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Week 9 Discussion Board

1. What is one specific thing you didn’t understand about this week’s reading? What is confusing about it? 

2. Spend a little time googling additional information about that one thing (look up a definition, look for a summary etc) – what did you find and how did it affect your understanding?

Week 9 12/1 & 12/3 – New Media and Social Movements

Attached Files:

Carney- All Lives Matter but so (218.254 KB)
Cabezas Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers (1.802 MB)

Required Reading:

1. Carney, Nikita. “All lives matter, But So Does Race: Black Lives Matter and the Evolving Role of Social Media. “Humanity & Society 40, no. 2 (2016): pp. 180-199.

2. Cabezas, Amalia L. “Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers: Gains and challenges in the movement.” Anti-Trafficking Review 12 (2019): 37-56.

Required Video:

1. An interview with the founders of Black Lives Matter | Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi

(Accessed at:

2. Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers: Gains and challenges in the movement. (Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCDb29Hy6OY&list=PLOQ25vEoydMfIV9D9vVqnyRH3UG5Px35p).

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301310750

All Lives Matter, but so Does Race: Black Lives Matter

and the Evolving Role of Social Media

Article in Humanity & society · April 2016

DOI: 10.1177/0160597616643868

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Research Article

All Lives Matter, but so
Does Race: Black Lives
Matter and the Evolving
Role of Social Media

Nikita Carney
1

Abstract
This article demonstrates the ways in which youth of color played an active role in
debates that erupted on Twitter following the tragic deaths of Michael Brown and
Eric Garner in 2014. These debates on social media represent a larger struggle over
discourse on race and racism across the nation. Drawing from critical theory and
race theory, and engaging in the relatively new practice of using Twitter as a source
of data for sociological analysis, this article examines Twitter as an emerging public
sphere and studies the hashtags ‘‘#AllLivesMatter’’ and ‘‘#BlackLivesMatter’’ as
contested signs that represent dominant ideologies. This article consists of a qua-
litative textual analysis of a selection of Twitter posts from December 3 to 7, 2014,
following the nonindictments of officers in the murders of Michael Brown and Eric
Garner. The debates on Twitter reveal various strategies that youth of color
employed to shape the national discourse about race in the wake of these high-
profile tragedies.

Keywords
social media, race, social theory

1 Department of Sociology, University of California–Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nikita Carney, Department of Sociology, Social Sciences and Media Studies Bldg., University of

California–Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.

Email: ncarney@umail.ucsb.edu

Humanity & Society
1-20

ª The Author(s) 2016
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Personal Reflexive Statement

As someone very involved with the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests of 2014,

this article emerged from a desire to examine the discourse regarding race and police

violence unfolding on Twitter using sociological theories and tools. The events of

Ferguson affected me personally as a woman of color, a sister, a cousin, an aunt,

an activist, and a scholar. During the fall of 2014, I was actively engaged in protests

against police brutality and systemic racism that permits such atrocities to occur

without any sense of justice for the victims and their families. I closely followed news

surrounding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, among other victims of

police violence, on mass media and social media. I also took to the streets with other

activists and participated in acts of protest at my university on a daily basis. Rather

than claiming to produce an ‘‘objective’’ analysis, I use my subjectivity to examine

discourse as it unfolded on social media with the goal of better understanding the ways

in which youth of color used technology to influence dominant discourse in the nation.

The tragic events of Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 had the nation abuzz, with much of

the conversation taking place on social media. Michael Brown’s death reignited

support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and prompted many to use

social media to debate the role of policing and the state of race relations in the United

States. In the aftermath of Ferguson, national attention turned to the killings of other

Black boys and men, such as Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Some argued

that the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were a race issue, plain and

simple. Others argued that their deaths had nothing to do with race and that the

police were the ‘‘real’’ victims. This article demonstrates the ways in which debates

that erupted on Twitter represent a larger struggle for power over the discourse on

race and racism across the nation, drawing from critical theory and race theory to

analyze a collection of posts on Twitter (http://twitter.com), and applying these

theories to a pressing contemporary context. Youth of color, a traditionally margin-

alized group in U.S. society, play a central role in the national discourse on race as it

emerges on social media, using this technology to voice their experiences and

concerns in ways that challenge dominant ideologies about race.

The BLM movement began in 2012 when George Zimmerman was acquitted

after shooting and killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Three Black

women activists, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, started the move-

ment that subsequently engaged many, including many youth of color, in social

justice activism across the country. According to the website, ‘‘#BlackLivesMatter

is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intention-

ally targeted for demise . . . The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for
ALL Black lives striving for liberation’’ (Black Lives Matter: A Movement, Not a

Moment; blacklivesmatter.com). The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter gained promi-

nence once again and became the rallying call for protesters after the killing of

Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, in August 2014.

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The debates on Twitter following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner

indicate a struggle for power in controlling discourse about the state-sanctioned

killings of Black men in the United States, particularly following tragedies and lack

of accountability for the police officers responsible, as was the case in the deaths of

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice. These often heated exchanges on

social media also reveal the emergence of a few dominant ideological positions,

emphasizing how different groups viewing the same media coverage interpret issues

of race and police violence in drastically different ways (Smith

et al. 2014).

Stereotypes of young Black men, especially those who come from low-income

neighborhoods, have become so entrenched in our society that they serve as a way to

legitimate police violence against unarmed Black boys and men in the eyes of many

Americans. Many normalize and accept these stereotypes as truth on a subconscious

level, leading some to insist on looking ‘‘objectively’’ at the facts without involving

an analysis of race. In contrast, many people of color, particularly youth, recognize

those stereotypes and acts of violence as part of a larger pattern of racism within the

United States. Using a combination of sociological theories to frame my analysis, I

argue that our positions within complex systems of oppression affect what we

believe to be ‘‘fact’’ in the national discourse about police violence against people

of color. Focusing in particular on the deployment of the phrases ‘‘#BlackLives-

Matter’’ and ‘‘#AllLivesMatter,’’ my analysis examines the discourse on Twitter at a

particular moment in time to investigate a contested site of knowledge production

and power through discourse.

First, this article brings together the traditional sociological theories of Jurgen

Habermas ([1962] 1991), György Lukács ([1923] 1971), and Karl Mannheim

([1936] 2013) with contemporary critical race theory to create a framework for

understanding the social processes unfolding on Twitter in discourse about BLM.

Then I engage in the relatively new practice of using Twitter as a source of data for

sociological analysis, joining other scholars who have begun to investigate the role

and implications of Twitter as it unfolds (Dubrofsky and Wood 2014; Ems 2014;

Florini 2014; Penney and Dadas 2014; Theocharis et al. 2015; Tremayne 2014). This

study consists of a qualitative textual analysis of Twitter posts following the non-

indictments of officers in the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner between

December 3 and 7, 2014, to examine a contested site of knowledge production and

power through discourse at this moment in time. This study reveals the ways in

which youth of color challenge dominant ideologies of race through social media,

highlighting various strategies that they employ. Lastly, an examination of Twitter

activity during this five-day span illuminates the speed with which discourse evolves

on social media, pointing to the instability and contestability of emerging signs.

Theoretical Framing

The work of Habermas ([1962] 1991) provides us with tools to think about social

media as an emerging public sphere where signs and myths are constructed (Barthes

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1972; Saussure 1916) and discourse on race unfolds. I use the works of Lukács

([1923] 1971) and Mannheim ([1936] 2013) alongside the critical race theory of

Omi and Winant (2014) to explain how some use color-blind racism without realiz-

ing their partial view of the greater system of racial oppression in the United States.

The writings of Lukács and Mannheim on totality and the production of knowledge

illuminate processes taking place in this contemporary public sphere. While tradi-

tional sociological theory can provide valuable insights and theoretical frameworks

to understand society today, the glaring absence of any discussion of race in the

works mentioned above makes it necessary to supplement those scholarly works

with contributions from critical race theory to fully understand the historical context

surrounding the police violence and the BLM movement. The works of Omi and

Winant (2014), Roediger and Esch (2012), and Roithmayr (2014) provide theoretical

contributions regarding racial oppression and resistance, the evolution of racial

stereotypes in the United States, and structural racism, while Killing Trayvons

(2014) offers a more targeted account of the ways in which race plays a role in the

state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies.

Social Media as a New Public Sphere

The important role of social media as a platform for recent discussions of racism and

police violence necessitates a revisiting of classical sociological theory in light of

modern technology. Habermas’s ([1962] 1991) theory of the public sphere provides

a useful framework to understand the discourse surrounding BLM on social media,

as discourse and specific rhetoric used in the public sphere allow insight into the

social and political tensions and forces at play just beneath the surface during and

following these events. With rapidly developing technology and the rise of social

media, the public sphere today looks very different than it did even 10 years ago.

However, as numerous scholars highlight, Habermas identifies key aspects of the

public sphere that are transferable to contemporary public discourse (Calhoun 1992;

Dalhgren 1995; Fraser 1992; Fraser and Nash 2014). Although not specifically

attuned to issues of race, Habermas’s theory of the public sphere sheds light on

social processes of national discourse in which today’s youth of color actively

engage.

In Habermas’s theory, the audience plays a crucial role in the functioning of the

public sphere. However, media scholar Peter Dahlgren (1995) asserts that the notion

of an ‘‘audience’’ is insufficient in that it implies a stable fixed group of receivers.

Instead, Dahlgren suggests that public spheres need ‘‘publics’’ that are interactive

social agents, rather than passive audience members. With the creation of a new

interface for public discourse, we see the emergence of subjectivities forming in a

new way, allowing for the active engagement of new publics.

We can extrapolate from Habermas’s perspective a set of questions that allow us

to reassess what the problem of ‘‘public sphere’’ may mean with regard to new social

media. Some may classify social media as a ‘‘weak’’ public, given that publics

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organizing on social media do not have the power to directly shape decision-making

in the state (Fraser 1992:134). However, social media serves as both a weak public in

which people formulate opinions and a ‘‘strong’’ public that puts pressure on the

state to reform its practices by raising awareness and organizing protests.

Although social media far from remedies the issue of universal accessibility to the

public sphere, it certainly creates a new form of access that engages many who

otherwise would not be able to participate in the public sphere. Habermas ([1962]

1991) argues that ‘‘[p]ublic opinion originated from those who were informed’’ and

that the lower classes did not participate because ‘‘they had neither the leisure nor

the opportunity’’ to concern themselves with anything beyond their most immediate

needs for survival (p. 102). With technological innovations and the increased acces-

sibility of cell phones, most youth in the United States can tap into discourse on

public media almost anywhere, anytime. Rather than needing to set aside time to

engage in national and transnational conversations about race and oppression,

increased access to the Internet and the ability to read and contribute to discourses

on social media via one’s cell phone allows youth to integrate this participation in

the public sphere into their daily activities. While the public sphere is not universally

accessible, the rise of social media appears to be increasing accessibility to national

discourse, particularly for youth who are coming of age with the rise of this

technology.

