Yellow taxi cabs add a dramatic dash of color to the petrol blue and jungle green port city of Esmeraldas. But the city really should be red. Egalitarian epithets – comrade, sister, brother, colleague, compatriot – infuse every interaction with a sense of revolutionary respect. The strongest incarnation of the ghost of communism was our taxi driver Stalin.
Dear Stalin. A man of gentle moods and docile disposition hid beneath this commanding name, hard with history, hid a man of gentle moods and docile disposition. As we pulled away from Hotel Kennedy, he kept a steady hand on the steering wheel, yes his voice wavered when asking: Why at night? Why indeed dear Stalin. En route, I explained to him the geopolitical scope of our project and its particular focus on sex workers.
"Aha," he said full of sudden understanding. "You want to capture them in their natural habitat."
Earlier in the morning, during a conference organized by RedTrab Sex, the national network of sex workers, I approached a young pimp who dressed the part. Pavel wore Georgio Armani imitation glasses and a neon orange polo shirt. A baseball cap did little to disguise the tight curls washed out by peroxide. At 22, Pavel is an administrator at club Sensation, in Borbon, earning $80 per week.
I persuaded Pavel to allow us access into his nightclub. Borbon is north towards the Colombian frontier, two hours away from Esmeraldas.
Stalin's car swerved and swung down a muddy half-built highway. Frogs ricocheted across the pavement. Crabs crawled crossroads. Cicadas complained at the heavy rains. For We navigated pockmarked asphalt and cut across high grasslands. Mosquitos and chitchat distracted our minds from the worst case scenarios: muggings and murder. The police had warned us. Stalin kept a clenched fist.
We took precautions: two undercover policemen. Stalin's nerves were not of steel. If we left him outside the nightclub he could bolt back to Esmeraldas and leave us stranded in the greasy hellhole of Borbon. Rain had stripped the streets down to rubble. Puddles and potholes made driving past loitering men at a safe speed impossible. The yellow cab conspicuously lit the empty streets and solitary, locked down shacks.
The taxi pulled up to Sensation shortly after 10 p.m. Sargento Sanchez's patrol car was parked in the vicinity, watching the back of his undercover officers. Three marine patrons stormed out with scowls on their face pissed off at police for not warning them before busting into a brothel with cameras.
Clients tempers boiled. Some pleaded for mercy from their wives, others threatened to take our tape and ban our entry to the brothel. I gave Pavel the kiss of Judas. "We are here under invitation from Pavel and the owner of the establishment. They have the right to show and promote their locale."
The owner of the establishment broke a sweat as the customers' finger wagging, popping veins and aggressive language, shifted onto him. The anger boomeranged back on us soon enough. I was pushed. Amy got hassled but kept silent. American citizenship and accents are a major liability here. I reassured two harried husbands that we respected their privacy and that we would not record faces.
Unconvinced, the men moved on to minor shoving and major cursing. The policemen watched bemused from their doorway, one arms crossed, the other thumbs hooked on his belt. So much for back up. While Amy shot undercover, I convinced Harlod Valencia, Pavel's uncle, to grant us an interview in one of the rooms reserved for sex workers. We talked about business.
Valencia bought the place three months ago for $25,000. The return of investment is slow. We were only allowed in because he had pinned his hopes on the press to boost his popularity. Before the clients revolted at the entrance, all he had cared about was whether the footage would appear on national television. I told him we were international press but that there was always a chance that national channels might pick us up.
Sensation as a"family heritage" in Valencia's mind.
"The idea," he says, "is not to make money but to offer a space where people who cannot obtain jobs find an income. We are an enterprise."
Sensation nets $100 to $150 dollars per week drawn from the labor of seven to 14 prostitutes and the demand of local and itinerant men. Harold took pride in the generous dimensions of the rooms (at most three meters by two), the availability of a fan, a sink and puppy printed sheets. He takes $1 per client.
As we shot Valencia, women walked in and out of rooms Short skirted, shirtless ladies wove their way through circles of men sitting on plastic chairs, sipping beers and playing cards. A hand was held. A man was led. Here, the toque – intercourse-- is worth $6. A session lasts ten to fifteen minutes depending "on a man's capacity to discharge himself."
One hour of sordid details later, we left Sensation and its seedy clientele. The mob mentality persisted as we walked out the door but some men visibly relaxed as we left and some even came forward with smiles and handshakes. Perhaps it was a last ditch effort to ingratiate themselves in the hope that we keep out their faces off national TV.
We dropped off our undercover policemen at the station.Sanchezescorted us halfway out of town inthe patrol car. When we parted, Stalin confessed that he wished the escort had lasted longer. The policemen were petrified at the club,he said. The fear was clearly transferred to our driver.
Click here for Stalin's video testimony.
Stalin stopped the car. We faced a barricade and a man in a ski mask…
Click her for video testimony.
-- Dominique Soguel
