Trade in Truths

This morning we head to the Quito airport to catch a flight to Lago Agrio, the northern oil town near the Colombia border. As we board the plane I take inventory of the ratio of men to women on the plane. In the Sucumbios province where we are headed, there are about 50,000 people who are an economically active part of the population. Nearly 40,000 of this population are men. The remaining 10,000 plus women work in agriculture, domestic work or commerce. We are going to document the segment of the population of women not included in these numbers, sex workers.

In a town with 7,000 petroleum workers, military men, police and vendors, there is a high demand for sex. Evidence is in the pool halls, karaoke lounges, discoteques and brothels. And only twelve miles to the Colombian border, the town offers financial opportunity for women desperate to flee violence and war.

In the first half of 2008 alone, over 270,000 Colombians were displaced by rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug cartels. I do not know how many of that number are women or of that number how many ended up resorting to sex work. But a 2005 study found that at least 70% of the sex workers in Ecuador are Colombian.

On the plane the stewardess tells us there are 84 passengers. I count five passengers who are not men.

Dominique sits on a black vinyl bench in the front of the night club. Red lights flash in time to the bass-heavy beat. The light show was not the only reminder that we had entered the red light district of Quito.

In Ecuador, it's summer year around. But the woman sitting next to Dominique is dressed with her profession, not the season in mind. Her shorts reveal the entire length of her legs. I want to take off my sweater and let her sit on it so her legs don't have to touch the sticky vinyl. Instead, I lean back in a mirrored corner at the rear of the club, guarding my camera and following my clear instructions.

"You can film the architecture, but not the people," the administrative manager told me.

I shoot abstractions of mirrors, lights, poles, and television screens, trying to avoid the human figures that I can't help but see in mirrors. I wait for word from Dominique. She must convince the woman she's sitting next to speak to us. It is her story that represents that of so many Colombian women. In her village her father was hacked to death by paramilitary forces. She fled to Ecuador and now is a sex worker in Quito. These few snippets that Dominique is able to glean are noticeably painful for the woman to share. She teared up as she mentions her father.

Our Quito driver is who we have to thank for access to the nightclub. At night he is contracted by three night clubs to drive the sex workers to and from work. He paces, speaks to a woman, then he joins me at the back of the club to keep me company while I wait.

We exchange broken Spanish. I answer basic questions about my family, my work, my age, my home. This is so surreal, I think. I try to maintain eye contact with him. If I don't the television screen is in my direct line of sight and it's broadcasting material that can't help but distract in the most vulgar of ways.

Dominique and the women part. Dominique walks to me to report. The woman lights a cigarette and perches on a bar stool next to a woman in a short red dress. "She doesn't want to talk to us," Kiki tells me.

We go to leave.

There are sports bars and then there are sex bars. The common trait between them is surplus of TV screens. In both, avid aficionados stare fixated at the plasma, salivating over strategy, movement, physical contact, with guttural gusto. As a woman, the images in sex bars overload your eyes, penetrate your pores and leave your body begging for a shower strong enough to wash away the dirty data overload.

Our Virgil into Quito’s nastiest scenes is a cab driver, Miguel. For a living, Miguel shuttles prostitutes from the brothels to hotels, motels and parking lots. He works at Night Katz. Twelve taxi drivers work with him. Initially, there were twenty five men hired for these runs. More than half in the group got laid off for sexually abusing or robbing the call girls after work. Miguel is one more spider in a vast web of facilitators and exploiters.

We finished our reporting day at 9 p.m. in Queens. A black bouncer blocked the blue lit doorway. Posters silhouetting curvy girls and trumpeting prices -- $10 a pop, or fifteen minutes -- plastered the walls. We crossed a second doorway and met the administrator, a man who previously worked at a New Jersey mattress company. He welcomed us inside and gave us the greenlight to film. Monday nights are low key.

At the club, we met a Colombian girl, who had all the elements of our missing profile for the story. She was very traumatized and determined not to speak to us. Off camera, she shared elements of her family's experience at the hands of guerrilla. It was not a happy story. She teared up six times. I encouraged her to tell it for the sake of other women in that situation but she would not budge.

"It didn't make sense," I told her. "She had shared her story off camera for nothing. Why would she not share it on camera for something: the help it could bring to others?"