While Habermas’s theories serve as great tools in the unpacking of the discourse

on social media, it is also important to point out the ways in which his theories do not

neatly map onto the contemporary context. Most importantly, the Internet is not tied

to any single nation-state. If online social media can in fact be considered an

extension of the public sphere, or a site where a new public sphere emerges, this

new platform for public discourse calls into question the relationship between the

public sphere and the state. For Habermas, the public sphere emerged as a space for

people within a nation-state to exchange ideas outside of state control. Today we see

a multiplicity of public spheres that overlap and are constantly shifting, public

spheres that are not necessarily tied to any singular governmental entity or confined

within the borders of a single nation-state. Although outside the scope of this article,

the implications of transnational public spheres in light of Habermas’s theory war-

rant further attention.
1

Totality versus Partiality

In History and Class Consciousness (1923), Lukács argues that ‘‘[f]acts can only

become facts within the framework of a system—which will vary with the knowl-

edge desired’’ ([1923] 1971:5). According to Lukács, all facts already imply an

interpretation, no matter how seemingly objective. In light of the contemporary

discourse surrounding the BLM protests in the fall of 2014, Lukács might argue

that adamant support of the phrases #AllLivesMatter or #BlackLivesMatter emerged

as a result of reified minds viewing these concepts as ‘‘true representatives of [their]

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societal existence’’ ([1923] 1971:93) rather than seeing the capital relations that

shape their existence and drive them into conflict with each other. In other words,

these hashtags took on greater significance, as they came to represent the identities

of groups of people. However, an overreliance on these hashtags could take attention

away from underlying issues of structural inequality and capitalist exploitation.

Lukács argues that ‘‘the knowledge yielded by the standpoint of the proletariat

stands on a higher scientific plane objectively’’ than knowledge produced by the

bourgeoisie ([1923] 1971:163). Although I do not necessarily agree that ‘‘objectiv-

ity’’ is the most useful way to frame this, Lukács’s point that those in power are often

blind to certain knowledge that is more readily available to the oppressed remains a

salient one. Other scholars, such as Georg Simmel (1950) and Patricia Hill Collins

(1986), have made similar claims about the uniquely situated knowledge of those

outside of the dominant system or society. As we will see in my analysis below, in

debates on Twitter regarding #BlackLivesMatter versus #AllLivesMatter, those

adamantly supporting #AllLivesMatter in protest against the claim that Black lives

matter (BLM) tend to oversimplify the discourse, engaging in color-blind racism.

While the claim that all human life is valuable is not ‘‘wrong,’’ it intentionally erases

the complexities of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the lives of people who

suffer from systematic police brutality.

In Ideology and Utopia (1936), Mannheim argues that utopian thought and ideol-

ogy are partialities that view themselves as objective totalities ([1936] 2013:36).

Mannheim aptly highlights the point that groups of people who are strongly invested

in a certain set of interests may mistakenly come to believe that they see the totality,

when in fact their views are only part of the totality. Another aspect of Mannheim’s

work that lends itself to this project is his theory of relationism. For Mannheim,

relationism lies between relativism and objective truth. Following Mannheim’s

concept of relationism, while I do not consider that searching for objective truth

in the discourse around racial violence and the BLM movement serves as a useful or

productive exercise, I do believe that there are criteria by which to judge the ethical

implications of various statements. For instance, statements that reaffirm racial

hierarchies and the silencing of marginalized communities are ethically problematic.

‘‘Truth’’ can be used in ways that perpetuate violence against vulnerable popula-

tions. Perhaps more important than the straight facts are the ways in which the

deployment of certain facts perpetuates regimes of power.

What about Race?

In the seminal work Racial Formation (2014), Michael Omi and Howard Winant

define race as a modern, socially constructed concept, and introduce the theme of

oppression and resistance as dialectical forces at play in race and racism. In the case

of discourse on social media following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner

and the nonindictments of their killers, we see this dialectical relationship between

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oppression and resistance at play, as youth of color use social media to call out racist

rhetoric and practices.

Omi and Winant also address the emergence of color-blind racism alongside

neoliberal ideology in the United States, making a connection between this form

of ‘‘new racism’’ and how it coincides with economic practices that structurally

disadvantage people of color. According to Omi and Winant, ‘‘Neoliberalism was at

its core a racial project as much as a capitalist accumulation project’’ (2014:211). As

opposed to Jim Crow era racism, color-blind racism appears egalitarian on the

surface with its assertion that all people are the same. However, adherence to this

postracial ideology while both structural and interpersonal racism persist effaces the

struggles of people of color by claiming that racism is a thing of the past. This

dangerous liberal ideology provides a false sense of comfort to those who do not face

racial oppression in their everyday lives.

Drawing on David R. Roediger and Elizabeth D. Esch’s (2012) account of the

history of race management in the United States, I examine how the legacy of this

management of race through labor can be seen today in the persisting racial conflicts

with regard to culture and power. While violence against people of color in the

United States has persisted in some form for hundreds of years, today we see youth

of color fighting to control the national discourse about state-sanctioned violence in

their communities in new ways through the use of social media. At the same time,

stereotypes of African Americans, which Roediger and Esch argue were developed

to manage Black labor over a century ago, continue to persist and serve as justifi-

cation for violence against Black bodies.

Emphasizing the importance of understanding the structural components of

racism in the United States, in Reproducing Racism (2014), Daria Roithmayr

explains factors that lead to the reproduction of racial inequality over time. While

discussions of the killing of Black boys and men on social media focus largely on

interpersonal racism and the details of particular instances of police brutality, the

underlying structural racism largely influences the different ideologies that emerge

in response to acts of police violence. Those who face structural oppression and

systematic racism on a daily basis tend to understand the events of Ferguson and

Staten Island very differently than those who do not face systematic racial oppres-

sion regularly. While mainstream conversations often do not address structural

racism, an understanding of those underlying structures is necessary when examin-

ing discourses about race within the nation. Even if all interpersonal racism magi-

cally ceased, the existing systems that privilege white supremacy and criminalize

nonwhite bodies and behaviors would persist. While discourse is crucial, the goal

should not be to merely ‘‘win’’ an argument, but to encourage people to fundamen-

tally change structures of oppression that permeate our lives.

In an explicit examination of the ways in which Black men are rendered dispo-

sable in the eyes of the state, Killing Trayvons (Gray, Wypijewski, and St. Clair

2014) highlights the connections between each individual act of violence against

Black males and the larger systemic problem, both nationally and globally.

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Addressing the ways in which whiteness functions as an ideology, Thandisizwe

Chimurenga, one of the authors in Killing Trayvons (2014), writes ‘‘Being a person

of color in the U.S. does not make one immune to white supremacist ideology or

behavior on its behalf’’ (2014:108). This quote emphasizes the point that the

tension exists not merely between white bodies and Black bodies, but that the

battle must be fought on an ideological level that goes beyond the visible compo-

nents of race. The fact that George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, is Latino

illustrates the way that whiteness as an ideology does not necessarily correspond to

white bodies. This analysis of whiteness as an ideology can be linked back to

theories about partial ideologies as presented by the traditional sociological the-

orists above. Not all white people attempt to erase the role of race in police brutal-

ity. At the same time, there exists great diversity in the experiences and politics of

people of color. For instance, a Black or Latino police officer may act in ways that

reaffirm white supremacist agendas by nature of their position within an institution

designed to criminalize nonnormative (read: nonwhite, heterosexual, middle class)

behavior.

Language and Discourse

I now turn to the work of Ferdinand De Saussure ([1916] 2011) and Roland Barthes

(1972) to provide a theoretical framing of my textual analysis of specific language

circulating on social media. Saussure’s work emphasizes the relational nature of the

signifier and signified, producing language as a structure. According to Saussure,

‘‘language never exists apart from the social fact’’ (1916:79). Words are signs that

are composed of two parts: the signifier and the signified. The relationship between

signifier and signified is arbitrary, in that the words do not objectively or inherently

possess some essence of the concept that they signify. Over time, the relationship

between a signifier and what it signifies can shift as social forces adapt and refine

concepts.

Barthes starts from Saussure’s theory of signs as consisting of the relationship

between the signifier and the signified, and then uses those signs as building blocks

to theorize the construction of myths as meta-level signifiers. In Mythologies (1972),

Barthes writes, ‘‘It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and

the form which defines myth’’ (1972:117). Barthes also emphasizes the historically

situatedness of myths and the ways in which myths can change and even disappear

completely over time. As we will see in the case of the hashtags that gained pro-

minence in autumn of 2014, Barthes argues that ‘‘myth essentially aims at causing an

immediate impression—it does not matter if one is later allowed to see through the

myth, its action is assumed to be stronger than the rational explanations which may

later belie it’’ (1972:129).

For the purposes of this study, I use the tools offered by Barthes to understand the

ways in which language functions in society and to analyze contemporary discourse

around race in the United States. Rather than pursuing a Marxist analysis as Barthes

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does in the final pages of Mythologies, I take a more Foucauldian approach to

studying discourse as power and investigating the effects of that power.

The combination of traditional sociological theory and critical race theory above

provides the framework necessary to analyze discussions of the BLM movement on

social media. This theoretical framework allows for an analysis that looks at the

discourse on social media in terms of partial ideologies playing out in an emerging

public sphere. Critical race theory complements the more traditional sociological

theory by providing the crucial historical context necessary to understand underlying

structural racism that informs modern discourse, while highlighting that said dis-

course is a current manifestation of racial tensions that developed over hundreds of

years. Having outlined the theoretical frameworks for this article, I now turn to an

overview of my methodology and an analysis of social media discourse in light of

the theory outlined above.

Method

This study consists of a qualitative textual analysis of Twitter posts following the

nonindictments of officers in the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner,

between December 3 and 7, 2014. News of the nonindictment in the case of Eric

Garner broke on December 3, leading to a surge in the usage of the hashtags

‘‘#BlackLivesMatter’’ and ‘‘#AllLivesMatter.’’ For the purposes of this study, I

focus on Twitter posts that include the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and/or #AllLi-

vesMatter to examine the discourse surrounding the emerging movement.

This study examines only a selection of tweets that fit these criteria for a number

of reasons. Primarily, the sheer number of tweets containing these key hashtags

during this week following the nonindictment in the killing of Eric Garner is stag-

gering. According to Topsy, a Twitter analytics tool, in just the first hour following

news of the nonindictment for Eric Garner’s death, tweets using ‘‘#BlackLivesMat-

ter’’ soared to over 13,000 (Dastagir 2014).

