THE SANTA FE

A History of Jews, Commerce, and Prostitution

Sergio Enciso

ES

I was ten years old when I heard about prostitution for the first time: a journalist’s voice was reporting from a street in downtown Bogotá, the TV showed images recorded by a camera hidden inside a car, somber houses flashed from one side of the screen to the other in the dark of night. In the background, dark, blurry women stood in corridors, next to barred windows, lit solely by the dim yellow glow of spotty street lights. Suddenly, a voice shouted: “Get inside, whores; they’re filming you!” and the women in the video ran off to hide. I understood at that moment that these women had something that wasn’t meant to be filmed, something that made them run away and. That’s how I learned about prostitution in Bogotá in the late 20th century.

These women were referred to as las enrejadas, or “barred women”, prostitutes who worked behind closed doors. Legislation at the time mandated that high-impact commercial activities be restricted to certain major commercial avenues, far from the public eye, and these women therefore remained behind barred windows and doors, where they wouldn’t be seen, but were allowed to work.

A lot has changed since then, but this model of prostitution, outside the “tolerance zones”, persists. There are other special areas in different locations throughout the city where the sex trade takes place, but the bulk of legalized prostitution in Bogotá has been concentrated in one place: the High Impact Zone (ZAI, in Spanish)[1] in the Santa Fe neighborhood. This area is located in Los Mártires, one of three boroughs that, along with Santa Fe and La Candelaria, make up the historic city center. This triangle, traditionally home to the institutions that comprise the axis of political, cultural, and economic power in the country, is also one of the city’s most problematic areas. The museums and historic homes in La Candelaria, the Plaza de Bolívar, the National Capitol, the Presidential Palace, Liévano Palace, the International Center (our own little Manhattan), elite and not-so-elite universities, the towering Torre Colpatria, and the still uninhabited BD Bacatá building are located only meters from some of the city’s poorest backstreets (El Cartucho, El Bronx), from marketplaces crowded with street vendors and homeless people, and from the local ZAI. Prostitutes, lottery vendors, street dwellers, housewives, children, students, and office workers in the area look out their windows at and cross paths with the mayor, ministers, and even the President of the Republic without greeting or even acknowledging each other. 

Despite their proximity with history and power, the ZAI, the prostitution business, and the Santa Fe neighborhood in general are considered by the people of Bogotá to be the city’s most visibly dangerous focal points. People bristle as they pass through the ZAI, stretching their necks cautiously yet curiously to get a look at the women who work there, as they ride along Avenida Caracas on Transmilenio buses. Taxi drivers have many tragic stories to tell about the area and put pedal to the metal, disregarding traffic lights and regulations, when transiting Calle 22 or Calle 24 at night past the countless homeless people. The Santa Fe neighborhood is feared by the people of Bogota, although they acknowledge and reminisce about it. And although activities related to prostitution, isolated mainly in the ZAI and other special areas[2], show signs of continual growth, a halo of fear and shame still surrounds the people linked to the trade and the women who work there continue to hide themselves away.

Carlos Manríquez, an artist who lives in the neighborhood, told me that photographing prostitutes is risky and can lead to beatings or attacks with fists or knives. “I’ve seen car windows broken because some guy with a cell phone thought it would be funny to take a selfie or a picture with a prostitute. They wreck the car. People shout, “Photo, photo, photo!”, but the women don’t hide inside anymore; they go after the guy, confiscate the cell phone and kick the shit out of the car.” (Manríquez. Personal communication, June 2015).

What is the reason for this? Why is the exercise of prostitution linked to concealment, isolation, and shame? These were the initial doubts that led me to visit the ZAI and talk and write about it. 

The ZAI is located between Avenida Caracas and Carrera 17 and Calle 19 and Calle 24, in the heart of the Santa Fe neighborhood in the Los Mártires borough. The creation of the High Impact Zone was a direct consequence of the ruling resulting from Acción de Tutela No. 2000-0672 (a citizen’s writ for the protection of constitutional rights). A citizen advocated for the rights of residents in the neighborhood, claiming that prostitutes, especially transgender individuals and their naked bodies, were violating the right to a dignified life, tranquility, and peace for families and children in the area.

