Lydia's Open Door: Inside Mexico's Most Modern Brothel / Edition 1

by Patty Kelly

Overview

In this groundbreaking ethnographic study, Patty Kelly examines the lives of the women who work in the Zona Galactica, a state-run brothel in Chiapas's capital city. By delving into lives that would otherwise go unremarked, Kelly documents the modernization of the sex industry during the neoliberal era in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and illustrates how state-regulated sex became part of a broader effort by government officials to bring modernity to Chiapas, one of Mexico's poorest and most conflicted states. Kelly's innovative approach locates prostitution in a political-economic context by treating it as work. Most valuably, she conveys her analysis through vivid portraits of the lives of the sex workers themselves and shows how the women involved are neither victims nor heroines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520255364
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/02/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Patty Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University.

Read an Excerpt

Lydia's Open Door INSIDE MEXICO'S MOST MODERN BROTHEL
By Patty Kelly
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-25536-4



Chapter One Modern Sex in a Modern City

Tuxtla is not a place for foreigners-the new ugly capital of Chiapas, without attractions.... It is like an unnecessary postscript to Chiapas, which should be all wild mountain and old churches and swallowed ruins and the Indians plodding by. Graham Greene, 1939

Anthropologists and other social scientists have been at work in Chiapas for more than half a century. Most research has centered on the indigenous Maya peoples of the Highlands region; the Zapatista uprising in 1994 extended researchers' field of interest both thematically and geographically. The rich work produced by scholars over the decades has generated a particular image of a Chiapas that is agricultural, indigenous, impoverished, and deeply conflicted over issues of ethnicity, land, class, and politics. Chiapas is all these things, but it is also urban, ladino (nonindigenous), and for some, a place to seek economic prosperity. This aspect of Chiapas has received less attention from Western anthropologists, who historically have come to southern Mexico to study indigenous peoples.

A VERY NEW CITY

As capital of the state known as the birthplace of the new Mexican Revolution led by the EZLN, Tuxtla Gutiérrez is perhaps not what many imagine. Located in the hot lowlands of Chiapas, Tuxtla, home to the Galactic Zone, is a city of nearly half a million people. If Chiapas is, as it came to be known after the uprising, "the other Mexico-backward and left behind," then Tuxtla is, in many ways, the other Chiapas. In 1892, Governor Emilio Rabasa transferred the capital of Chiapas from San Cristóbal de las Casas to Tuxtla with the hopes of ridding the state government of the provincialism and corruption found in the Highlands government, as well as to effect the "geographic reorientation of Chiapas," turning it away from Guatemala-the state was a Guatemalan territory until 1824-and toward Mexico City. The young Rabasa (he became governor at age thirty-five) was less an elected official than an appointed one: he was chosen by President Porfirio Díaz to implement the very values (economic liberalism, modernization, and positivism) for which the Díaz regime stood. Rabasa played a key role in the political modernization of Chiapas.

More than a century later, heavily touristed San Cristóbal, with its cobblestone streets and outdoor indigenous markets, is still plagued by a reputation of provincialism, while Tuxtla prides itself on its image as a modern city. Where San Cristóbal makes much of its colonial roots, Tuxtla showcases its modernity. In a document written by municipal authorities, Tuxtla is portrayed as a city without a past, an antidote to San Cristóbal, with its indigenous population and colonial architecture, both of which are considered distinctly premodern: "Outside of the museum, the visitor to Tuxtla will search in vain for signs of the colonial era and vestiges of the Spanish epoch. Tuxtla is like that, it is a very new city, its ancient traces having disappeared with modern urbanization and it would be useless to hope to still find here an atmosphere of centuries past."

Tuxtla is, in this account, cleansed of its colonial past and freed from its late-nineteenth-century reputation in San Cristóbal as a lowland back woods town lacking amenities. But in 1930, the capital of Chiapas still lacked both a drainage system and paved roads; only the central block had running water, and only four medical doctors were available to serve the entire population of Tuxtla and its hinterlands.