Current technology does not allow for an efficient way to archive tweets by

hashtag during a set period of time in the past. Some tools, such as Topsy, or

Twitter’s advanced search function, allow users to perform somewhat sophisticated

searches by key terms, hashtags, and dates, but these tools do not allow users to

download and easily use these data. Other tools harvest tweets and allow users to

download these data, but these functions are restricted to tweets from the previous

six to nine days but not prior.

Given these challenges, I decided to use Twitter’s advanced search feature and

take screenshots of selected results between December 3 and 7, 2014. The analysis

process drew heavily from grounded theory in order to identify key themes (Glaser

and Strauss 1967; Lofland and Lofland 2007). I initially read through approximately

500 tweets from this time period to get a sense for the dialogue on Twitter at this

moment in time. Based on this initial read-through, I loosely coded tweets based on

whether they used ‘‘#BlackLivesMatter,’’ ‘‘#AllLivesMatter,’’ or both. I selected

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100 tweets out of the initial sample of 500, consisting of approximately 30 to 35

tweets from each initial grouping that were representative of the larger sample. I

conducted a close textual analysis on these 100 tweets, from which I developed more

specific thematic groupings, including ‘‘call to action,’’ ‘‘conflict over signs,’’ and

‘‘shifting signs/discourse.’’ After using the refined codes to categorize the 100

tweets, I then analyzed the tweets within each thematic grouping. At this point in

the process, I investigated the race, gender, and age of each Twitter user when that

information was available, so that I could include these factors in my analysis of the

various trends I observed and recorded.

Although this method does not allow for the collection of comprehensive infor-

mation regarding demographics of users, it highlights processes of discourse as they

unfold on social media while taking into account Twitter users’ identities to the

extent that they publicize that information. This study is not intended to be general-

izable to the practices of all social media users or all Americans; instead, this study

provides insight into dominant discourse on race at a particular moment in time and

applies classical sociological theory to analyze this contemporary phenomenon.

Sample

Of my final sample of 100 tweets, each from unique Twitter users, I was able to

determine some descriptive factors (age, gender, and race) of the majority of the

users based on their Twitter profiles and links to their other social media accounts

and blogs. Of the 100 users, I coded 31% as Black (16 men, 15 women) and 27% as
white. Additionally, 23% of users represent enormous diversity with regard to age
(teenage to retirement age), race (white, Asian, Latino, and unknown), and ability

(one user stood in solidarity with the BLM movement as a non-Black person with

Autism) and the remaining 19% of user identities are unknown.

Self-reflexivity

As a queer, Black woman who was actively involved in protests and debates on

social media in the wake of the nonindictment of officers in the killings of Michael

Brown and Eric Garner, I understand my position as that of a participant observer.

While I did not directly engage in conversations on Twitter, I followed and engaged

in the discourse on Facebook and several blogs regularly during the fall of 2014. I

chose to use Twitter as a source of data for this project because of the public nature

of many Twitter posts and the prolific engagement of users, including youth of color.

Findings

The #BlackLivesMatter slogan met a great deal of resistance in the wake of the

killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On social media, one of the primary

ways in which people resisted the #BlackLivesMatter movement came in the form of

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using #AllLivesMatter as a counterslogan to undermine the purpose and message of

the #BlackLivesMatter call to action. Many social media users deployed #AllLives-

Matter as a way to deny the specific and prominent violence against Blacks by

appealing to a larger universal. Thus, in the guise of presumably broader politics,

it depoliticized and deracialized the specificity of #BlackLivesMatter.

#BlackLivesMatter: A Call to Action

The following examples are representative of one type of post, or tweet, that dom-

inated the Twitter discourse in December, immediately following news of the non-

indictment in Eric Garner’s killing. In parentheses following each tweet, I include

any information about the person who posted the tweet when that information is

available. First, here are three examples from December 3 to 4 of the ways in which

the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was deployed as a way to draw attention to systemic

racism faced by Black people in the United States. This grouping of #BlackLives-

Matter tweets represents the call to action at the heart of the movement by high-

lighting the ways in which Black bodies are disproportionately targeted for violence

by the police:

1. I am JUDGING you by the way you are responding to this. THIS IS MY

MEASURING STICK. #BLACKLIVESMATTER #ThisEndsToday (black

and white anarchist flag icon).

� Includes screenshot of Facebook post reading: ‘‘The ultimate measure of
man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but

where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’’—Dr. Martin

Luther King Jr.

2. The outrage should be unanimous and universal. #ThisEndsToday #Indict-

TheSystem #BlackLivesMatter (identity

unknown).

� Includes link to CNN article announcing nonindictment reading ‘‘Protest-
ers poured onto the streets of New York late Wednesday, upset over a

grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric

Garner.’’

3. Shooting up a school? Np.
2

Killing spree in a movie theater? All good! Just
NO loose cigarettes or skittles. #blacklivesmatter #fb (identity unknown).

The first quote in this series insists that all members of that individual’s social media

network take a clear stance in support of #BlackLivesMatter, invoking a quote by

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to emphasize that the character of a man can be measured

in times of crisis. The second tweet calls for universal outrage against a system that

failed to indict the police officer responsible for Eric Garner’s death. By including

the hashtag ‘‘#IndictTheSystem,’’ this Twitter user draws attention to the systemic

nature of the problem of state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies, which

includes interpersonal and structural racism. Lastly, the third tweet contrasts the

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violence targeted at Black men such as Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin in response

to nonviolent behavior, and instances where white perpetrators of domestic terrorism

were treated very differently.

Struggle over Signs: Black Lives versus All Lives

Next, here are three examples of the ways in which some Twitter users countered the

#BlackLivesMatter call to action with the #AllLivesMatter hashtag:

1. #AllLivesMatter All of them. Black, white, Asian, mixed race, you name it.

ALL LIVES MATTER (white woman, young adult).

2. This #BlackLivesMatter is so ignorant. #AllLivesMatter period. No matter

what you look like (young

white wo

man).

3. This is not about skin color! It’s about resisting arrest & disrespecting author-
ity. #AllLivesMatter #SupportPolice as they have a job to do (middle-aged

white woman).

Based on the Twitter profile information available, well over half of those

arguing against the #BlackLivesMatter movement on Twitter in my sample

appeared to be young white women. The argument generally centered on a

color-blind politic, accusing #BlackLivesMatter protesters of being exclusive and

privileging Black lives over any other lives. This group of social media users at

times made explicitly racist claims, such as implying that Black men are disre-

spectful and dangerous, while masking their objection to #BlackLivesMatter in

color-blind terms.

Many Twitter users took issue with the #AllLivesMatter rhetoric and vehemently

disputed its usage. Here are five examples representative of the ways in which the

#AllLivesMatter hashtag was disputed on Twitter on December 3 to 4:

1. Do people who change #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter run thru a

cancer fundraiser going ‘‘THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO’’ (young

Black woman).

2. If I see you tweeting #AllLivesMatter I’m unfollowing you because you

clearly don’t get the point of #BlackLives

Matter (young Black woman).

3. #AllLivesMatter is the #NotAllMen of racism. You miss the point, either

through ignorance or a deliberate attempt to undermine a movement (identity

unknown).

4. I’ll raise the banner for #AllLivesMatter when ‘‘all lives’’ are subject to

being destroyed—shot at 12 times; choked to death—with impunity (white

man).

5. Don’t tell me #AllLivesMatter when this is happening. Don’t. #BlackLives-

Matter (young Black woman).

� Included screenshot of CNN coverage reading ‘‘Police shootings by race
(age 15–19): Whites 1.47 per million; Blacks 31.17 per million.’’

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In this grouping of posts, we see Twitter users taking a number of different

approaches to defending the use of the #BlackLivesMatter rhetoric. The first of these

tweets in particular went ‘‘viral’’ and was widely circulated. The poster makes the

argument that at times it is perfectly acceptable to draw attention to a particular

problem, such as raising awareness for cancer. Generally, cancer fund-raisers do not

meet much backlash, as cancer is widely accepted as a problem society faces. How-

ever, #BlackLivesMatter was hotly contested because many were outraged by the

insistence that we look at racism as a serious social problem in the United States.

Through discourse on social media, those refusing to look at the issue of racism

replaced the rhetoric of #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter as a way of

claiming impartiality and perhaps even superiority, as though by posting #AllLi-

vesMatter those users are not limited to focusing on the issue of race. This subtle

move to shift the discourse was not missed by activists. As seen in the third tweet

listed above, supporters of #BlackLivesMatter were quick to call out the use of

#AllLivesMatter as either ignorance or barely veiled racism. By invoking the

hashtag #NotAllMen, this Twitter user references a similar debate that previously

consumed social media in which many of the same tactics were employed in an

attempt to control the dominant discourse around gender-based violence. In con-

trast to Twitter users deploying #AllLivesMatter in an attempt to undermine the

BLM movement, most of the Twitter users in my sample who fought back against

#AllLivesMatter were people of color, particularly young Black women. While

great diversity exists within each grouping of Twitter users, with some white users

standing with BLM and some people of color affirming that all lives matter, the

dominant trends reveal important information about whose voices are contributing

to the conversation and in what ways.

Shifting Signs and Discourse

The conversation on social media evolved rapidly in the week following news of the

failure to indict the officer who killed Eric Garner. The above tweets represent trends

that emerged in the first one to two days following news of the nonindictment. The

argument over #BlackLivesMatter versus #AllLivesMatter was in full swing the day

the nonindictment for the killing of Eric Garner was announced. But by later that

week, all arguments were drowned out by calls to take to the streets when activists

on Twitter included both hashtags when organizing events. The following tweets

represent an emerging feature of the conversation on Twitter regarding #BlackLi-

vesMatter and #AllLivesMatter three to four days following news of the nonindict-

ment for Eric Garner’s death.

1. #BlackLivesMatter #AllLivesMatter Meet at the library @ 7:30 pm

TOMORROW! Wear ALL BLACK!! [emoji icon of a brown fist] (young
Black woman).

� Includes a professional photo of a young Black man.

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2. Protests are happening for one cause all over the world . . . Amazing [clap-
ping white hands emoji] #EricGarner #MikeBrown #AllLivesMatter (young

Black man).

3. #AllLivesMatter #blackout Hollywood right now—#justiceWILLbeserved

@ Hollywood Boulevard (Black man).

4. No Charges for Cop Who Broke Face of Handcuffed Woman in Patrol Car

#AllLivesMatter Mr. Policeman (Black woman).

5. Boston is shutting it down for #EricGarner #ICantBreathe #WeCantBreathe

#BlackLivesMatter #AllLivesMatter (young white woman).