As a result of this acción de tutela, Municipal Criminal Judge 31 ordered Mayor Antanas Mockus to regulate prostitution in Bogotá and to create zones where it could be exercised. A series of participatory encounters with citizens sponsored by the Administrative Department of Social Welfare gave rise to Decree 187 of 2002, which ruled that Zoning Unit (UPZ, in Spanish)[3] Sabana No. 102 was the most suitable for the activity, since more than 70% of its premises were zoned for commercial use (Buriticá, 2013). Onto these blocks moved the “activities related to sex work, amusement, and recreation, and other shops and services, wiskerías (bordellos), striptease establishments, houses of procurement, and other categorizations related to the exercise of prostitution.” (Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, 2002). And so, UPZ 102 became the first –and only, at the time– place in Colombia where prostitution was exercised legally.[4]

I, like many artists, find something particularly fascinating about the ZAI. It’s not just the endless rows of women dressed in exotic or scanty attire, or the powerful presence of Bogotá’s most visited and most outlandishly decorated nightclubs, which coexist alongside informal businesses and the homeless and marginal communities shuffling through the trash on the streets. In my case, this fascination also stems from the borderland quality of the Santa Fe neighborhood due to its condition as a ZAI.

When I speak of “borderland” I mean the spaces between different geographical, cultural, and social realities. Gloria Anzaldúa called these territories borderlands in her writings when referring to the geographical space between Mexico and the United States, a territory she calls an “open wound” where “the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.” This borderland is a “third country” that has grown and become a kind of warp for an indigenous (Mexica, Aztec) cultural heritage, the Spanish heritage of the conquerors, and the Anglo heritage of the current white owners of the territory of the United States (Anzaldúa, 1999, p. 25).

Although the ZAI does not separate two different countries, it can be thought of as a borderland arising from the clash of the two distant realities that intersect there: the condensed prostitution trade with its related businesses, accelerated growth, and the migrants it attracts (which now also includes Venezuelan migrants), and Bogotá’s traditional, centrally-located Santa Fe neighborhood populated by families, and with its own cultural and architectural heritage. 

The Santa Fe neighborhood emerged in the thirties, when members of the Tafur Villalobos family, the owners of the San Antonio de la Azotea hacienda, entrusted development of the land to the Ospinas construction company. The company adhered to the urban planning designs of Austrian architect Karl Brunner, director of the Department of Urban Development at the time, whose job it was to connect the terrain to public utilities, divide it into lots, and sell them. At the same time, according to Enrique Martínez[5], an expert in Jewish territories in Bogotá, with the approach of World War II, the country’s Jewish community was not allowed to emigrate, they had restrictions placed on their movements throughout Latin America, and were prevented from returning to Europe. The community therefore began investing in real estate. Nearly 20 percent of the lots in the new Santa Fe neighborhood were purchased by Jews and other European migrants living in the city, which gave the neighborhood its initial aristocratic character that lasted for several decades and for which it is still known and remembered. A walk through the Santa Fe neighborhood, inside and outside the ZAI, and a look at its original buildings, leads one to imagine what those streets must have been like in their glory days, when the neighborhood resembled, perhaps, Teusaquillo, although with a more commercial appearance. This history, discernible among the neon signs and the bright tiles now covering the facades of the original buildings, is unknown to most inhabitants of Bogota.

At the end of World War II, as the second half of the 20th century approached, Jewish and European migrants moved to other less central neighborhoods, such as Chapinero, Chicó, or Usaquén, or returned to Europe. New settlers arrived in Santa Fe, including families from other parts of Colombia, artists, students, and merchants. The proximity of the neighborhood with the Estación de la Sabana train station and the city’s entry and exit routes increased its commercial character, attracting hotels and businesses and a floating, migrant population that took advantage of the services provided by sex workers.[6] By the end of the twentieth century, the neighborhood provided a niche for prostitution and commerce. 

But the establishment of the ZAI in the heart of the Santa Fe neighborhood was, in the words of Enrique Martínez, “a coup de grace for the neighborhood”, meaning the event that marked its fateful decline into what has been recognized as one of the capital’s most conflictive and dangerous areas. However, this same event in 2001 also marked the beginning and development of a geographical area within Bogotá that, due to its characteristics, can be understood as a “perspective, or an epistemological space” (Escobar, 2003, p. 70) from which it is possible to construct visions of a world facing the heteronormative traditional and hegemonic forms prevailing in much of the city. 

I spent several years visiting and researching the ZAI, trying to uncover those visions. I also attempted to answer my initial question, as well as a research question that became central: Which practices and dynamics have emerged in the borderland between the Santa Fe neighborhood –one of Bogotá’s traditional neighborhoods, inhabited by traditional families– and the prostitution business legally established there?

