A sex worker in Red Light District of Tijuana
Photo by: Oralia Loza, IHCCM UCSD

Following on this week's annual XVII International AIDS Conference being held in Mexico City from August 3^rd through 8^th, the foundation is cooperating with the Institute of the Americas to bring a select number of the 3,000 some journalists covering that event to Tijuana from August 9^th to 11^th to learn about the human side of the story at the San Diego-Baja California border.

“We’re going to introduce them to the people who live in the Tijuana canals, introduce them to the people who are distributing the condoms and those who are going into the fields in North County,” said Lee Tablewski, the organizer of the field reporting workshop at the Institute of the Americas located on the University of California at San Diego campus.

The International Community Foundation has been active in supporting such efforts, organizations, and a Tijuana clinic called Prevencasa that focus on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, he said.

“The foundation believes in the idea of advocacy and getting out the human face of what is being done in terms of intervention,” Tablewski said.

HIV and AIDS are problems that spill both ways across the U.S.-Mexico border. The diseases are found among Mexican migrants who contract the condition in the United States and sometimes are spread to wives and girlfriends when they return home to Mexico.

In border cities, such as Tijuana, sex workers are found frequently in cantinas, bars, hotels, nightclubs, massage parlors and street corners catering to clients from both the United States and Mexico. According to a study by J Urban Health, estimates of female sex workers in Tijuana range from 4,500 to 25,000. Although prostitution is illegal, the practice is tolerated by authorities, even regulated by them. Mexican female sex workers with U.S. clients are more likely to have sexually transmitted diseases, to inject drugs, and to be paid more for sex without condoms than other sex workers, the study said.

Underage sex workers, called the niñas or chamaquitas, are commonly seen on the main street of the Red Light District, officially the Zona Norte of Tijuana in the border-abutting northern section of the city. The city provides HIV and sexually transmitted disease testing to sex workers in the Red Light District but not to women of less than 18 years of age.

While HIV prevalence among female sex workers in Mexico was low for decades, the rate has risen in Tijuana over the last two years from 2 percent to 6 percent.

Many sex workers, especially homosexuals, are demonized, said Tablewski. “It breaks your heart.”

“There needs to be an understanding and sympathy for those who are underserved,” he said. “The International Community Foundation understands this, and that’s why it’s working hard to get money for this issue.”

A major focus of the International Community Foundation’s current efforts is in support of the Prevencasa clinic. Located in rented quarters in Tijuana’s Red Light District the clinic has been staffed by a team of doctors, nurses, psychologists, outreach workers, and social workers – about a dozen in all – that have been catering over the last 15 years to the needs of drug addicts but mainly to sex workers. Services include connecting sex workers to health services for testing and other health care, dispensing condoms, educating sex workers and drug addicts about prevention, reducing harm caused by abusive clients and pimps, and encouraging people to change their behavior.

Besides serving clients at the clinic, Prevencasa has expanded the reach of its work from a large recreational vehicle, called the Prevemovil, donated by the University of California at San Diego. Mexico’s National Center for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS and Baja California’s Ministry of Health recently introduced throughout the state four smaller, brightly painted, green-and-white vehicles known as the Condonetas, or little condom trucks. Two Condonetas operate in Tijuana.

Support the work of Prevencasa by making a contribution online to their "Friends of Prevencasa Fund" at the International Community Foundation.

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See related article and video published August 1, 2008 in the Washington Post which features our foundation’s grantee, Prevencasa, AC.

• Washington Post Article

Prevencasa's position in the Red Light District currently is uncertain because it might lose use of the building where it is located. To preserve and increase the clinic’s role in the community, the International Community Foundation has established a fund to help Prevencasa fundraise for either the purchase of the building or to secure other quarters. So far, $100,000 has been donated by the Orphaflamme Foundation, and another $150,000 is needed.

It would be a major loss if the clinic loses its operating location because it would be difficult to continue its work, said Dr. Ana Alvarez-Malo, a Prevencasa project coordinator and staff member of UCSD’s Family and Preventive Medicine Department.

“It’s a much known place where people come and trust us and feel like they can get help,” she said. “We see a lot of cases. The main impact we’ve had is that a lot of girls have left sexual work and moved on to other legitimate work.”

Written by: Diane Lindquist, Journalist

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