These represent only a segment of tweets using these hashtags on December 6 to

7. Some Twitter users, primarily white, continued to use #AllLivesMatter in an

attempt to undermine the claim that Black lives matter. However, in an interesting

turn, young Black users largely stopped engaging in debates over the meaning of

#BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter. Some Black youth chose not to engage

with #AllLivesMatter at all and continued to use #BlackLivesMatter to highlight the

injustice of state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies. As shown in the tweets

above, others chose to conflate #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter, shifting

attention away from semantics in favor of mobilizing protests in the streets.

Discussion

These findings represent part of the national discourse regarding race following the

deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, as it unfolded on social media. Contrary

to mass media, which plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions of race for a largely

passive audience, social media allows users to actively engage and shape the dis-

cussions (Adoni and Mane 1984; Bjornstrom et al. 2010; Entman 1992; Parham-

Payne 2014), offering youth of color an opportunity to contest dominant ideologies. I

now return to the theoretical framework outlined above to analyze these findings in

light of sociological theory. Through this analysis, I seek to examine social media as

an emerging public sphere where youth of color both confirm and transform existing

sociological theory.

Twitter is an interesting platform to host debates about such complex issues

because it restricts the length of posts to 140 characters. To effectively convey

messages in so little space, words must be chosen carefully. To transpose Barthes’s

explanation about myth, each tweet must be crafted in a way to capture one’s

attention. Since the Twitter platform does not allow space for a lengthy, nuanced

conversation to unfold, the importance of making an immediate impression is a

central character of these debates on social media. The practice of ‘‘trolling,’’ leav-

ing incendiary comments with the intention of causing offense and eliciting a

response, further amplifies the polarity of political conversations that unfold (Smith

et al. 2014).

The passion with which groups contested the meaning and usage of these signs,

#BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter, indicates the power associated with being

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able to control discourse. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter signifies a contested

concept. Although imperfect in its representation of the concept, and not necessarily

pointing to any concrete or objective truth, the sign serves as a crucial tool in

mobilizing for social change.

Rather than contesting the ‘‘truth’’ of the situation, let us look at the ways in

which multiple and conflicting knowledges were produced and the power of those

knowledges. Thinking back to Mannheim, these factions of Twitter users each focus

on selective parts of an already partial ideology, some strategically and others

seemingly with less intentionality. The debates over these signifiers indicate a strug-

gle for power in controlling the discourse about the national race crisis.

The first thematic grouping of tweets above, ‘‘#BlackLivesMatter: Call to

Action,’’ consists of posts from activists seeking to dismantle institutional racism

who seized the opportunity to create a discourse about the oppression of Black men

by the police. By stating that Black lives matter, protesters and activists on social

media did not seek to invalidate the lives of non-Blacks, but rather to momentarily

draw attention to the systemic violence and oppression that Black people in the

United States face on a daily basis. In emphasizing that Black lives matter, activists,

including many youth of color, strategically chose to emphasize the importance of

racism over other forms of oppression.

In the public sphere, where white voices normally control the discourse and mar-

ginalize voices of the oppressed, the #BlackLivesMatter movement appeared very

threatening to some, as evidenced by the second thematic grouping of posts, ‘‘Struggle

over Signs: Black Lives vs. All Lives.’’ A contingent of Twitter users deployed the

hashtag #AllLivesMatter as an attempt to question and dismiss the legitimacy and

presumed ‘‘rationality’’ of #BlackLivesMatter. Although #AllLivesMatter claims a

certain universality that is inclusive of all, in practice, it worked to collapse the

specificities of different groups’ experiences in favor of a color-blind ideology that

favors white supremacy. Although impossible to determine intent given the limitations

of the medium, some Twitter users supporting the color-blind ideology of #AllLives-

Matter may truly believe that they see the totality of the situation, without understand-

ing how their situated knowledge influences their perceptions.

Although originally created for strategic political purposes, as #BlackLivesMat-

ter and #AllLivesMatter were repeated in discourse, they came to be fixed in the

minds of many. Instead of seeing these signs as the socially constructed, historically

situated, and constantly changing signs that they are, many came to stand by them as

‘‘true representatives of [their] societal existence’’ (Lukács [1923] 1971:93). This

process of people viewing signs as ‘‘true’’ representations of identity and existence is

particularly clear in the debates on Twitter on December 3 to 4, immediately fol-

lowing the nonindictment. Contestation over these signs came to eclipse any con-

versation about class, gender, sexuality, or any other ways in which oppression

occurs within the nation. As the signs became reified, they came to stand for a

debate about the value of Black male lives in relation to ‘‘all’’ (read: unmarked,

white, middle class, male) lives.

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The intensity of the debate and the prolific engagement of social media users led

to a rapid evolution of the discourse over the course of the following days. While

some continued to engage in a debate over #BlackLivesMatter versus #AllLives-

Matter, particularly those in support of #AllLivesMatter, many youth of color shifted

the discussion. Some youth of color refused to further engage with those purporting

that #AllLivesMatter and continued to spread awareness of state-sanctioned vio-

lence against Black men. As demonstrated in the ‘‘Shifting Signs and Discourse’’

theme in the findings above, some youth of color strategically chose to adopt #All-

LivesMatter alongside #BlackLivesMatter in efforts to organize in-person protests.

This adoption of #AllLivesMatter for the cause of protesting racist systems and

practices ingeniously took power away from those who tried to deploy #AllLives-

Matter as a counter to #BlackLivesMatter. By using both signs, these activists subtly

and effectively shifted the conversation away from a debate over the meaning of

these hashtags as mutually exclusive and toward a call for collective action. Rather

than continuing to attempt to reveal the racist intentions behind #AllLivesMatter,

many youth of color adopted the sign and used it for their own purposes, once again

taking control of the discourse.

In the case of public discourse surrounding BLM and the deaths of Michael

Brown and Eric Garner, another example of Mannheim’s notion of partialities is

the surge in protests against police killings of Black men while the deaths of women

and transgender people of color received far less attention. For some, a focus on

Black men as victims of police violence led to an emphasis on the role of racism in

police brutality at the expense of other issues, such as class, gender, and sexuality.

Interestingly, though the #BlackLivesMatter movement was initiated by Black

women and many young Black women were extremely active in the debates on

social media in autumn of 2014, talk about violence toward women of color was

largely absent from the dominant discourse, emerging only as an afterthought in

later weeks. The focus on state-sanctioned violence against Black men rendered

Black women and transgender victims invisible. This oversight, which was

addressed by many activists in following months, illustrates the ways in which

even well-intentioned antiracist work can unintentionally lead to the continued

marginalization of vulnerable populations. The fact that many Black feminist

activists subsequently came to speak out against this silencing of the struggle of

Black women illustrates the ways in which these imperfect signs continue to

evolve over time, as their meanings are contested. Although the signs can never

be a perfect representation of any group’s ideology, they serve as important mar-

kers in the debate about race and oppression in the United States and allow people

to engage in these important conversations.

Finally, the contestation over signs and the fight for control of discourse in the

public sphere that took place on social media indicates a shift in the way that we

understand the public sphere. In previous decades, young people like those currently

dominating the discourse on social media, which has in turn influenced news cov-

erage and more mainstream or traditional forms of media, might not have had the

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opportunity to participate in the public sphere. Developing technology created the

emergence of new subjects, or new publics, who otherwise would not have been

involved in the public sphere. While the technology calls new subjects into being,

the new subjects in turn create and develop the technology. Despite the benefits of

accessibility for youth of color to this emerging public sphere, scholars have noted

definite drawbacks to the use of social media, such as risks associated with surveil-

lance and government regulation (Penney and Dadas 2014).

As mentioned above, the implications of this emerging public sphere are outside

the scope of this article but deserving of further investigation. Contributions by youth

of color in national discourse on social media can reveal a great deal about the ways in

which social media can be understood as a public sphere as described by Habermas as

well as the limitations of Habermas’s theory in light of new technology. As one of the

Twitter posts above states, ‘‘Protests are happening all over the world for one cause.’’

Social media allows youth of color across the globe to engage in transnational dis-

cussions about oppressive systems and state-sanctioned violence. While this article

focuses on the public sphere as an extension of U.S. civil society, it is important to

remember that social media functions both within the nation and transnationally.

Conclusion

This analysis shows the ways in which active participants in the emerging social

media public sphere contested the usage of two ‘‘signs,’’ #BlackLivesMatter and

#AllLivesMatter, immediately following the nonindictment in the killing of Eric

Garner. Drawing from Barthes, my analysis of these signs as created and used at a

certain point in time speaks to the historical situatedness of signs and myths. Even in

that short span of time, only a few days, the definition of the signs was in flux and

constantly changing. My research revealed that over that limited period we can see

the conversation begin to shift, from a contentious debate over the meaning of two

prominent signs (#BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter) to a conflation of these

signs as protesters mobilized action off-line. This is not to suggest that my analysis

points to a major or permanent discursive shift beyond the conversation on Twitter;

rather, this study points to the instability of emerging signs and the ways in which

meaning can rapidly shift on a platform such as Twitter. I suggest that this particular

discursive shift indicates a very intentional strategy employed by supporters of the

BLM movement.

This analysis reveals how these signs were both constructed and contested but

also by whom and to what ends. Some Twitter users supported white supremacy

through the deployment of a purportedly color-blind ideology. More interestingly,

this study reveals the ways in which youth of color actively engaged in debates over

race in the nation, strategically and adeptly negotiating signs and language to control

the public discourse. Social media serves as a public sphere where youth of color are

particularly skilled and well equipped to gain some amount of power over public

discourse to express their experiences and viewpoints.

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As yet the full implications of social media as a public sphere are unknown, but

there is already evidence that it holds great possibilities for engaging youth of color

in important current issues in the United States. Engaging in activism and participat-

ing in a forum that allows traditionally silenced groups to be heard are valuable in

and of itself. In the future, we should stay alert to the ways in which public discourse

on social media directly or indirectly influences policy and affects change on a

structural level within the nation.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Alex Kulick, Megan Undén, and Gabrielle Gonzales for their support as

fellow activists as well as Professors Jon Cruz and Howard Winant for their feedback on early

drafts of

this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-

ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of

this article.

Notes

1. See Nancy Fraser and Kate Nash (2014) for theories of transnational public spheres.

2. ‘‘Np’’ is common Internet shorthand for ‘‘no problem.’’

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C K Meyer and S A L Cabezas

Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers:
Gains and challenges in the movement

Amalia L. Cabezas

Abstract

This article challenges the notion that the organised sex worker movement
originated in the Global North. Beginning in Havana, Cuba at the end of the
nineteenth century, sex workers in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)
region have been organising for recognition and labour rights. This article
focuses on some of the movement’s advances, such as the election of a sex
worker to public office in the Dominican Republic, the system where Nicaraguan
sex workers act as court-appointed judicial facilitators, the networks of sex
worker organisations throughout the region, and cutting-edge media strategies
used to claim social and labour rights. Sex workers are using novel strategies
designed to disrupt the hegemonic social order; contest the inequalities,
discrimination, and injustices experienced by women in the sex trade; provoke
critical reflection; and raise the visibility of sex work advocacy. New challenges
to the movement include the abolitionist movement, the conflation of all
forms of sex work with human trafficking, and practices that seek to ‘rescue’
consenting adults from the sex trade.