My fieldwork in the area, which included walking tours, interviews, lunches, breakfasts, meetings, and running a nocturnal street stall, among others, revealed three important facts: first, that there is a type of urban development that focuses on the body of the woman who works as a prostitute. The female body in the ZAI is subject to constant public exposure. This body, traditionally consigned to the private domain, now appears in public in front of discos and boardinghouses, among pedestrians and in traffic. Bogotá society views this type of exhibitionism as something negative, and this is partly, or precisely, what brought about the isolation of the areas where prostitution is exercised. Only in this part of Bogotá is it possible to see half-naked women in public.[7] The architecture in the area, the former houses and buildings of European Jews and immigrants, has therefore transformed slowly to accommodate bars, bordellos, boardinghouses, and hotels linked to the prostitution business and the trafficking of women who exhibit themselves in public. What is more, this form of trafficking has given way to the so-called cuquiturs, a term used to describe the action of traveling in a private car, taxi, or motorcycle along the streets and avenues of the ZAI to solicit the services of sex workers, or to simply observe them.

Second, there is a market aimed exclusively at these women, that includes services such as hairdressers, spas, and clothing stores. This market functions inside the traditional market in this neighborhood; inside the small shops in the area, for example, you’ll find articles such as the thongs or underwear favored by prostitutes alongside school supplies for children.

And third, the configuration of the ZAI has allowed a space in which the trans identity community has gained visibility alongside the prostitution business. Members of this community work and show themselves there, in the light of day, exhibiting their transformed bodies in the same way that cisgender women do.[8] Trans women who practice prostitution have found their own space in the ZAI.

This third fact includes an aspect that remains hidden behind the doors of nightclubs in the high-impact zones, but that struggles to be recognized: the agency demonstrated by trans people in the constitution of the ZAI. Diana Navarro, a lawyer who defines herself as “black, a fag, and a whore”, worked as a prostitute and is a co-founder of Fundación Opción. She lives in the neighborhood and confirms that, in 2001, following the ruling that resulted from Citizen’s Writ 2000-0672, the Los Mártires mayor’s office moved to evict those in the neighborhood who exercised prostitution, but that, thanks to her intervention, prostitution zones were regulated and the ZAI was created. Diana acknowledges her role as the “face” of this process because, as a lawyer, she had technical knowledge of legislation that her colleagues did not possess. However, she also stresses that, although she acted as a leader, she was not alone. “I really emphasize that fact, because it wasn’t just me; it was all of us who worked [in the area] at the time” (Navarro. Personal communication). Diana also said that trans women, unlike cisgender prostitutes, are less concerned with people finding out what they do for a living: “I didn’t care if people knew, and the other girls didn’t either. We’re just whores or hairdressers, so who cares? But I understand cisgender women, because they lead a double life. Many of their families have no idea they work as prostitutes.” (Navarro. Personal communication, March 2016). 

Some time has passed since I decided to direct myself to friendlier places and write about other locations. However, I still wonder about the darkness surrounding the exercise of prostitution and why we continue to condemn it morally, thus blocking the path to real regulation.  

A number of tendencies have arisen throughout the world with regard to the issue of prostitution. Abolitionist, regulatory, and prohibitionist tendencies are the product of different social realities and of the political and regulatory decisions of different governments (Guerrero, 2017). In Colombia, prostitution has been treated directly and indirectly by different public policies throughout history. According to Misael Tirado (2011), such policies have oscillated between repression and regulated tolerance. Historically in this country, the exercise of prostitution, and other related expressions considered more offensive by social communities or religious morality, have been directly penalized. Similarly, certain issues linked to sex work have been regulated, but only for criminological, health, and urban planning purposes.

Two rulings by the Constitutional Court, however, have become legal precedents and have opened the door to regulated legalization of sex work and the protection of the human rights of the population that exercises it. Ruling T-629 of 2010, issued by the Constitutional Court, recognized the activity of prostitution as a form of employment exercised by the female sex worker, who as a mother and head of household deserves protection and job stability. The State is, in the Court’s opinion, the guarantor of human rights and dignity. Ruling T-736 of 2015 also addresses the issue of prostitution, stating that sex workers form a “discriminated and marginalized group given their activity, and therefore the State owes them special protection under the constitutional mandates of material equality”.