Finally, in the 1940s the state intervened, augmenting Tuxtla's infrastructure "in order to consolidate it as the worthy capital of the state of Chiapas"; this coincided with the beginning of the state-led development of Mexico on a national scale. During this period, many of Tuxtla's old and colonial-style buildings were demolished, along with parks, aging hospitals, and decaying markets, all replaced by modern structures. The image of the city was changing. The state widened principal roads in order to accommodate automobiles, the "symbols of modernity." The construction of the Pan-American Highway was completed in 1942, facilitating Tuxtla's communication with Mexico City and its expansion, and new settlements sprang up in the east and west along the highway's edge.

Yet not until the middle of the twentieth century did Tuxtla truly begin to develop the infrastructure characteristic of a modern city. By the 1960s, the city had a new airport and its first automatic traffic lights. Fountains and monuments, symbols of the consolidation of state power, were built throughout the capital. Tuxtla's main thoroughfare, called Avenida Central in the eastern half of the city and Boulevard Belisario Domínguez in the west, was widened. New residential neighborhoods were constructed. Some of these neighborhoods were private fraccionamientos (subdivisions), while others, like Colonia Bienestar Social, were sites for state-sponsored public housing. Tuxtla's wealthier residents tended to live in the western half of the city (as they still do), while poorer Tuxtlecos (residents of Tuxtla) lived in eastern Tuxtla (also the location of the Zona Galáctica). Tuxtla is very much a city divided by class-even its movie theaters (like sexual services) are class stratified, ranging from the more expensive, cleaner, air-conditioned cineplex of the central plaza to poorly maintained, cheaper theaters with sound systems that barely function.

Tuxtla's population surged during the 1970s following the arrival of poor rural migrants, families from the neighboring city of Chiapa de Corzo displaced by an earthquake, and workers from as far away as Guatemala who had come to build the dam at nearby Chicoasén, part of a massive, state-sponsored hydroelectric complex. Between 1970 and 1980 the number of residents doubled, reaching nearly 167,000. Many of these new migrants settled on uncultivated lands in the foothills in the northern and southern sections of the city.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Tuxtla was one of Mexico's most rapidly growing cities. As the debt crisis and economic chaos engulfed Mexico during the 1980s, massive public works projects were undertaken in Tuxtla. During this time, growing economic, social, and political strife besieged rural Chiapas: croplands continued to fall into the hands of large landholders, many of whom raised cattle; and authorities jailed campesinos protesting the loss of lands, as the newly militarized state and judicial police repressed dissent. Nearly eighty thousand Guatemalan refugees poured into eastern Chiapas, fleeing the murderous military regime of General Efraín Ríos Montt. Government authorities worried about the possibility of insurrection in Chiapas.

During this period, despite austerity measures implemented throughout the nation, the state government in Tuxtla began a campaign to construct a new capital showcasing state power and advertising the successes of urbanization. Public funds were used to remodel the downtown center and construct the Unidad Administrativa, two massive buildings housing many of the offices of the state government. The Museum of Anthropology, the City Theater, and the Libramiento Sur, a wide highway that traverses the city's southern edge, were all built in this period of economic decline and social crisis. When seen in the context of demographic shifts, economic crisis, and political turmoil, it is little surprise that the idea for constructing a site for state-regulated prostitution that would control marginal populations emerged during this time.

In many ways Tuxtla stands apart from the agricultural and indigenous Chiapas represented by social scientists who bypass this often-maligned city on their way to the Highlands. Graham Greene's 1939 characterization of the "new ugly capital" still holds true for many tourists, social scientists, and Chiapanecos alike. Tuxtla has no ruins, most of its churches are modern in design, and there is little indigenous presence in the city. Its high annual population growth rate of 7.3 percent, due largely to internal migration, worries public officials, who wring their hands as shanties continue to sprout in the southern hills overlooking the city. Unlike the whole of Chiapas, where some 60 percent of the economically active population is employed in primary-sector activities such as agriculture, fishing, or cattle raising, nearly 75 percent of Tuxtlecos earn their living in the commercial and service sectors; only 4.3 percent are engaged in agriculture. Some Tuxtlecos are still landholders, however: many of the city's wealthy families earn money from rural landholdings and maintain ranches in the countryside surrounding the city, a status symbol for local elites.

