Massacre of Sex Workers during a police operative against human trafficking in the Zona Galáctica tolerance zone of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas,.

Massacre of Sex Workers during a police operative against human trafficking in the Zona Galáctica tolerance zone of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas,. January 2014

This happened three years ago. They arrived without notice, there were immigration officials, local police, the AFI (Federal Investigation Agency), and they started to violently take all of the people out of the space without the slightest bit of compassion. If we were busy, they kicked our doors in, that’s how they pulled us out of the room. They did not even wait for us to get dressed, and they also ran the clients out. This is when the gunfire began – there were more foreign women, Guatemalans, Salvadoreans, Hondurans, from all over the place. Many women died.

Nobody helped us. The police locked us up, they also killed young guys who had their CD stands in the street. The women who did not want to come out were gassed so that they were forced to come out. Other women were killed. They asked us for our identification and they separated those who were not carrying any. They didn’t allow us to drink water or anything, people were even dehydrated. The zone was closed off for 15 days. Fifty people were detained and taken away and only ten of them were rescued afterwards. According to them, their security measures did not allow them to give out any information.

None of this was made known to the public because they were from the AFI and they threatened us by saying that if we opened our mouths, they would kill us. I would not want anyone to have to live through what we lived through that day – imagine if there were a stray bullet that was meant for one person but killed another! They said they came because there were women being forced to work there, but that’s not true. The story came out in the news saying that supposedly two pimps had killed the women, but that’s not what happened, it was them. I worked for four years and never saw anything of what they were talking about.

One of the three police officers who was watching us woke up dead. The police officers started to change places amongst themselves, they took turns so that no one would realize what was happening. Nothing appeared in the newspapers, only that a woman had killed her pimp because he was demanding she pay her dues. The newspapers didn’t cover anything, they said that two women who had been beaten to death were found in a bathroom but they never mentioned anything about gunshots.

No one said anything. There are relatives who had gone to ask about people who were killed, but they are too afraid to give them any information. Now they say they don’t want foreign women from Guatemala, Salvador, because immigration often shows up to supervise.

That time, the police operative was very big because it was a sectorial action. Federal, municipal and state police arrived on the scene, it was very big and there were many people killed. Many people took off running and escaped along the river. We were told “you chicks better listen to what we say, don’t run away”. There was a big hall and they held us there, but because of our fear we did not listen to them. After a week when they let us go, I didn’t want to go back out of fear that the same thing would happen again. I came here because later on there were many problems with the immigration officials. I worked for four years and then came here. They say that they carry out those police operatives because of the pimps, but the immigration officials don’t listen to what we have to say and are very rude.

When they arrived, fortunately I was busy. When I heard them knock on the door, I thought it was a drunk client. I didn’t know what was happening outside, but when I opened the door, the police officer said “come out sweetheart, I want you upstairs”. I told him I was busy, but he said “I don’t care, do what I say”. He said, “I want you upstairs with your papers, your identification, your birth certificate, your CURP (Unique Population Registry Code)”. Fortunately I had those papers on hand and gave them to him. The clients were also forced to leave the place. Many of them were locked up and are still in jail because they were accused of different offenses, such as human trafficking, like they mentioned in the talk.

The police operative took place early in the day. There were more foreigners than Mexicans, and when they were on the floor, they started to kill them. I saw like eight, they put them in zip-up body bags. Since the others refused to be caught out of fear of the immigration officials, they beat and slapped them around and ended up arresting them anyways – some were even killed. I’m too scared to go back there, everything comes to my mind again. The immigration officials don’t respect anyone.

I would ask the authorities that they not be corrupt, that they support us foreign women because we are all mothers. They should let us work because we all have needs – we don’t work for pleasure. I started working out of necessity. My husband took a lot of money with him when he left me and I was stuck with a huge debt. I had my newborn baby and started working but only earned 1,000 to 1,200 pesos every two weeks. I couldn’t earn enough to make ends meet and that is why I got started in this line of work. I had to pay off large amounts of money and I couldn’t do it.

I have two children – one is six years old and the other is five – and that’s why I don’t want to be picked up by immigration authorities. They don’t respect anyone! I am from Tuxtla, and I have to come and go. They mistreat us a lot, both physically and verbally. I have been working for 7 years – I started when I was 21 and now I am 28. I stared working the Zona Galáctica and now I am here. I have also tried to work in the tolerance zone of Zintalapa.

There is a lot of corruption in the tolerance zone. I only lasted three months, I couldn’t handle it. They didn’t check us, they only asked us for money. They don’t test you for HIV/AIDS. There are many women who are very close-minded and don’t let people organize talks. The majority of them are foreigners.

It is the foreign women who suffer most in the tolerance zone. There are 172 women, and I believe there may be even more because each module has 13 women and more modules were built. Now there are 19 modules, but they are very small.

The work is too risky. We come across every kind of situation and you can get traumatized. That’s why I don’t like to read the newspaper because I find out about more problems. After the police operative, my mother found out about the kind of work I do because I didn’t come home for several days and she asked around because our cell phones were taken away. They told us that we were being our calls were being monitored, you could hear an echo on the phone when we talked, that’s why I had to change my chip. It’s very risky work.