The Court also emphasizes, yet again, the difference between legal sex work, arising from the exercise of the free and reasoned will of the person who performs it –even when performed in contexts of socioeconomic vulnerability­–, and forced prostitution, or the exploitation of human beings for the economic gain of third parties[9] (Constitutional Court, 2015).

Undeniably, the practice of prostitution is an economic activity that generates benefits and resources necessary to individual or collective survival. The Colombian State recognizes the rights of the population that exercises this activity and affirms the State’s role as guarantor of their rights. And yet it is important to state that despite such recognition of rights and protection by the Court, as Daniela Guerrero Ordóñez (2017) points out, the regulatory tendency has not been strictly adhered to. The issue generates controversy, debate, and discussion among different sectors in this country and there is evidence to suggest that the Constitutional Court’s decisions have sought to follow a certain abolitionist tendency, with regulatory and prohibitionist nuances. The Court notes that “the law protects those who practice prostitution while respecting public health measures, but at the same time imposes on the State the duty to promote its eradication and rehabilitate those who work as sex workers” (Constitutional Court, 2010). This statement is proof that the legal system does not defend a single exclusive position in relation to this activity, and does not adhere to one exclusive regulatory tendency. On the contrary, this hybrid tendency, in the end, has failed to ensure people who exercise prostitution the minimum guarantees to employment and a decent quality of life.

I will continue to investigate the cause of this lack of guarantees, rights, and visibility and will continue to search for an answer to my question regarding the shame and isolation experienced by the people who live in the Santa Fe neighborhood and work in the ZAI. I plan to speak with the members of groups working with the trans community engaged in prostitution in the neighborhood. I hope to continue to meet with those working collectively to achieve greater visibility and better working conditions for these people within our society. A society that seeks, above all, to keep them invisible and hidden, despite the fact that the exercise of prostitution is one of the few livelihoods available to this community in Bogotá.

References

Mayor’s Office of Bogotá (2002). Decree 187 of 2002. Bogota City Hall. Bogota, Colombia Retrieved online from 

http://www.alcaldiabogota.gov.co/sisjur/normas/Norma1.jsp?i=5137.

Anzaldúa, G. (1999). Bordelands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco (USA). Aunt Lute Books. 

Buriticá, I. (2013). El discurso antagónico de la sexualidad y la participación ciudadana: el caso de las travestis prostitutas de Mártires, Bogotá. (The antagonistic discourse of sexuality and citizen participation: the case of prostitute transvestites from Los Mártires), Bogotá. La Manzana de la Discordia, 8, (1), 37-54.

Constitutional Court (2015). Ruling T-629/10. Retrieved online from http://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2010/T-629-10.htm.

Constitutional Court (2015). Ruling T-736/15. Retrieved online from  http://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2015/t-736-15.htm.

Escobar, A. (2003). Mundos y conocimientos de otro modo: el programa de investigación modernidad/colonialidad latinoamericano. (Worlds and knowledge in another way: Latin American modernity/coloniality research program). Tabula Rasa (1), 51-86.

Guerrero, D. (2017). El ejercicio de la prostitución como trabajo sexual, implicaciones sociales y régimen jurídico. (The exercise of prostitution as sex work: social implications and legal framework). Undergraduate thesis, Universidad Católica. Retrieved online from https://repository.ucatolica.edu.co/bitstream/10983/15807/1/EL%20EJERCICIO%20DE%20LA%20PROSTITUCI%C3%93N%20COMO%20TRABAJO%20SEXUAL.pdf.

Henao, M. (2017).  Response to a request regarding the concept of high impact areas. Retrieved online from http://www.sdp.gov.co/sites/default/files/conceptos-juridicos/82-17.pdf.

Malaver, C. (2019). Because it is an activity, prostitution will not be limited to the urban area. Retrieved online from https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/discusion-en-el-pot-en-bogota-sobre-zonas-para-ejercer-la-prostitucion-330472.

Manríquez, C. (2015). Personal communication. 

Navarro, D. (2016). Personal communication. 

Tirado, M. (2011). El debate entre prostitución y trabajo sexual, una mirada desde lo socio-jurídico y la política pública. (The debate between prostitution and sex work: from a socio-legal and public policy perspective). Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad (International Relations, Strategy and Security Magazine), 6 (1), 127-148. Bogotá: Universidad Militar Nueva Granada.