Consumer culture, much of it service based, thrives in Tuxtla more than anywhere else in the state. Middle- and upper-class consumers from San Cristóbal and throughout Chiapas come to Tuxtla to purchase items and receive services (particularly medical care) unavailable in their home communities. Tuxtla's western and wealthier half is home to American big-box stores like Office Depot and Blockbuster Video that reflect neoliberalism's reach into southern Mexico. U.S.-based fast-food chains such Domino's Pizza, McDonald's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken dot the landscape; the latter two have drive-through windows, making consumption as fast and easy as possible. U.S. influences permeate consumption in Tuxtla and elsewhere in Mexico. Some Mexican urban and suburban landscapes have changed so dramatically in recent years that they are nearly indistinguishable from their northern neighbors, at least to some. The author and activist John Ross writes of a group of undocumented workers who paid polleros (smugglers) in Tapachula, Chiapas, five thousand dollars apiece for passage to the United States. The migrants, mostly from Guatemala, were dropped off in front of a mall containing a "Wendy's, a KFC, even an Applebee's, and the ten-plex 'Hollywood Cinema' in suburban Chihuahua City, a good 100 miles from the U.S. border. The workers believed they had arrived in the U.S., as one worker told a local newspaper, 'It looked just like how it looked on television.'"

American venues have made some concessions to local culture: the "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" mantra of U.S. fast food restaurants does not apply in Tuxtla's McDonald's; small barefoot children belonging to middle- and upper-class families tear through the restaurant and its adjoining playground while their parents order McMexicanas-hamburgers with avocado and salsa. At Kentucky Fried Chicken, now called KFC, the colonel, whose cultural symbolism would be lost on most Mexicans, has been replaced by a happy cartoon chicken with robust pectoral muscles. Directly behind McDonald's is the newly opened Sam's Club, a Wal-Mart-affiliated price club. During the Christmas season, it offered shoppers pine trees shipped from the United States. The nonunion Wal-Mart currently owns 687 superstores and subsidiaries throughout Mexico (though they go by various names: Superama and Bodega Aurrera, to name two), including one built in central Mexico within sight of the two-thousand-year-old pyramids of Teotihuacán (dubbed Teotihualmart by writer and social critic Carlos Monsivais). A few blocks farther west is Plaza Cristal, an upscale shopping mall with a food court where local middle-class teens gather while their younger, darker-skinned, poorer counterparts bag groceries in Chedraui, the large modern supermarket that is one of the mall's anchor stores.

Increasing commoditization and United States cultural influences also permeate sexuality in Tuxtla. Though the city has long had its share of sex workers and even a soft-core pornographic movie theater located within sight of both the municipal and state government headquarters, daily newspapers that ten years ago had perhaps one or two small ads for edecanes (hostesses) who provide sexual services now contain pages and pages of such advertisements. The ads often picture blond Hollywood actresses (Mira Sorvino is a favorite) and thin Western fashion models, who have come to define new cultural standards of beauty and sexiness.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, what is now Tuxtla was sparsely populated by indigenous Zoque Maya, who cultivated corn and beans. Today, the city is primarily ladino. While more than 25 percent of all Chiapanecos over the age of five speak an indigenous language, in Tuxtla this figure is just 2 percent. Immigrant Tzotzil and Tzeltal speakers from indigenous Highland communities such as Chamula and Zinacantán now outnumber the few hundred Zoques remaining in Tuxtla. The three groups frequently work as day laborers, informal workers, service workers, and vendors in local traditional markets, selling fresh flowers, vegetables, and traditional foods.

While Chiapas is one of Mexico's most impoverished states, Tuxtla is one of the nation's least impoverished municipalities. The distribution of wealth and misery in Chiapas and all of Mexico is complex and uneven, and marked by regional and ethnic differences. In Chiapas, indigenous residents of the Highlands and the selva suffer poverty the most. The infant mortality rate in Tuxtla is 3.8 percent; nationwide this figure is 4.9 percent, while in some Chiapas municipalities, such as the indigenous town of Chamula, this figure is as high as 16.8 percent. Tuxtla boasts the highest rates of literacy in the state and the largest number of prisons or, as they are called, Centers for Social Rehabilitation. While one-third of all homes in Chiapas lack electricity, despite the continued operation of the massive hydroelectric complex mentioned earlier, in Tuxtla this figure is 3.2 percent; nationally, 12.5 percent of Mexican homes do not have access to electricity. And Tuxtla also boasts the Galactic Zone, considered by its administrators to be one of the most modern brothels in the nation.

