Beatriz
Rodríguez’ life was turned upside down when her family
introduced her into prostitution at the age of 14. What she calls her
“kidnapping” lasted 22 years. She was born in the city of Pereira, Colombia, but
eventually ended up in Florencia, another Colombian city where she found a way
out and a reason to live - to help other women to escape the clutches of the
traffickers who send women in their thousands to countries across the world. She
is now aged 50 and the association she directs, which began as a local government-funded
project that trained women to be butchers , has grown
into an integrated project of empowerment and development for women in the region.
Her brave work, undertaken in a conflict hot spot in Colombia, earned her a
Nobel prize nomination.
How did
you enter prostitution?
I was trafficked by my family. When I was 14, still a girl, my mother
took me to my aunt who owned a brothel. Virginity is highly prized in my
country, so when I lost mine I was no longer worth anything. My mother thought
it would be impossible to get me married off, so there was nothing else to do
with me. She told me that I had to be responsible and go and work with my aunt.
You were
sexually exploited for over 20 years. How did it affect you psychologically and
how were you able to withstand it?
I was kidnapped from my own body and my own world. Back then, I didn’t
analyse it, I survived without thinking about it or feeling it. I could never
give myself the space to sit down and cry for all the pain and damage I was
suffering. It was simply what I was taught to do as a girl. I was subjugated,
coerced and convinced that this was my lot in life. I didn’t have that space to
react. When I managed to get out, I began to hurt. I had sleepless nights, I
couldn’t have sexual relations with my partner, I couldn’t leave behind the
guilt and fear. Now I feel the pain, but back then I doing was what my mother
had taught me.
Was your
mother in prostitution?
No, she was never in that situation.
What
were the other women you met like during those years?
As the prostitution survivor and activist Amelia Tiganus says, the
brothels are concentration camps, where every type of pain and crime that could
be committed against a human being converge. They are places of abuse and
extreme violence. Brothels are also places of drug and alcohol addiction. Personally,
I used alcohol as a palliative to get through it. We were under constant danger
of Illness, AIDs, pregnancy, beatings and kidnappings. In my case, I spent most
of the time held captive, without documents, and the money that was paid for my
abuse never came into my hands.
How was
this network set up so that you couldn’t escape?
They took away your documents, so you couldn't go out on the street. Our
society and laws put all the blame on the putas. They also take away all your economic capacity and keep you controlled
constantly, under lock and key. I have
three children - a daughter and a son who are both 34 and another daughter who’s
now 28. When I gave birth, I handed the babies over to my mother and carried on
working without any postnatal care.
Fortunately,
you got out of that hell. How did you do it?
We formed a group of 20 women and gained support from the mayoress of
Florencia, the city in the Amazon in Colombia where I ended up being trafficked
to and where I still live. Lucrecia Murcia had promised her electorate she
would create a “resocialisation” program for vulnerable groups, including the prostituted
women, who they referred to as “sex workers”. She helped us get funding through the University
of the Amazon for training in meat production, and we formed AOMUPCAR (Association
of Women Butchers & Meatpackers of Caquetá).
We started out making sausages, ribs and hamburgers, but we’ve grown into a social,
political and economic platform for the women in the region.
Now AOMUPCAR
is a school of psychological, medical, pedagogic and productive empowerment for
women in the region. It has even opposed forced evictions. Why didn’t you
change the name?
We kept the name in memory of our origins, but most of all for security
reasons. In a way, the name acts as a protection in a very violent region. Here
the armed conflict in the drug and arms trade involves many groups – the military,
paramilitaries, the US army, crime gangs. It isn’t easy to do our work in this
territory because they don’t like us taking away the women, their spoils of
war. They don’t want women to empower themselves.
How is
the armed conflict in Colombia related to trafficking and sexual exploitation?
In a way, the zone of conflict acts as a breeding ground, a place to experiment
with new types of trafficking and prostitution. The drugs trade and the sex
trade are both important for the economy. It’s a matter of powerful men buying
whatever they want, which includes women’s bodies and lives. To them we are just
things, tools, easy to buy and easy to manage. On the other side, the
government doesn’t even consider trying to abolish prostitution because they
reap huge economic benefits from it. From my home city of Pereira, which has
476,000 inhabitants and is in the coffee-growing region of Colombia, we’ve counted
42,000 women trafficked to Spain alone, but many more are taken across Europe
and to Japan. It’s an economic benefit that no state wants to lose.
How has
feminism helped you to face your past and be able to help others?
I’ll be very honest, I don’t know a lot about law or academia. What
helped me to heal was the work I do with other women. To be able to rescue them
from danger, open their eyes, to listen to them and alleviate their pain. I am
grateful for whatever academics can do to help women, but I want to continue
rescuing them and helping them to overcome the situation they’re in.
In Spain,
feminism is divided. Some women believe that prostitution should be recognised
as work and others think that abolition is the only way. What do you think?
This is not a job,
it’s not an industry, it’s not commerce. The scourge of prostitution is nothing
more than the use and abuse of women and girls’ dignity. You can’t dress it up.
When we talk of industry and work, we think in terms of regulations that apply
to both the clients and the people contracted to do a job. I ask, how would you
regulate prostitution? By the number of times you penetrate me anally, penetrate
me vaginally, suck my breasts? How do I negotiate with a buyer? I don’t get it.
I’m tired of hearing it being called a job. You can’t regulate abuse.
Translated by Ben Riddick
Original article in Spanish here