Keywords: sex work, sex worker movement, sex worker organisations, media,
Latin America and the Caribbean

Suggested citation: A L Cabezas, ‘Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers:
Gains and challenges in the movement’, Anti-Trafficking Review, issue 12, 2019,
pp. 37-56, www.antitraffickingreview.org

Introduction

In February 2018, a Dominican newspaper reported the arrest of street-based
sex workers and the response of Congresswoman Jacqueline Montero:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Under the
CC-BY license, the public is free to share, adapt, and make commercial use of the work. Users must always give proper
attribution to the authors and the Anti-Trafficking Review.

ATR issue 12–9.pmd 1/1/2545, 1:1337

ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 12 (2019): 37-

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic. The deputy of the PRM
(Partido Revolucionario Moderno—Modern Revolutionary Party),
for San Crist bal, Jacqueline Montero, denounced that last weekend’s
capture of dozens of female sex workers who worked in the
surroundings of the Bas lica Nuestra Se ora de Altagracia (Our Lady
of Altagracia) in Hig ey, is another example of the discrimination
and violation of rights that this sector experiences. ‘In the Dominican
Republic, there is no law that prohibits sex work, therefore, that
detention was illegal’, she said.1

That a congresswoman would be involved in this type of exchange in such a
deeply conservative Catholic nation is surprising. She spoke as an elected official
of the PRM, a social democratic political party in the Dominican Republic.
Montero, who is regularly interviewed by various media outlets, started her
political career in 2010 as a city council member in Haina, a municipality outside
the capital of Santo Domingo. In 2016, she was elected to the Chamber of
Deputies, the lower house of the Dominican Congress. In the same newspaper
interview, Montero added that, ‘it is natural for sex workers to choose this
area to offer their services, because it is a well-travelled area’. Montero’s intimate
knowledge of the public spaces of sex work, and of the applicable laws
regulating the sex trade, emerges from her background as a former sex worker
and as a leader in an organisation by and for sex workers. Indeed, newspaper
accounts reveal that Montero is outspoken about her support for sex worker
rights, and her background as a former sex worker positions her as an expert
to openly advocate for the cessation of harassment, criminalisation, stigma,
and violence targeting sex workers. In fact, Montero routinely demands that
the state create jobs for single mothers. In the interview, she stated that ‘the
majority of the compa eras (comrades) that engage in sex work are single mothers
who must support their children alone and face difficulties getting a job because
of the discrimination they experience on a day-to-day basis. The state must
guarantee their rights instead of mistreating them’.2

In Latin America and the Caribbean, there is a long tradition of sex workers
advocating for social and labour rights. Montero is just the latest sex worker
to enter the political arena to publicly address issues impacting those involved
in the sex trade. High-profile sex workers, such as Claudia Colimoro of

Mexico

City and Gabriela Leite of Brazil, have openly challenged juridical structures

1 All translation from Spanish into English by the author. A Nu ez, ‘Diputada
Ja c q u e l i n e M o n t e r o D e n u n c i a D i s c r i m i n a c i n Tr a b a j a d o r a s S e x u a l e s ’ ,
Almomento.net, 23 February 2018, retrieved 4 July 2018, http://almomento.net/
diputada-jacqueline-montero-denuncia-discriminacion-trabajadoras-sexuales.

2 Ibid.

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C K Meyer and S A L Cabezas

and social mores and also ran for elected office in their respective countries.3
While some accounts attribute the political organisation of sex workers to the
influence of the North American and European movements—referred to as
the ‘first wave’ of sex worker organising4—Latin American and Caribbean sex
workers have a long history of their own.5

This article documents the emergence of the sex worker movement in Latin
America and the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, a history challenging the
literature that suggests that sex workers first organised in the Global North in
the 1970s.6 While the sex worker movement in the Global North has received
the majority of English-language scholarly attention, I turn to Latin America
and the Caribbean, an under-researched region in sex worker studies, to
indicate the historical persistence of sex workers organising for social
justice and change.

I begin with a discussion of the prostitute collective formed in Havana, Cuba,
at the end of the nineteenth century, and then explore sex workers’ oppositional
cultures of resistance in Mexico and Ecuador during the twentieth century. I
also examine the network of sex worker organisations, linked to global advocacy
organisations, which currently operate in the majority of countries of Latin
America and the Caribbean. I then explore some of the cutting-edge media
strategies and other initiatives crafted by sex workers in Spanish-speaking
countries. The examples chosen indicate how sex workers challenge the
hegemonic gender, sex, and labour regimes and present alternative visions. I
argue that the current contiguous networks, pioneering juridical interventions,
and sex worker radical media and other practices are solidifying the foundation
of a transhemispheric movement. It is important to examine the advances of
and challenges faced by this movement in order to understand its lessons for
other parts of the world.

3 L Murray (Dir.), A Kiss for Gabriela, Mir ade Filmes in association with
Rattapallax, 2013; M Lamas, El Fulgor de la Noche: El comercio sexual en las calles
de la Ciudad de Mexcio, Editorial Oceano de Mexico, S.A. de C.V., Mexico, 2017;
C Colimoro, ‘A Prostitute’s Election Campaign’ in G Keippers (ed.), Compa eras:
Voices from the Latin American women’s movement, Latin America Bureau, London,
1992, pp. 92-96.

4 K Hardy, ‘Incorporating Sex Workers into the Argentine Labor Movement’,
Inter national Labor and Working-Class Histor y, vol. 77, no. 1, 2010, pp. 89-108,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547909990263.

5 K Kempadoo, ‘Globalizing Sex Workers’ Rights’, Canadian Woman Studies, vol.
22, no. 3, 2003, pp. 143-150.

6 G Gall, An Agency of Their Own: Sex worker union organizing, John Hunt Publishing,
London, 2012.

ATR issue 12–9.pmd 1/1/2545, 1:1339

ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 12 (2019): 37-56

The examples of sex worker advocacy I have chosen to highlight in this
article—radical uses of the media, organising, and juridical intervention—
are not exhaustive but rather illustrative. They were selected because they
represent novel strategies designed to disrupt the hegemonic social order,
contest the inequalities, discrimination, and injustices experienced by
cisgendered and trans women in the sex trade, provoke critical reflection, and
raise the visibility of sex work advocacy.7

This article focuses on selected examples from Spanish-speaking countries in
Latin America and the Caribbean. More research on organising efforts is needed,
particularly ethnographies investigating the Dutch, French, and English-
speaking countries in LAC. Likewise, more research on male sex workers
and their incorporation into the movement is necessary. Finally, further
analysis is required of the uses of social media for organising the diverse
populations of sex workers in the region.

Historical Precursor—La Cebolla (The Onion)

Most accounts of the origins of the sex worker movement reference Global
North precursors, such as the occupation of the Saint-Nizier Church by
prostitutes in Lyon, France, in 1975, the establishment of the English Collective
of Prostitutes in London during the same year, and the creation of Call Off
Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) in San Francisco in 1973. In the Americas,
however, the conception of prostitution as a form of labour—and not sin,
vice, or the depravity of ‘fallen women’—was first articulated by a Caribbean
collective of prostitutes who sought to organise politically to demand their
rights as workers. Indeed, sex workers in Latin America have a long history of
organising, publicly challenging and resisting unjust regulations and policies.

An often-ignored forerunner of the global movement for sex worker rights
began in Cuba. In the late nineteenth century, during a period of increased
migration from European countries and the circulation of women in Latin
America and the Caribbean, women worked in the brothels of Havana, which
had been a popular destination for sex since the beginning of the Spanish
Conquest. As historians have uncovered, migrant women travelled from
Europe, the United States, the Canary Islands, Mexico, Panama, Spain, and
Venezuela to Havana to eke out a living in the red-light district. Some of the
matrons, or madams, were well-to-do, having earned large sums of money in

7 J Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious communication and social movements, 2nd Edition,
Sage, London, 2000.

ATR issue 12–9.pmd 1/1/2545, 1:1340

C K Meyer and S A L Cabezas

their youth.8 They invested their savings and established entertainment venues
that offered prostitution, gambling, and dancing. As brothel owners, they
made a decent living, and began to exercise their economic power by challenging
the corrupt practices of the Spanish colonial administration.

In 1888, a group of Havana sex workers founded a newspaper to voice their
anti-government views and called for the establishment of a political party led
by sex workers. Financed by wealthy sex workers and edited by a Spanish
immigrant anarchist, Victorino Reineri Jimeno, the newspaper was a medium
for protest, countering discriminatory laws and unethical officials in the colonial
government.9 La Cebolla: Peri dico ilustrado, rgano oficial del partido de su nombre
(The Onion: Illustrated Newspaper, Official Organ of the Party with the Same Name)
was widely distributed throughout Havana and other Cuban provinces and
openly advocated for the rights of prostitutes in cosmopolitan Havana. The
name of the newspaper alluded to the formation of a sex worker political
party. However, historians have not been able to uncover evidence of a political
organisation attached to the journal.10 The newspaper was envisioned as a
publication for and by prostitutes. The newspaper advocated for changes to
the Reglamento de Higiene P blica (Public Hygiene Regulation), an administrative
system that, in part, sought to reduce the incidences of sexually transmitted
infections by registering sex workers and forcing them to carry identity cards
and submit to gynaecological examinations. This imported system of state
regulation of sex work initially came from France and England, but was later
adopted throughout the Americas.11

A series of articles published in La Cebolla in September 1888 ridiculed and
protested government regulations imposed on brothel-based sex workers,
including the high regulatory fees and mandatory medical check-ups. As
historian Mar a del Carmen Barcia Zequeira points out, sex workers defined
themselves as a marginal and exploited class because they saw themselves as
victims of continuous extortion at the hands of the authorities who sought
to control their activities.12 One unsigned letter stated:

8 M Barcia Zequeira, ‘Entre el Poder y la Crisis: Las prostitutas se defienden’ in L
Campuzano (ed.), Mujeres Latinoamericanas: Historia y cultura: Siglos XVI al XIX,
Havana, 1997, pp. 263-273.

9 M Beers, ‘Murder in San Isidro: Crime and culture during the Second Cuban
Republic’, Cuban Studies, vol. 34, 2003, pp. 97-129.