And so, while Chiapas may be "the other Mexico," in many ways Tuxtla is "the other Chiapas," contrasting in most respects to the indigenous Chiapas observed by anthropologists over the past five decades and by the international media since the EZLN uprising. Yet Tuxtla and its Zona Galáctica are not separate from the political economic trends that gave rise to the Chiapas that has become so well known, but rather were born from these same trends. The policies that contribute to rural poverty and underdevelopment also engender increasing urbanization. Nearly two-thirds of the high population growth in the city is a product of immigration from other parts of southern Mexico. Despite the city's prosperity, however, there are plenty of impoverished Tuxtlecos who are unemployed, or underemployed in the booming informal economy that flourishes in Tuxtla's streets, homes, and brothels. Those living in the shanties in the foothills above the city watch the prosperity from a distance. In the city center below, hundreds of poor people line up each evening outside the public regional hospital, waiting for medical care. The police crime pages report stories of robbery and violence, and the private security guard industry flourishes. It may be the other Chiapas, but Tuxtla is still Mexico.

MODERN SEX

The Zona Galáctica lies four miles from Tuxtla's bustling city center, down a lonely, bumpy dirt road flanked by vibrant green vegetation, the flamboyán trees blooming bright orange in the springtime. One does not arrive at the zone by chance: one must seek it out. Its location is a testament to the current status of commercial sex throughout much of Mexico: available, yet, ideally, invisible.

The dirt road leads to the large, open, unpaved lot outside the main gate to the zone. Directly in front of the visitor, behind a tall chain-link fence kept gated and locked during the day, is the King Kong, one of the area's two nightclubs where some sex workers perform striptease. To the right are two small refreshment stands that flank the entry to the Galáctica; one of them is rarely open. In front of the stands is a line of microbuses and Volkswagen Beetles that provide transportation for zone clients, workers, and staff. (Most zone clients, working-class men, do not own their own transportation.) The micros, as they are called, cost four pesos (US$0.47) and make many stops between downtown Tuxtla and the zone. They provide little anonymity for sex workers and clients, who share the bus with others making shorter trips within the city. The Volkswagens, known as piratas (pirate, or unlicensed, taxicabs), charge five pesos (US$0.59) and proceed directly to the zone once they are filled. This mode of transport is generally considered more desirable because it is a quicker and more discreet way to arrive at the Galáctica, though if the taxi does not fill up at the taxi stand it will slowly cruise one of Tuxtla's main thoroughfares with a sign in the window that reads "ZONA," decreasing the anonymity of both workers and clients riding in it.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
Map of Chiapas

1. Modern Sex in a Modern City
2. Hidden in Plain Sight: Street Prostitution
3. Inside the Galactic Zone: Regulating Sex, Regulating Women
4. Convergence: Panistas, Prostitutes, and Peasants
5. “It Began Innocently”: Women of the Ambiente
6. Sellers and Buyers
7. The Secrets We Keep: Sex, Work, Stigma
8. Final Thoughts: Understanding, Imagining

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Effective and insightful."—Spread Magazine

Editorial Reviews

Effective and insightful.

Spread

[Kelly’s] methods are innovative, her analysis is sharp, and her writing expertly crafted, all of which make this ethnography not only valuable, but truly enjoyable.

Journal Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology

Kelly’s nuanced, descriptive, and insightful study Bérénicely complements recent work on gender and sexuality in provincial Mexico and offers a fresh perspective on issues related to labor, reformism, and economic development in the context of globalization.

Americas

Lydia’s Open Door is a captivating, well-written book that makes use of the author’s ethnographic skills and theoretical baggage. Undoubtedly, this book is a key reference for those interested in the way in which neoliberalism transforms the exercise of prostitution into something ‘modern’, by exhibiting hidden nineteenth-century moral values, in a society ‘trapped’ between tradition and modernity.

Journal of Latin American Studies

“Effective and insightful.

Spread Magazine - Melissa Ditmore