For a moment, that argument seemed to hold weight. It was the first one out of many that she actually mulled over. Despite three moments of hesitation, she stood her ground. We gave her our number in case she changed her mind. We'll see how that goes. Miguel is now pitching sources that want to sell us such stories. The answer was no and an explanation of basic ethics that hold even when access is difficult.

Accessing Colombian sex workers is one side of the obstacles coin. The other side of the coin is the hermeticism, bureaucratic jargonese and red tape that one needs to cut through when dealing with the NGOs theoretically meant to help this people. The story is there but many forces sabotage our access, close the valves of information flow. Sources sidestep the issue fearing a diplomatic controversy with Colombia or a backlash from the men who represent the cause of displacement (guerrillas, paramilitary, abusive relatives.)

The night ended at Dragonfly in Quito's red light district. The bar was on the same block we circled earlier in the evening looking for minors, transvestites and Colombians working the streets. Amy shot footage from the front seat while Virgil gave us the scoop on the streets who's who: crack whores, drug dealers, underage girls, narcotrafficking night club owners, ad nauseam. Virgil was a breakthrough after many roadblocs. But into what?

When we're not interviewing sex workers, brothel madames, health officials and police, our trusty driver, Stalin transports my Dominique and I around Esmeraldas on a hunt for activities to film. He has taken us to fish markets, cargo container lots, oil refineries and vistas with sunset views in the background and cranes and industry in the foreground. I have been trying to collect footage of activities around Esmeraldas to create a real sense of the place.

To properly tell the story of Colombian sex workers in Ecuador I'm collecting footage of the places where the women live and work. We've filmed inside and outside of the brothels. We've filmed nightclubs and pay-by-the hour motels. We've filmed a brothel owner preparing lunch for her family. But there are less conspicuous places like massage parlors and karaoke bars -- venues camouflauging the reality that here too, women can be bought. And in many cases the women are actually girls. Today it's these places we are trying to spot.

As we drive around Esmeraldas, our eyes scan buildings and billboards for signs announcing this underground marketplace.

"Look Dominique, actual camouflage," I say, pointing to two men wearing red, gray and white pants in a pattern typically seen in earth tones. "Who are they?"

Dominique leans forward to ask our driver, Stalin if they are in a branch of the military.

"They're firemen," he says. I then notice the fire trucks parked behind them.

If the army members wear khaki camouflage to remain inconspicuous in forests, do the firemen wear red camouflage to blend in with the fire? Or is that they want to camouflage themselves from the fire's red flames?

The problem with looking at the underbelly of society, is once you start to look, you can't stop. What you're bound to see will make you weep.

Yesterday, we had an intensive interview with a Margarita, a sex worker from Colombia who works for Lucia. Margarita perched on the edge of the company bed in her professional work quarters for the interview. The 5' x 7' room felt like water-free aquarium with the green walls and aqua sheets. In the space, I felt the claustrophobia a fish snatched from the ocean and dumped into confining glass walls would feel.

Unlike many sex workers who sleep in the same beds as they work, Margarita lives with her grandmother in Esmeralda. She agreed to let us film in her apartment the following morning, on the condition that we not mention her work. We made arrangements to meet the following morning in front of the Gran Mision Esmeraldas al Encuentro de Cristo -- a church overlooking the central square.

We slept, then awoke. Stalin picked us up and drove us to the meeting point.

Outside the church young boys and girls huddle, giggling and joking. Dominique gets out to scour the area for Margarita. I sit in the car guarding my camera and watching the crowds.

On a bench across the street from the church, a middle aged man in a day-glo green tank top and white shorts catches my attention. Seated on his lap is a young girl, probably eleven or twelve years old. Next to him sits another girl, a little older, who stares at the sidewalk, not getting nearly as much attention as the other. Both are wearing jeans, pink tank tops; their is hair is pulled back in tight cornrows. Given the man's age, my initial assumption is that this father is dropping his daughters off for the church's Saturday activities.

Dominique still isn't back. I continue to watch this trio. The girls bear no resemblance to the man. The way he looks at them is not at all paternal. I am disgusted, sickened. These girls are too young. I resist the urge to call him out on his predatory behavior. Dominique returns. Margarita is nowhere to be found. We drive around the block two more times before concluding Margarita changed her mind.