Miami Herald - December 23, 2004
Tyler Bridges

LIMA - The men walked up and down the cement floor, the shy ones looking furtively, the bold ones casting an appraising eye at the women standing in the open doorways wearing nothing but bras, panties, high heel shoes and a beckoning smile.

Traffic on a recent Saturday night here at one of the two legal bordellos in metropolitan Lima was a fraction of the business 10 to 15 years ago, however, and that may hold an important lesson for authorities trying to move the city's thriving prostitution trade off the streets.

Cesar Gonzalez, mayor of the Lima neighborhood Lince, began calling two months ago for the creation of a "red zone" that would feature legal brothels, sex shops and porn theaters.

But the day after visiting the Trocadero bordello here, Gonzalez has discarded this idea for another.

"I learned that you can't do a red zone, it would fail," Gonzalez said in his office. ``There was no one there last night. The men simply visit prostitutes in their neighborhoods. Why travel to a red zone when you've got what you need in your neighborhood?"

LEGAL BROTHELS

So Gonzalez has hit upon another solution that he hopes to sell to the other 41 mayors in Lima: Create legal brothels throughout the city in hotel-like buildings. The first floor would feature strip clubs where men could choose women who caught their fancy and then transact their business in upstairs rooms.

Gonzalez heard about the idea from a group of Spanish lawmakers from Catalonia and saw it in action first-hand in Barcelona.

"I'd like to convert some of the regular hotels into sex hotels with municipal licenses," he said. ``Hotels would give greater security and stronger medical controls."

Asked why he has adopted the issue as a personal crusade, Gonzalez pointed to an oil painting in his office. "He's responsible," he said, pointing to a likeness of his grandfather, Juan Gonzalez.

As way of explanation, he handed a slim book with a green cover to a visitor: It was Juan Gonzalez's 1918 doctoral dissertation. The subject: Regulating Prostitution in Lima.

"The interest is genetic," Gonzalez said with a laugh.

But Gonzalez has a more practical reason for wanting to crack down on street prostitution: He has received about 3,000 signed requests that he address the problem in Lince, which has a population of 75,000.

Gonzalez is hardly alone. Just about every neighborhood mayor in this metropolis is facing similar complaints.

Lucio Campos, the mayor of another neighborhood, San Mart n de Porres, has even offered a large undeveloped tract as a potential site for a red zone. He, Gonzalez and a third neighborhood mayor have formed a task force to study the proposal and report back to their colleagues.

Juan Gonzalez's doctoral dissertation reported that Lima had 4,000 prostitutes in 1918, at a time when the city's population was 150,000.

Today, Lima has 20,000 prostitutes -- 30 percent of them are transvestites -- among its eight million inhabitants.

Many residents in lower income neighborhoods complain that they have to walk among the prostitutes and their would-be clients while shopping or on their way home from work.

SENT TO BEACH

For a time, Gonzalez had his police officers arrest the prostitutes in Lince and deposit them miles away on the beach. The women had to climb a steep dirt hill to get within hailing distance of a passing bus or taxi.

Their attorneys raised such a fuss that Gonzalez stopped. Now he has a special police unit called the "Panther Command" that swoops down on suspected whorehouses. He said he discovered the locations by looking at classified sex ads in Lima's El Comercio newspaper until the prostitutes wised up to him and stopped advertising their addresses. The Panther Command now relies on tips.

The idea of creating sex hotels throughout Lima gets a favorable reaction from the madam of the Little Boat bordello, which adjoins Trocadero and a third brothel, Wild, in a windowless two-story building in Lima's port city, Callao.

'The `johns' like to stop by after work," she said in the Little Boat's lounge as men on the prowl walked by. ``They are tired, they want to be distracted. They don't want sex immediately. They want to sit down, have a drink, watch a bit of TV and then look for a girl."

UNDERCUTTING PRICE

The madam said street walkers turn tricks for as low as six soles, or about $1.80, which has undercut the three red zone bordellos. To enter any of them, customers buy a ticket for 13 soles. To spend 15 minutes with one of the prostitutes costs an additional 20 soles.

Yackelyn Macedo was one of the prostitutes at Trocadero advertising herself in one of the doorways, a red light overhead. "Yaky," read the girlish hand-written sign on the door.

She said the advantage of the red zone is that prostitutes have work cards from the government Health Ministry and are tested once a month for venereal disease and every six months for the HIV virus. "It's much safer for the johns," Macedo said as she sprawled on her thin mattress, a mirror propped against the wall, toiletries and condoms in a small dresser at the head of the bed. Use of the room costs her 20 soles a day. The price includes an adjoining toilet and shower without a plastic curtain.

Macedo, a 24-year-old mother of two, has spent the last four months working as a prostitute at Trocadero. She took the job for the added income, 2,000 soles per month (about $615) versus the 800 soles (or $245) that she earned as a secretary.

Macedo liked Gonzalez's proposal to create sex hotels.

"It would create more opportunities for safe work," she said.

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