10 Barcia Zequeira.
11 For discussions of responses to regulationism in Latin America, see: S Caulfied,

In Defence of Honor : Gender, sexuality and nation in early 20th centur y Brazil, Duke
University Press, Durham, 2000; E J S Findlay, Imposing Decency: The politics of
sexuality and race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920, Duke University Press, Durham,
1999; and T Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic,
1840-1920, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2013.

12 Barcia Zequeira.

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ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 12 (2019): 37-56

The Mayor, who is so old and cranky that not even a fly dares to land
on him, has decreed that we cannot exhibit ourselves in the doorways
of our own establishments. […] Is this fair? What country prohibits
a businessman from showing the public his merchandise? The
‘horizontals’ of this city pay more contributions to the state than
necessary. Yet, even though we contribute more than any other sector
to bolster the revenues of the state with the sweat of our […] brows,
we are treated as if we were slaves, as if we were outlaws. In other
words, we are considered citizens so as to meet our obligations but
not to enjoy the rights of citizenship.13

The ‘horizontals’—the name used to denote sex workers in the paper—did
not shy away from protesting the control of prostitutes’ lives by challenging
an exploitative administrative system that was being paid for with all the
regulations enacted over their bodies. Another article advocated for the
formation of a professional guild of prostitutes that would back their demands
and fight for the recognition of sexual services as a system of labour. Using
humour and candour, sex workers publicly exposed their exploitation in print
media, inspiring the creation of a new identity for prostitutes as labouring
women.

Both the rebellious and demanding spectacle of so-called ‘public women’
who had no shame in identifying as prostitutes and the publication of La
Cebolla were acts of defiance against a Spanish colonial administration that
was already under attack by the Cuban independence movement. Government
officials retaliated, banning the newspaper and incarcerating the editor.
Nevertheless, the short-lived campaign highlighted the fact that sex workers
were no longer politically powerless, invisible, and easily vilified. Thus, in
Havana, at the end of the nineteenth century, women who made a living in the
sex industry envisioned the formation of a political party that would demand
their rights. This important intervention was the genesis of the current
transnational social movement of sex working women in Latin America and
the Caribbean. As I detail below, these organisations have been able to realise
some of the achievements imagined by the women of La Cebolla.

13 Beers, p. 105.

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C K Meyer and S A L Cabezas

Mexico

The case of Mexico offers an example of sex workers refusing to align
themselves with labour politics. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the aftermath of
the Mexican Revolution, during a period of rapid urbanisation and nation-
building, sex workers saw the manifestation of political organising as an
affront to their identities as decent people. In Mexico City, as historian Katherine
Bliss’ scholarship documents, women working in the sex trade insisted that
they were part of communities and households for which they bore
responsibility. Seeking to be regarded as gente decente (decent, honourable
people), they affirmed their identities as providers for their families and, by
extension, the nation. When radical labour unions sought to unionise them
to improve working conditions in brothels and cabarets, they manifested
their resolve by refusing to be controlled by labour organisers. Instead, they
claimed a more flexible political subjectivity that did not inscribe them into
permanent states of stigma and shame. Defying the discourse of ‘vice’ or
even ‘individual desperation’, they emphasised their role and identity as
‘conscientious parents and providers’.14 For them, sex work was an income-
generating activity they undertook on a temporary basis to support their
families, and thus was tied to reproductive labour. By proclaiming the right to
live as gente decente, they challenged the structural conditions of gendered
poverty that relegated them to the margins of society and the mores that
pinned them as deviant women within hegemonic meanings of prostitution.
While they did not want to be aligned with labour rights and unionisation,
they nevertheless spoke out in opposition to the injustices they faced.

Paradoxically, sex workers in Mexico City also rejected the Department of
Public Health’s efforts to abolish sex trade businesses, such as cabarets, and to
deregulate the red-light district. Instead, as Bliss establishes, ‘while many
women acknowledged that their work was undesirable, they insisted that they
engaged in sex work because they were honourable daughters and mothers
supporting deser ving family members’. Sex workers also appealed to
revolutionary fervour by maintaining that their work was in service of the
nation and its families. They proclaimed that they ‘“threw themselves into the
street” and participated in a profession that put them at risk of abuse, violence,
and disease to protect their children, Mexico’s future workers and leaders’.15 In
effect, sex workers challenged their marginalisation, thus affirming their right
to work and their normative social identity, while linking the domains of
sexuality, social reproduction, nationhood, and economy.

14 K Bliss, ‘A Right to Live as Gente Decente: Sex work, family life, and collective
identity in early twentieth-century-Mexico’, Journal of Women’s Histor y, vol. 15,
no. 4, 2004, pp. 164-169, https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2004.0005.

15 Ibid., p. 167.

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ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 12 (2019): 37-56

Regional Networks of Organisations

In the 1980s, sex workers established grassroots organisations in various parts
of Latin America. Women in Uruguay’s sex trade were one of the first groups
to organise in 1986. Shortly thereafter, Uruguayan sex workers obtained social
security and health benefits for their occupation. In 1987, two Brazilian sex
workers, Gabriela Leite and Lourdes Barreto, held Brazil’s first national
conference for sex workers.16 By 2007, sex workers from Davida, a Brazilian
organisation that champions the rights of prostitutes, had launched the fashion
line Daspu in Rio de Janeiro, which became the first fashion house created and
managed by sex workers.17 Currently, there are several sex worker organisations
throughout Brazil, including Rede Brasileira de Prostitutas (National Network
of Prostitutes) and Federa o Nacional das Trabalhadoras do Sexo (National
Federation of Sex Workers).18

In the early 1980s, one of the first sex worker collectives was organised in El
Oro province in Ecuador. On 22 June 1982, 300 brothel-based women united
to for m La Asociaci n Femenina de Trabajadoras Sexuales Aut nomas
(Association of Independent Female Sex Workers) and, in 1988, they went on
strike in an effort to negotiate better treatment from brothel owners.19 Their
success inspired the formation of other sex worker collectives throughout the
country. By 1993, when sex workers convened Ecuador’s first national
conference, there were eleven community organisations of sex workers calling
for improvements in working conditions, health, and security. According to
Lourdes Torres, the president of the brothel-based sex workers’ organisation
Asociaci n para la Defensa de la Mujer (Association for the Defence of Women),
Ecuador has at least one sex worker collective in every province of the country.20

Ironically, during the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS pandemic made governments
and supra-national health associations pay attention to the role that sex workers
could play in preventing and eradicating the virus. According to Mzilikazi

16 A De Liso, ‘How Brazil’s Sex Workers Have Been Organized and Politically
Effective for 30 Years’, The Conversation, 15 December 2017, retrieved 12 August
2018, https://theconversation.com/how-brazils-sex-workers-have-been-
organised-and-politically-effective-for-30-years-88903.

17 B Hagenbuch, ‘Rio Prostitutes’ Fashion Line Hits Street Catwalk’, Reuters, 20
January 2007, https://uk.reuters.com/article/oukoe-uk-brazil-fashion-prostitu
t e s / r i o – p r o s t i t u t e s – f a s h i o n – l i n e – h i t s – s t r e e t – c a t w a l k – i d U K N 2 0 3 5 8 8 9 1 2 0 0
70120.

18 A Piscitelli, ‘Transnational Sisterhood? Brazilian feminisms facing prostitution’,
Latin American Policy, no. 5, 2014, pp. 221-235, p. 224, https://doi.org/10.1111/
lamp.12046.

19 Kempadoo, 2003.
20 Hardy; See also: J Van Meir, ‘Sex Work and the Politics of Space: Case studies of

sex workers in Argentina and Ecuador’, Social Sciences, vol. 6, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1-
40, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6020042.

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C K Meyer and S A L Cabezas

Kon ’s research, the entry point into work with sex workers was around HIV
prevention and empowerment. Sexual health was primary, and empowerment
and organising came through that initial sexual health-centric model.21 Sex
workers, however, continued to be targeted by state interventionist efforts to
eliminate venereal diseases, but these problematic practices drew sex workers
together and facilitated further organising.22 Regional gatherings, for example,
resulted in the formation of various transnational networks. Currently, these
networks are linked to similar actions in more developed countries and represent
Latin America and the Caribbean’s entry into the global stage of the struggle
for sex workers’ rights.

The transnational associations began in Costa Rica in 1997, when the Red de
Mujeres Trabajadoras Sexuales de Latinoam rica y el Caribe (Network of
Women Sex Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean—RedTraSex) was
born as a transnational non-government association of sex worker groups in
the region and has since built political influence.23 RedTraSex is headquartered
in Argentina, linking associations in fourteen countries: Argentina, Bolivia,
Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. Sociologist
Jorgelina Loza explains that ‘the central claim of the women that make up
RedTraSex is their demand to be recognised by the nation states to which they
belong as subjects of rights, that is, as workers who have the right to access
decent working conditions and social benefits: housing, health, retirement
and pensions’.24 Through a feminist, rights-based approach, RedTraSex
coordinates programmes to unite sex workers around issues that impact their
lives, including advocating for improved access to medical care free of
discrimination, anti-violence initiatives, safe working environments, sexual
health, and mobilising in opposition to human trafficking.

RedTraSex has enhanced visibility, influence, and activism through a number
of accomplishments. This is not an exhaustive list, but I highlight a few
significant gains facilitated by cross-national collaboration. First, the
connections produced by transnational ties within the region and internationally
have fortified activists’ image and legitimacy and created a platform to denounce

21 M Kon , Sex Worker Political De velopment: From infor mal solidarities to formal
organizing, PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2014.

22 M Kon , personal communication, 26 February 2019.
23 M Kon , ‘Transnational Sex Workers Organizing in Latin America: RedTraSex,

Labour and human rights’, Social and Economic Studies, vol. 65, no. 4, 2016, pp.
87-108.

24 J Loza, ‘Ideas Nacionales en la Escala Regional: La experiencia de acci n colectiva
transnacional de la RedTraSex en Am rica Latina’, FLACSO/UBA-CONICET,
Argentina, retrieved 4 July 2012, http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/
FLACSO-ISA%20BuenosAires%202014/Archive/8886d0d9-3dd9-4693-9d10-
aa1ac5c7320f .

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the normalised violence that sex workers routinely face. Samantha Carrillo, of
the Organizaci n Mujeres En Superaci n (Organisation for Women’s
Empowerment), reflected on their increasing political clout in Guatemala: ‘we
were a crazy trio thinking that someday we were going to have a house and
that someday we were going to sit down with the officials to talk about us as
sex workers’. She went on to add:

Every year, every day, every step we take, we are no longer a crazy trio.
Today we are thirty-five female sex workers [who] day-to-day, work
in preparation, arranging with the directors of health centres, talking
with members of congress, with ministers, and talking about how
we want to change not only the working conditions but also the
conditions in health and also our rights.25

Consuelo Raymundo, affiliated with Movimiento De Mujeres Orquideas del
Mar (Women’s Movement Orchids of the Sea), in El Salvador, echoed this
sentiment when she stated, ‘RedTraSex provides us greater visibility with
government institutions. If we are alone nothing happens but when we are
united in so many countries people tends [sic] to take us seriously’.26 This
level of respect would be difficult to achieve without the power and strength
of a regional network.

