Zona Galáctica
Located four miles from the center of the Mexican city of Tuxtla, Zona Galáctica is a state-run brothel that was constructed in 1991 in hopes of modernizing sex work in the state of Chiapas. Compound zones like Galática emerged in Mexico in the 1940s in response to concerns about public disturbance and the maintenance of public health. Similar to those in other countries, legalized and regulated zones in Mexico continue to coexist with illicit street prostitution.
Zona Galática is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., hours that reflect the city’s concern with order and the facilitation of purely orderly sexual practice. Patty Kelly, author of “Lydia’s Open Door,” an ethnography on Zona Galática, argues that the zone workers prefer these regular hours as it provides a sense of working with cultural norms.[1] Public microbuses and private cars provide transportation to the zone for clients, workers and staff and once at the gate, clients pay an entrance fee of three pesos and are subjected to a police search to ensure sobriety and lack of weapons. Kelly describes the layout of the zone:
The eighteen buildings are organized into three rows with wide concrete pathways in between. Each building is constructed to facilitate client browsing as well as surveillance of workers: the three sides of the unit open into a central open-air courtyard through which clients may stroll while “shopping.” There are no dark corners or invisible spaces in the zone. Everything is within sight, within reach.[2]
In addition to the buildings where sex workers conduct business, there are two administrative buildings, one housing the medical services and the other housing the accountant, two jail cells and space for adult education. Generally, workers make their own hours and often spend much of their time alone in their rooms, waiting for clients. Doors are left open so that clients can poke in, decide to negotiate prices, and choose whether to stay. Kelly suggests that the zone does not ensure a stable income, instead periods of little activity lead to anxiety, over-eating, boredom and fighting.[3]
Workers must buy a Sanitary Control Card to work in the Zone, declaring them healthy but also stripping them of anonymity. Workers must go through a weekly health exam, the charges of which she is responsible for. Kelly found that, while she had been told there had never been a case of HIV in the zone, there were a number of cases and that for a long period, the laboratory had been “[…] either testing the women’s blood and not reporting the results, or more likely, not testing the women’s blood at all, though it took their blood and the feeds they paid.”[4] Such a discovery directly rejects claims that tolerance zones are established for the wellbeing of the workers and clients.
Under a paternalistic notion that these women can be “rehabilitated,” however, some education is provided, which can be beneficial to the workers. Women come to the zone for numerous reasons; to escape abusive partners, for their own independence, for economic stability, etc. While Kelly argues that the regulations of the zone ensures the continued stigmatization of prostitutes and certainly does not ensure the practice of safe sex, in many ways the environment does provide a safer work space than on the streets of Mexico.[5]