ojos de los médicos, policías y empleados a cargo de ejecutar el sistema reglamentarista, hacia el propio sistema que consuma la posesión y la administra.
Así, el propio sistema absorbe esta economía simbólica y la suma a su economía formal e informal, al mundo de las sanciones, y también al de las corruptelas a que da lugar. Un juego de imágenes-espejo abiertas al infinito de la corrupción: la de los cuerpos que se juzga corruptos y las prácticas de cohecho/soborno que alienta su accionar institucional.
Hilarión Frías y Soto describirá en 1868, al recuperar algunas caracterologías de costumbrismo edificante y vernacular, este testimonio romántico sobre la prostituta de la ciudad de México, en que se perfila un estereotipo importado: "La Traviata, esa figura tan moderna, tan actual, no es la ramera parisiense, no es la Oliva ni la Olalla de la Biblia. Es algo más brillante, más florido, más perfumado en medio de la corrupción social".
En el trayecto del reglamentarismo en México podría leerse, inserto a escala, el trayecto de algunos mecanismos del coloniaje que suelen pasar por los siguientes pasos: 1) imposición verticalísta de una técnica de saber y poder, extraída de su lugar de origen, en otro sitio sujeto a dominio y con menor grado de desarrollo histórico, cuyas condiciones socioculturales resisten contra lo impuesto; 2) por un decreto autoritario, tal medida se ordena y ejecuta, y su solo nombre adquiere un rango de excelencia: es lo moderno, lo científico; 3) al entrar en funcionamiento, la medida desata unaserie de contradicciones en el momento de chocar con el nuevo contexto, lo que redunda en inutilidad, insuficiencias, explotaciones, corruptelas, coacciones adicionales; 4) por último, cuando la medida se "naturaliza" donde se implantó, se abre hacia una dinámica nueva de efectos perversos en perjuicio de los propósitos originarios, cuyos daños recaen más en las minorias que víctima, que en el conjunto de la sociedad.
Homi K. Bhabha ha destacado que una "característica del discurso colonial es su dependencia respecto del concepto de 'fijación' en lo que atañe a la construcción ideológica de la otredad. La fijación, en tanto signo de la diferencia cultural/histórica/racial en el discurso del colonialismo, es un modo paradójico de representación: connota rigidez y un orden inmovilista de desorden, degeneración y repetición demónica". En otras palabras, el discurso colonial hace del estereotipo su mayor estrategia discursiva, "una forma de conocimiento e identificación que oscila entre lo que siempre 'está en su lugar', lo ya sabido, y lo que debe ser ansiosamente repetido".
Dicho anhelo compulsivo por reiterar lo ya sabido, e incluso convertirlo en el fundamento de la estrategia del discurso colonizador, se transparentará -en mayor o menor grado- en las representaciones contemporáneas de la prostituta y sus aplicaciones vernaculares.
Nuestras editoras Virgi y Marga nos preparán un delicioso texto sobre la virilidad fatal y cuando el marido se convierte en un soberano estorbo.
“No somos una minoría y estamos dispuestas a llegar hasta las últimas consecuencias; no pedimos nada más que lo que nos corresponde por derecho: trabajar sin ser extorsionadas, golpeadas, maltratadas o apañadas, porque no estamos cometiendo un delito”, dice Yesica, trabajadora sexual y participante activa del movimiento de sexoservidoras que busca el derogamiento de la Ley de Cultura Cívica (LCC), vigente en el Distrito Federal desde el primer día de agosto, y que a la fecha ha derivado en una violencia inusitada contra mujeres (y hombres) dedicadas a esta actividad, en que sean multadas e incluso sean recluidas por varias horas.
Las sexoservidoras le presentaron a AMLO un documento en el que le plantean, además, otras nueve demandas básicas, entre las que destacan: un albergue para sexoservidoras adultas mayores, en el edificio del Curato de la Iglesia de La Soledad, que está vacío actualmente; la apertura de un centro de atención médica, jurídica y psicológica, en el que haya también talleres de capacitación en diversas áreas; un programa de vivienda en el que se les considere; apoyo a madres solteras; programas de salud por zona, y becas para sus hijos. 
“Son trabajadoras que no tienen madrota ni padrote, que estaban cobijadas por el desaparecido Centro Integral de Atención a Sexoservidoras (CAIS) (que apoyaba la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del DF) que empezaron a reconocerse e incorporarse a una vida diferente y se fortalecieron en el sentido de no dejarse extorsionar. Son mujeres y hombres que construyen su identidad fuera de las mafias de las madrotas”, explica Margarita García Arteaga, asesora jurídica de las trabajadoras sexuales independientes.
Para frenar esta situación, las trabajadoras sexuales han emprendido acciones en varios frentes. Primero en lo jurídico, para ampararse contra la LCC. Manuel Fuentes, de la Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos, asegura que la mencionada ley viola los artículos 123, 13, 14 y 16 de la Constitución. En el 123 se establece que es el Congreso de la Unión el que deberá expedir leyes sobre el trabajo, “de tal manera que la Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal no está facultada para reconocer y sancionar el trabajo sexual”.