Second, the organisations prioritise a model of governance that puts sex
workers in charge of the direction of the movement. Thus, the leadership is
comprised primarily of sex workers, even if they lack formal schooling.27
Furthermore, cross-cultural and cross-national approaches have injected new
tactics into the national landscape. As RedTraSex member ngela Vill n,
representative of Peruvian sex worker organisation Miluska Vida y Dignidad
(Miluska Life and Dignity), reported, ‘to see how things work in other countries
allows [us] to find models that we can adapt to our own reality’.28 Even
though members are confronted with language barriers, cultural and racial
differences, technological difficulties in communication, and financial
uncertainties, their advocacy strengths are shaping public and political spaces
for people in the sex industry at the national and regional level.

25 RedTraSex, Historias de Trabajadoras Sexuales Empoderadas, 1997-2017, RedTraSex,
Buenos Aires, 2017.

26 RedTraSex, 10 Years of Action (1997-2007): The experience of organizing the network
of sex workers of Latin America and the Caribbean, RedTraSex, Buenos Aires, 2007,
p. 76.

27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., p. 77.

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RedTraSex engages in diverse forms and areas of advocacy designed to empower
sex workers. These include communication campaigns, the development of
awareness campaigns aimed at different national actors, and the formation
and strengthening of community-based sex worker organisations. It also
conducts research and develops position papers on key issues, such as sexual
and reproductive rights, violence, labour rights, and the distinction between
sex work and human trafficking.29

A second regional network, Plataforma Latinoamericana de Personas que
Ejercen el Trabajo Sexual (Latin American Platform of People Who Exercise
Sex Work—PLAPERTS), is headquartered in Ecuador. Organisations from
Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru started this regional platform of the Global
Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) in 2014. As in the case of RedTraSex,
the platform’s member organisations call for the recognition of sex work as a
legitimate occupation, struggle to improve the working conditions of sex
workers, and inform their members about their rights. There are also smaller
regional organisations. In the Caribbean, the regional Caribbean Sex Worker
Coalition (CSWC), formed in 2011, brings together sex workers from
English-, Dutch-, and Spanish-speaking countries. CSWC is comprised of
groups based in Antigua, Belize, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Guyana,
Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. It includes, among others, the
Caribbean Regional Trans in Action (CRTA), an organisation supporting trans
women in sex work. The majority of the member alliances work principally
with cis-gendered and transgender women involved in sex work regardless of
their sexual identity, though some also include male sex workers.

Both PLAPERTS and RedTraSex have created new paradigms for women
working in the sex industr y. These paradigms combine communality,
collaboration, and new social and political subject positions. As workers,
feminists, and citizens worthy of human rights protections, they are committed
to mutual support and respect. The different collectives are also dedicated to
the empowerment of sex workers and achieving legislative change in their
respective countries, as detailed below.

The flourishing network of sex worker organisations that emerged since the
1980s also actively participates in civil society, primarily through the creation
of non-governmental organisations and entry into the political sphere.
Jacqueline Montero, for instance, in addition to ser ving as an elected
representative in the Dominican Congress, also serves as the president of the

29 ONUSIDA, ‘La RedTraSex Presenta 20 A os de Logros en la Promoci n de los Derechos
Humanos de las Tabajadoras Sexuales en Am rica Latina y el Caribe’, ONUSIDALAC,
http://onusidalac.org/1/index.php/listado-completo-de-noticias/item/2293-la-
redtrasex-presenta-20-anos-de-logros-en-la-promocion-de-los-derechos-
humanos-de-las-trabajadoras-sexuales-en-america-latina-y-el-caribe.

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ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 12 (2019): 37-56

sex worker organisation Movimiento de Mujeres Unidas (Movement of United
Women—MODEMU), a non-governmental organisation started by the Centro
de Orientaci n e Investigaci n Integral (Integral Orientation and Research
Center—COIN). COIN is a community-based organisation in Santo Domingo
that supports sex workers as part of their agenda to provide safer sex education
to vulnerable populations.30 Founded in 1996, MODEMU was the only sex
worker organisation in the country until 2016, when former members of
MODEMU started a new group headed by Miriam Altagracia Gonzalez
G mez, a founding member of MODEMU. The Organizaci n de Trabajadoras
Sexuales (Organisation of Sex Workers—OTRASEX) works closely with
RedTraSex, and has recently conducted research on police violence aimed at sex
workers and held educational workshops with members of the armed forces.
The existence of two sex worker organisations in such a small country is
testament to the self-determination and heterogeneity of perspectives in the
movement for social, labour, and political rights.

Other Radical Interventions By and For Sex Workers

Girasol’s Judicial Mediators
The official acceptance of sex work as a type of labour is one of the central
principles of the sex worker rights movement. In addition to the advocacy
efforts of the networks in Latin America and the Caribbean, in individual
countries, women engaged in sex work are fighting for alternative visions of
justice. In Nicaragua, the sex worker organisation Girasoles de Nicaragua
(Sunflowers of Nicaragua) has recently made headway in the struggle for
awareness of their rights as precarious labourers, and positioned sex workers
as an integral part of the justice system.

Founded in November 2007, Girasoles de Nicaragua currently boasts more
than 2,300 members. The collective, in conjunction with the country’s Supreme
Court, created the first programme of sex worker judicial mediators. This
conflict resolution model reduces caseloads in the courts and enhances
communication between the justice system and sex workers. Nicaragua is the
first country in the world that has trained sex workers to resolve conflicts
within their jurisdiction; officially trained and accredited by the Supreme Court
of Justice, eighteen sex workers assist the Administration of Justice as judicial

30 K Kempadoo, ‘COIN and MODEMU in the Dominican Republic’, in K
Kempadoo and J Doezema (eds.), Global Sex Workers: Rights, resistance, and
redefinition, Routledge, New York, 1998, pp. 260-266; D Brennan, What’s Love
Got to Do with It? Transnational desires and sex tourism in the Dominican Republic,
Duke University Press, Durham, 2004; A Cabezas, Economies of Desire: Sex and
tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Temple University Press, Philadelphia,
2009.

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facilitators, resolving conflicts related to sex work, and preventing and
decreasing violence. In an interview, the President of the Supreme Court of
Justice, Alba Luz Ramos, stated, ‘it is the best way to do it, because they [sex
workers] sometimes feel discriminated against by the rest of the community.’31
As an example of the programme’s efficacy, Mar a Elena D vila, president of
Girasoles, said in an interview that judicial facilitators were able to assist a 23-
year-old co-worker who was stabbed by a client. The client went to jail, and the
judicial facilitators monitored the process ‘to ensure that the police and forensic
medicine do their job’.32 She went on to explain how the incorporation of sex
worker advocates is a crucial step in the process, in that it helps to ensure that
sex workers are not victimised by the police and the justice system.

In an interview in 2015, D vila was asked how she felt about Nicaraguan sex
workers participating as judicial facilitators. She replied:

We already feel recognised, but we do not have a document that says
as of this day sex workers enjoy the same rights as the workers’
union. We will achieve it, because that is the challenge, but I cannot
say whether today or tomorrow… Then we would be happier than
we are now. That would be the final point, but each right [we gain] is
leading to demand another.33

Girasoles achieved this goal in 2017, when Nicaragua recognised sex work as a
form of labour. It became the third country in Latin America, after Colombia
and Guatemala, to have a sex workers’ union acknowledged by the Ministry
of Labour. Currently, Girasoles is attached to the Confederaci n de Trabajadores
por Cuenta Propia (Confederation of Self-Employed Workers), a union
representing people who work in the informal economy, selling all kinds of
inexpensive goods and services.

Garnering further media attention, the program of judicial facilitators
was featured in a 2017 documentary film, Girasoles de Nicaragua, which
premiered at international film festivals. Created by a feminist filmmaker,
Girasoles de Nicaragua follows Nicaraguan sex workers as they champion

31 La Prensa, ‘Es mejor que trabajadoras sexuales medien sus conflictos’, La Prensa,
1 9 M a r ch 2 0 1 5 , h t t p : / / w w w. l a p r e n s a . c o m . n i / 2 0 1 5 / 0 3 / 1 9 / n a c i o n a l e s /
1801749-csj-es-mejor-que-trabajadoras-sexuales-medien-sus-conflictos.

32 A Wallace, ‘Nicaragua: El primer pa s del mundo en entrenar a sus trabajadoras
sexuales para resolver conflictos’, BBC Mundo, 10 June 2015, https://
www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/06/150609_nicaragua_tr abajadoras
_sexuales_justicia_aw.

33 L Garc a, ‘El Objectivo Es Que La Justicia Se Cumpla’, El Nuevo Diario, 5 May
2015, retrieved 4 July 2018, https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/
359415-objetivo-es-que-justicia-se-cumpla.

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for fair treatment of sex workers and the inclusion of their voices in
community-based conflict resolution.34

The victories secured by sex worker activists working together for social
acceptance and political visibility have been hard-won. The struggle to change
the stigma against women living in poverty, and working-class single mothers,
is compounded by the sexualisation of their labour. As the cases of Argentina
and Columbia, detailed below, illustrate, public interventions and cultural
resistance can challenge stigmatising moralities and humanise sexual labourers.

AMMAR
In 1994, a group of women engaged in Argentina’s sex trade came together in
the city of Buenos Aires with the objectives of organising to oppose police
violence and arbitrary arrests and to fight for basic rights.35 The Asociaci n de
Mujeres Meretrices de Argentina (Association of Women Sex Workers of
Argentina—AMMAR) was born in 1995 and has been at the forefront of
efforts to organise women engaged in the sale of sexual services with a focus
on advocacy and mutual help. AMMAR is integrated into the trade union
umbrella confederation, the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (Argentine
Workers’ Central Union), which represents the interests of informal sector
workers.36 In Argentina, the sale of sex is not criminalised at the federal level,
but brothels and third parties that profit from sex work and advertisements
are outlawed. The regulations date back to 1937, when they were first instituted
to combat venereal diseases.37

Recognised as a non-profit organisation, AMMAR has influenced public policy
and built political alliances with other workers. In 2003, 2008, and 2010,
AMMAR succeeded in having local laws repealed that criminalised sex workers
and empowered police to arrest them and violate their rights. In 2018, they
successfully fought for the repeal of a code in Buenos Aires that authorised
fines and the arrest of sex workers, routinely applied to trans- and cis- women
on the grounds of being ‘scandalous’.38

34 F Jaugey (Dir.), Girasoles de Nicaragua, Camila Films, Managua, Nicaragua, 2017.
35 C Varela, ‘Del Tr fico de las Mujeres al Tr fico de las Pol ticas. Apuntes para una

historia del movimiento anti-trata en la Argentina (1998-2008)’, PUBLICAR-
En Antropolog a y Ciencias Sociales, vol. 12, 2013, pp. 35-64.

