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Incorporating Sex Workers into the Argentine Labor Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2010

Kate Hardy
Kate Hardy
Affiliation:
University of London
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Abstract

Sex workers in Argentina and beyond are making their histories visible through political action, often in the face of extreme and violent repression. Alongside two first waves of sex worker organizing, a third appears to be emerging from countries in the Global South, which has largely been neglected in academic commentaries. One such organization is Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de la Argentina (AMMAR), the female sex workers' association of Argentina. This essay draws on questionnaire data, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with union and nonunion sex workers and members of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), the umbrella federation of which they are a part, across ten cities in Argentina. It traces the relationship between AMMAR and the CTA to examine how the two organizations have worked together to organize workers in an infamously exploitative, precarious, and vulnerable labor sector to achieve social and political change. The essay contributes to debates about the regeneration of the trade union movement and challenges the reigning wisdom that sex workers and trade unions are unlikely partners.

Type
Gendered Activism and the Politics of Women's Work
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 89 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

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References

Notes

1. I use the word “prostitute” here so as not to use anachronistic terms.

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8. Such ossification ignores long and historical debates over the parameters of what constitutes work and who constitutes a worker. See Cobble, Dorothy Sue and Vosco, Leah, “Historical Perspectives on Representing Nonstandard Workers,” in Nonstandard Work: The Nature and Challenges of Changing Employment Arrangements, eds. Carré, Francoise, Ferber, Marianne A., Golden, Lonnie, and Herzenberg, Stephen A. (Ithaca, 2000)Google Scholar.

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12. Devenish and Skinner, “Organising Workers in the Informal Economy.”

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15. The term “sex work” was coined by Carol Leigh, a sex worker activist, in 1978 but gained broader usage through the 1980s and 1990s. Its emphasis on work seeks to dislodge the negative connotations and stigma attached to “prostitution” and assert parity with other forms of labor. See also Ditmore, Mellissa Hope, Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work (Greenwood, 2006), 502Google Scholar.

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18. GMB is Britain's General Union. These initials were adopted as the official title in 1989. For the historically minded, the G derives from General, the M from Municipal, and the B from Boilermakers, but GMB is not an abbreviation for these titles. http://www.gmb.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=90332&int1stParentNodeID=89645&int2ndParentNodeID=89647, accessed July 22, 2009.

19. Jenness, Valerie, Making it Work: The Prostitutes' Rights Movement in Perspective (New York, 1998), 13Google Scholar. In the 1990s a flurry of material was produced concerning sex worker organizing, much of it emerging from the organizations and representatives themselves. The collection of pieces on global sex workers' organizations in Kempadoo and Doezema's excellent “Global Sex Worker” include articles from organizations in Ecuador, Japan, the United States, South Africa, Mexico, India, and Suriname, providing an important platform for the voices of sex worker organizations.

20. Alongside trade unions, a number of other collectives and outreach organizations exist. Some of these focus more on service provision and welfare, although some also offer empowerment programs. Other organizations not included: a wide variety of Sex Worker Outreach Projects (SWOP) across the United States; in Australia, Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women; EUROPAP – a network across Europe; Anti-Trafficking Centre (ATC), Belgrade.

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25. Many authors have asserted the difficulties faced by sex workers in their interactions with trade unions, though none are clearly detailed. See for example Jo Bindman, “Redefining Prostitution as Sex Work on the International Agenda” (1997), http://www.walnet.org/csis/papers/redefining.html, accessed May 11, 2009.

26. Pheterson, A Vindication of the Rights of Whores, 7.

27. The Karnataka Sex Workers' Union have recently begun blogging about their experiences and campaigns. The information can be found at http://www.blogger.com/profile/10868366661389533397, accessed May 10, 2009.

28. AMMAR, “Lo que hacemos,” http://www.ammar.org.ar/loquehacemos.htm, accessed March 10, 2008.

29. Elena Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 19, 2008.

30. Chant, Sylvia and Craske, Nikki, Gender in Latin America (London, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago, Chile, 1990), cited in Mitter and Rowbotham, Dignity and Daily Bread; Cerrutti, Marcela, “Economic Reform, Structural Adjustment and Female Labor Force Participation in Buenos Aires, Argentina,” World Development 28 (2000): 879–891CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chatterton, Paul, “Making Autonomous Geographies: Argentina's Popular Uprising and the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (Unemployed Workers Movement),” Geoforum 36 (2005): 545–561CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stiglitz, Joseph, Globalization and its Discontents (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

31. David Lier and Kristian Stokke note a similar precarization of state workers in South Africa, where community unionism has also flourished to account for such conditions, in “Maximum working class unity? Challenges to local social movement unionism in Cape Town,” Antipode 38 (2006): 802–24.

