Diary of a Pandemic Pt. 4

COVID-19, the indiscriminate global killer, has taken the life of Jaime Montejo, an activist who fought for the civil rights of street sex workers in Mexico City. A journalist who chronicled his work measures Montejo’s impact on the lives of people who have few political allies.

By Ana Arana

The name Brigada Callejera -- Street Brigade -- has the revolutionary resonance that grassroots activist Jaime Montejo intended.

The movement’s name came naturally to Montejo. He was born in Cali, Colombia, a city that influenced his social insurgency. As a youth, he sympathized with the urban guerrilla movement M-19, which signed a peace agreement with the government in the early ‘90s.

Then for 25 years, Montejo and Elivra Madrid, his wife and compañera, pounded the chaotic streets of Mexico City like urban brigadeers on behalf of a large population of sex workers. Every day they’d visit street corners or rundown hotels. Their goal was to improve the lot of a vulnerable community, and they did just that: Mexico City now recognizes sex workers as nonsalaried, self-employed individuals eligible for social benefits that apply to all working Mexicans.

That record of impact underscored the sense of tragedy when I learned in April that both Jaime and Elvira had caught COVID-19. They got sick after setting up a community cafeteria for sex workers unable to work as Mexico went into a lockdown caused by the pandemic.

In early May, Jaime died from complications related to his infection. He was 54 years old. Five hospitals had turned him away in a week of seeking help. Mexico City has become an epicenter for the disease, and there are few available hospital beds. Today, Elvira, still ailing but at home, is sure that Jaime died because of the government’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Brigada’s early march

Brigada accepts sex workers for what they are. For them, sex work is a job they prefer over cleaning houses or raising someone else’s children, Jaime once told me. They earn more money working the streets.

I met Jaime and Elvira in 2010, when he invited me to his office. Do not wear jewelry or outlandish clothing, he warned. I rode Mexico City’s metro train to La Merced -- a rough-and-tumble neighborhood filled with street vendors and stalls with counterfeit goods. I walked a few blocks to his office on Corregidora Street, No. 15. Around the corner, sex workers were lined up waiting for customers.

The building I found was built in the 1950s and was a home for the blind. It was constructed by the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, which held power in Mexico for 70-plus years. The building is lugubrious – its walls damp, with well-worn green paint. Only a few blind residents live there today.

A metal gate protected the door to Brigada’s office. But inside, everything was cheery. Jaime and Elvira were meeting with sex workers. Pictures of Subcomandante Marcos, the Mexican revolutionary who rose up in the mid-1990s, hung on a wall. In one photo, Marcos was next to a smiling Elvira. Pictures of street rallies and other Brigada activities covered other brightly painted walls. Inside the offices, three health clinics offered free services.

That day, the tall and bald Jaime sat at a computer in a corner, next to a statue of the Santa Muerte, the pagan Saint of Death held in regard by many in La Merced. Jaime said some sex workers had given him the statue for protection. He welcomed the gift.

Jaime Montejo at a sex workers' rights protest in Mexico City. Photo courtesy of Exelsior.

A record of success

Jaime and Elvira launched Brigada in 1995. “The idea of working with sex workers found us,” Jaime told me.

A sociology project by the National University in Mexico City sent them to study sex workers, and Jaime, Elvira -- and her sister Rosa Icela -- made the cause their own. “The professor told us we were too involved -- sociologists needed distance,” Jaime said. The three students, all in their early 20s, abandoned school and began working for the rights of sex workers. (They finally earned their diplomas in 2000.)

The changes Jaime and Elvira eventually won for sex workers were beyond what they could have imagined. They ran a health clinic, handed out condoms and visited street walkers in every Mexican state. They also worked with Central American immigrant women who were exploited as sex workers in the southern state of Tapachula. When local police raided street corners, the couple was there. The police had stolen the workers’ money, and the women said officers sometimes raped them. All this was chronicled by Jaime and his news agency Noti-Calle, Street News.

Jaime and Elvira celebrated birthdays, held Mother’s Day celebrations and bought Christmas gifts for the women and their children.

In Mexico City, the couple lived modestly with Elvira’s mother in her apartment in Edificios Tlatelolco. In 1968, from windows and balconies of the building, soldiers shot and killed dozens of protesting university students who had rallied against government repression. The apartments were built for working-class families, and in recent years they’ve run into disrepair.

A few years ago, Jaime wrote to me on Whatsapp that he and Elvira were spending the night at the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office. A 16-year-old girl said she was being forced to sell sex and had gone to authorities for help. She had accused her pimp of physical abuse, but nobody wanted to go to prosecutors and press charges. “We are staying here, because if we do not press charges, the girl will be released back to the pimp,” he wrote. Life on the streets is hard, Jaime told me, and he and Elvira felt they had to be there.

A most dangerous fight

The last time I worked with Jaime and Elvira, we found ourselves on a bus, traveling to Guadalajara, the metropolis in western Mexico. Sex workers there are often hired as sentries for drug traffickers. The women always knew what’s happening on the streets.

We stayed at a small apartment Jaime and Elvira owned in a working-class area of the city. We were there to visit street sex workers caught up in the crossfire of a recent cartel turf battle. The Sinaloa Cartel was losing control, and the new drug leaders were more strict. I accompanied Jaime and Elvira on a walking tour of downtown Guadalajara’s busy sex-for-sale corners.

We visited a roster of cheap hotels. Elvira talked to young women in short skirts and high heels standing outside waiting for patrons. We stopped by a small park where an older sex worker with long blond hair was holding court. “She was one of the top prostitutes in Guadalajara 20 years ago,” Jaime said. He had a soft spot for older prostitutes. He said they don’t earn as much: “Once they are past 30, they begin to suffer.”

As we walked near the open market stalls in downtown Guadalajara, we noticed we were being followed by a crew of young men. Jaime presumed they were members of a local trafficking gang, who must have been alerted to our arrival. He quickly planned our escape: We wound through various streets and eventually hailed a cab.

I asked Jaime if life was always this dangerous. He smiled and said “No.” However, he added, there were always difficulties to face.

In the end, a pandemic proved to be the most difficult challenge.

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Ana Arana is veteran investigative journalist who lived and worked in Mexico City from 2007 to 2016. — **Ana Arana** *is veteran investigative journalist who lived and worked in Mexico City from 2007 to 2016.*