36 Hardy.
37 D Guy, Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, family, and nation in Argentina,

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1991.
38 AMMAR, ‘Un Paso M s Para La Descriminalizaci n Del Trabajo Sexual’,

AMMAR, 13 July 2018, retrieved 28 July 2018, http://www.ammar.org.ar/
Un-paso-mas-para-la.html.

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Image 1: An example of AMMAR’s campaign. The message on the wall reads:
‘86% of sex workers are mothers. We need a law that regulates our work.’
Image credit: AMMAR / Ogilvy.

At the intersection of popular culture and radical media, and on the heels of
La Cebolla, AMMAR has cleverly utilised public spaces to drive home a political
message. Borrowing from Banksy’s famous street stencils, the organisation
started an innovative campaign in 2013, by adorning walls on various street
corners in Buenos Aires with mural paintings. Depicting women on one side
and their children on the other, the campaign stressed that 86 per cent of
Argentine sex workers are mothers, bringing attention to the fact that sex
workers are women with familial connections and obligations, and are integrated
into communities as mothers and breadwinners.39 The murals not only
facilitated neighbourhood discussions and awareness, but this labour rights
campaign also received widespread media attention, even winning an
international prize from a public relations and communications magazine.40

39 EIKON, ‘La Campa a de las Trabajadoras Sexuales Que Les Vali Un Eikon’,
EIKON, 17 October 2015, https://premioseikon.com/la-campana-de-las-
t r a b a j a d o r a s – s e x u a l e s – q u e – l e s – va l i o – u n – e i k o n – 2 / ; R R a d u , ‘A r g e n t i n a ’s
Prostitutes–Mothers First Sex Workers Second, The Guardian, 17 June 2013,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/17/arg entina-prostitutes-
advertising-campaign.

40 J Edwards, ‘These “On The Corner” Ads for Argentine Sex Workers Are Brilliantly
Deceptive’, Business Insider, 10 June 2013, https://www.businessinsider.com/
ammars-corner-ads-for-argentina-prostitutes-2013-6.

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AMMAR produced another impactful intervention in the form of a public
sphere performance in which activists randomly distributed fake invoices for
sexual services rendered, complete with price details. The campaign also targeted
journalists, opinion leaders, and politicians, among others.

Image 2: Member of AMMAR shows a symbolic invoice for sexual services.
Image credit: EFE/David Fern ndez.

The objective was to make evident that sexual services involve a financial
transaction similar to other enterprises, with obligations and rights which, if
decriminalised, would also have ramifications for public finances. Georgina
Orellano, the general secretary of AMMAR, declared that their aim was to
highlight the importance of autonomous sexual labour for adult women
who voluntarily decide to engage in this work.41 AMMAR’s ingenious initiative,
designed to promote acceptance of sex workers and support for their rights,
generated media attention and once more initiated public awareness and
discussion.

La Esquina
In another part of Hispanic America, a group of mostly trans sex workers in
Santa Fe, Colombia, near the capital of Bogot , created a mural that later
inspired a printed newspaper called La Esquina (The Corner) in 2018.

41 ‘Argentina: Prostitutas Reparten Boletas en el D a del Trabajo’, El Comercio, 2
May 2015, https://elcomercio.pe/mundo/actualidad/argentina-prostitutas-
reparten-boletas-dia-189679.

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Image 3: Monica Quiroz and ngel L pez layout the pages of the second
issue of La Esquina. Image credit: Nad ge Mazars/Hans Lucas for the Guardian.

Staffed by trans sex workers, La Esquina is a media space where community
members share information of community interest, such as how to avoid
complications related to surgical procedures, how to get a job, how to make
cheap meals, and how to take better care of their health.42 Funded by non-
profit organisations, La Esquina has a mural edition that is laminated and
pasted to walls on street corners where sex workers congregate to wait for their
clients. It also has a regular print edition that is distributed to brothels and
other businesses in areas patronised by sex workers.

La Esquina addresses the interests, needs, and empowerment of a disadvantaged
community that is doubly discriminated against for being trans and sex workers.
At the outset, surveys were used to determine what community members
wanted to see and read; politics received a ‘clear thumbs down, while residents
said they really wanted to hear about security, health, and events.’43 For staff
members such as Marcela, a 56-year-old trans woman with limited literacy

42 S Grattan, ‘“Culture is power”: The Colombian sex workers who launched a
newspaper’, The Guardian, 23 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2018/apr/23/colombia-sex-workers-newspaper-la-esquina-
bogota.

43 Ibid.

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skills, La Esquina offers the opportunity to visually communicate stories.
Conveying her disdain for mainstream media that exclude trans issues ‘because
they only look for us to tell the morbid thing that woke them up’,44 she uses
photography to document stories for the newspaper. In commenting on her
work, the Colombian newspaper Semana stated that, ‘Marcela thinks in frames,
in all those stories that are walking through the streets of Santa Fe and that
hide in exposed skin and tattoos.’45 Without La Esquina, those stories would
not be told. Likewise, the section created by staff member Lorena, called
‘Gourmet at 10 lucas’ (lucas is the slang word for pesos), features low-cost
recipes, with the explicit goal of introducing trans sex workers to different
foods. For, as Lorena specifies, she knows well that they can spend entire
nights without eating anything. The various features included in the paper
share a common thread: they are deeply committed to contesting and
transforming the daily violence, social exclusion, and invisibility experienced
by trans sex workers. Writing about La Esquina, the British newspaper The
Guardian opined, ‘in a neighbourhood where violence and murder usually
steal the headlines, La Esquina is making an impact in [a] gentler way’.46

By challenging transphobia, sharing mutual interests, and creating new venues
for creative expression, La Esquina is a type of radical media that produces
critical and transformative thinking in a marginal setting. It represents an
invitation for the wider sex worker movement to think in terms of accessibility,
diversity, and the creation of new literacies for its members.

Conclusion

Latin America and the Caribbean have a long history of sex worker
organisations that have strug gled for better working conditions free of
institutional violence and oppression. The militancy and dedication of the sex
worker movement in the region represents the continued demand for
recognition—just as they did in the late nineteenth-century Havana. Instead
of a corrupt colonial administration, they now face an equally powerful neo-
colonial and neoliberal context that undermines their livelihoods and rights.

44 Semana, ‘El peri dico de las trabajadoras sexuales que salva vidas en el barrio
Santa Fe’, Semana, 27 April 2018, https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/
periodico-la-esquina-hecho-por-trabajadoras-sexuales-trans-del-barrio-santa-fe/
565218.

45 Ibid.
46 Grattan.
47 Amnesty International, Sex Workers at Risk: A research summar y on human rights

abuses against sex workers, Amnesty International, 2016; see also: Varela, 2013.

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Ongoing issues for the Latin American and Caribbean sex worker movement
include access to labour rights, the decriminalisation of the sex trade,
institutional discrimination, state violence, and social stigma. These issues
impact the global sex trade as well and will continue to facilitate dialogue and
intellectual exchange between the different regions. However, sex workers in
Latin America have a history of organising that is distinct from the genealogy
of sex worker organising in the Global North; the former is ignored and the
latter is usually inaccurately assumed to explain sex worker organising in Latin
America and the Caribbean. The presence of unique forms of resistance,
political advocacy, and commitment to social justice need further visibility.
The Latin American and Caribbean sex workers are not the passive recipients
and beneficiaries of feminist and worker ideologies from the Global North.
Rather, they have long since developed a consciousness and praxis to confront
their own issues.

One of the biggest setbacks in the last twenty years has been the neo-
abolitionist movement and the conflation of all forms of sex work with
human trafficking.47 These new challenges include practices that seek to ‘rescue’
consenting adults from the sex trade, and policies that ignore their right to
self-determination. Nonetheless, non-governmental organisations such as
Amnesty International support policies that decriminalise sex work. In 2016,
Amnesty International condemned human trafficking and at the same time
released a model policy that summons countries to decriminalise the sex trade
in order to better protect the health and human rights of sex workers.48 Other
organisations such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, the Global
Alliance Against Traffic in Women, Human Rights Watch, Lambda Legal, the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Freedom Network USA concur
with its position.49

In 2008, Elena Reynaga, president of RedTraSex, spoke at the first plenary
session of the International AIDS Conference dedicated to sex work. She
asserted:

Female, male and transgender sex workers are dying because of a lack
of health services, a lack of condoms, a lack of treatment, a lack of
rights—NOT BECAUSE OF A LACK OF SEWING MACHINES!
We don’t want to sew, we don’t want to knit, we don’t want to cook.
We want better work conditions. So we demand the following:

48 Ibid.
49 E Albright and K D’Adamo, ‘Decreasing Human Trafficking through Sex Work

Decriminalization’, American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, vol. 19, no. 1,
2017, pp. 122-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2009.05.012.

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56

Abolish all legislation that criminalises sex work. Investigate and
condemn violence, abuse and the murder of sex workers. Oppose
red-light districts that force us into ghettos and promoting violence
and discrimination. Abolish mandatory HIV testing. Abolish the
sanitary control card among sex workers. Promote voluntary, free
and confidential testing including pre- and post-test counselling.
Ensure universal access to prevention, testing, treatment and high-
quality care. Provide access to healthcare among migrant and mobile
sex workers. Provide access to friendly integral healthcare services,
without stigma and without discrimination.50

Reynaga’s leadership, along with that of women such as Jacqueline Montero,
can infuse public spaces where policy is created with subaltern knowledge of
the conditions and solutions to realise the rights of sex workers. The exclusion
of sex workers from public life is being defied on multiple fronts, and they are
insisting that their voices be heard.

Amalia L. Cabezas is an Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies
and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside.
She is the author of the book Economies of Desire: Sex Tourism in Cuba and the
Dominican Republic and co-edited Una ventana a Cuba y los Estudios cubanos: A
Window into Cuba and Cuban Studies and The Wages of Empire: Neoliberal Policies,
Repression and Women’s Poverty. Her journal articles include publications in Social
and Economic Studies, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, European
Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Latin American Perspectives, Social
Identities, and Cleveland Law Review. Her current project addresses sex worker
movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. Email: amalia@ucr.edu.

50 E Reynaga, ‘Sex Work and Human Rights’, Presentation at the first plenary
session at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico, 6 August 2008,
retrieved 4 July 2018, http://redtrasex.org/Sex-Work-and-Human-Rights.

ATR issue 12–9.pmd 1/1/2545, 1:1356

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