32. Adriana Marshal and Laura Perelman, “Why ‘union revitalization’ is not an issue in Argentina? Labour institutions and the effectiveness of traditional trade union recruitment strategies,” paper presented at the twenty-ninth Annual Conference of the International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation, Porto, September 8–10, 2008); Murillo, Victoria, “Union Politics, Market-Orientated Reforms, and the Reshaping of Argentine Corporatism,” in Chalmers, Douglas A., Vilas, Carlos M., Hite, Katherine Roberts, Martin, Scott B., Piester, Kerianne, and Segarra, Monique, The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

33. Central de Trabajadores Argentinos, “Debate para la organizacion de los trabajadores,” http://www.cta.org.ar/institucional/historia.shtml, accessed June 10, 2009.

34. Osmar Zapata, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 18, 2008.

35. Fabio Basteiro, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, January 14, 2009.

36. Zapata, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

37. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

38. Maté is an herbal tea-like drink made from yerba maté leaves, infused with hot water, and drunk through a metal tube known as a bombilla. It is used across all social settings, professional and informal. The cebador prepares the maté in a special cup and passes it, one by one, to the occupants of the room, who each pass the cup back to the cebador when they have finished. Communal use of the bombilla between members of the group indicates that significant meaning is attached to sharing maté in terms of respect and belonging. Many of the women expressed particular attachment to drinking maté with other groups, as many had had experiences of maté being withdrawn from them when they were identified as sex workers.

39. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

40. Susana Martinez, interview by author, La Plata, Argentina, April 24, 2008.

41. AMMAR, http://www.ammar.org.ar/sindicato.htm, accessed November 10, 2008.

42. AMMAR, http://www.ammar.org.ar/sindicato.htm, accessed June 9, 2009.

43. Martinez, interview by author, La Plata, 2008.

44. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

45. Zapata, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

46. Maghy Panno, interview by author, La Plata, Argentina, July 18, 2008.

47. Gayle Pheterson argues in The Prostitution Prism (Amsterdam, 1996), 30, that “whore stigma” discredits not only women who sell sex, but any women who transgress normalized feminine behavior, particularly concerning chastity and passivity. In this context, it also appears to dissuade women from association with sex workers for fear of attracting the label.

48. Basteiro, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2009.

49. Carlos Sanchez, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 3, 2008.

50. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

51. Kate Hardy, “Sex Workers Unite,” Developments 43 (2008), http://www.developments.org.uk/downloads/Developments_Issue43.pdf, accessed February 2, 2008.

52. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

53. Claudia Carranza, interview by author, Paraná, Argentina, March 1, 2007.

54. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

55. Oscar Mengerelli, interview by author, Córdoba, Argentina, April 10, 2008.

56. AMMAR, AMMAR Boletin, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

57. Mengerelli, interview by author, Córdoba, 2008.

58. Reynaga, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

59. Carlos Sanchez, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 3, 2008.

60. Collier, Sebastian Etchemendy and Ruth Berins, “Down but Not Out: Union Resurgence and Segmented Neocorporatism in Argentina (2003–2007),” Politics and Society 35 (2007): 363–401Google Scholar.

61. Sanchez, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2008.

62. Mengerelli, interview by author, Córdoba, 2008.

63. Cartoñeros collect cardboard (carton) and other recyclable material from discarded rubbish piles and sell it to recyclers for a small fee. It is estimated that there are around thirty thousand cartoñeros in Buenos Aires alone, who turned to the practice following the high levels of unemployment throughout the 1990s and the economic crisis of 2001. Almost half are estimated to be children. See Nicole Hill, “Backstory: Lives Recycled in Argentina,” CS Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0125/p20s01-woam.html, accessed July 10, 2009.

64. Alejandra Angriman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 14, 2008.

65. Dan Gallin, “Propositions on Trade Unions and Informal Employment” 533. Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Vosko, “Representing Informal Economy Workers.”

66. Such as those currently occurring in the British trade union movement.