In the 1990s, Nencel (2001: 2-3) considered a feminist discourse of sex work led by women who sell sex in Peru inconceivable. Similarly, Cavagnoud (2014) remains pessimistic regarding change in relation to trans sex workers’ rights. Yet activists and other academics―while also frequently critical of the situation―offer examples of incremental progress in relation to sex workers’ safety, health, and broader rights.
In 2002, Peru’s national sex worker organisation Miluska, Vida y Dignidad95 was founded, uniting existing sex worker groups in the face of “police, institutional and social violence” (RedTraSex, 2007: 65). These organisations have collectively denounced police corruption and mistreatment to the Ombudsman, the public prosecutors’ office (fiscalía) and the congressional human rights committee (CARE-Perú, 2008a). The movement has also forged links with regional and global sex worker, LGBT and trans rights movements, joining RedTraSex in 2004 and co-founding PLAPERTS in 2014 (RedTraSex, 2007: 65; PLAPERTS,
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2017). Since its establishment in the 1980s, Peru’s first gay rights organisation Movimiento Homosexual de Lima (MHoL) has become a key political actor and is increasingly involved in national policy fora (Boesten, 2010; Cáceres et al., 2008a). Although trans people’s concerns have long been marginalised relative to those of gay men and lesbians (Runa, 2007: 23), a strong transgender rights movement has emerged in recent years (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 18). Trans activists are organising to fight for rights and recognition within and beyond the contexts of sex work, HIV, and healthcare (Campuzano, 2008; Pollock et al., 2016; Salazar and Villayzan, 2010; Fraser, 2016). Male sex workers’ involvement in activism, while less visible (Cáceres et al., 2015), is growing (PLAPERTS, 2017). Thus, although the ‘sexual slavery’ discourse remains prominent, a counter-discourse of sex workers’ rights has developed (Reynaga et al., 2004; Salazar, 2009; Salazar and Villayzan, 2010).
The growth of these movements can be linked closely to that of HIV-related activism. In 1996, MINSA’s HIV/STI programme―under pressure from Peru’s longest-standing HIV activist-led NGO, VÍA LIBRE―began training selected female sex workers and men who have sex with men as peer outreach workers (promotores/promotoras) (Konda et al., 2009; Lalani, 2014). They were tasked with providing condoms and health information leaflets to their peers and encouraging them to attend government STI clinics for routine testing, receiving small stipends in return. Yet the programme also drove a “new wave of sexual minority organising” in urban, working-class areas (Konda et al., 2009), peer outreach workers going on to form rights- and/or HIV-related community organisations (associaciones civiles) (Cáceres et al., 2008a).
A decade later, a series of national meetings began to bring these organisations together. In 2005, a UN-funded meeting of trans activists from across Peru culminated in the
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formation of a national transgender movement, RedTrans96 (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 37). Participants in a subsequent workshop identified violence in sex work, particularly by serenazgo officers, as a primary concern (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 38-9) and the following year activist organisation La Agrupación Claveles Rojos97 began systematically recording and reporting these abuses (Runa, 2007). In 2007, Peru held a national consultation on sex work and HIV, aimed at bringing together diverse actors to fight for “the respect of sex workers’ human rights and against HIV/AIDS” (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 44). Coordinated by Miluska, Vida y Dignidad, RedTrans, the Instituto de Estudios en Salud, Sexualidad y Desarrollo Humano (IESSDEH)98 and MINSA, and financed by the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), the event involved over 200 female sex worker and trans representatives, a small number of male sex workers, 69 national, regional, and municipal officials, civil society, and academics (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 44).
Salazar and Villayzan (2010: 43-44) consider one of the main successes of the latter event the alliances that emerged between sex worker and trans organisations as they reflected on their shared struggles. RedTrans and Miluska Vida y Dignidad subsequently worked with IESSDEH, legal consultants and MINSA’s HIV/STI programme to develop a bill to protect sex workers’ rights, hold accountable those who enacted violence against them, and legally recognise sex work as labour. Although Congress did not pass it into law, the bill’s formulation reflected unprecedented collaboration of this kind in this setting (Salazar and Villayzan, 2010: 33). Sex worker activists and allies continue to advocate for such a law
96Trans Network (Salazar et al., 2016). 97Red Carnations Group
98The Institute of Studies in Health, Sexuality and Human Development, a non-profit affiliated with the Unit at
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(RedTraSex, 2016a), some also seeking “safe work zones”―where sex workers could operate legally with police protection―in collaboration with other members of PLAPERTS (PLAPERTS, 2017; NSWP Latin America Regional Correspondent, 2016).
Sex workers’ collaborations with dominant institutions, however, remain dependent upon the extent to which they are recognised as legitimate political actors. In Iquitos, sex worker activists have successfully worked with the Ombudsman, the regional government, and the police to reduce raids, institutional violence, and improve reporting―providing workshops to police about sex workers’ human and labour rights, and urging sex workers to call them if they are caught up in raids (Lalani, 2014). Activists had been supported by VÍA LIBRE, through training in administration, management and advocacy, and invitations to Lima to meet key officials. While some had initially dismissed or denigrated them, they are now recognised as key partners locally and are seeking to expand their efforts to nearby cities (Lalani, 2014).
Elsewhere experiences have been more mixed. In Arequipa, relations with the authorities appeared to improve amid pressure from new activist organisations (Salazar, 2009: 103). However, the municipality reportedly lacked interest in taking action, and police continued to extort and film sex workers. In Huancayo, the Ombudsman intervened when venues were shut down to ensure that sex workers were not detained, and their rights not violated―yet police continued not to act on or record reports of violence (Salazar, 2009). Indeed, such collaborations are ultimately contingent upon authorities’ willingness to acknowledge the situation and their complicity in it, within the context of an ambiguous legal framework and entrenched institutional stigma (Salazar, 2009). As experiences elsewhere
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demonstrate (Murray, 2015; Blanchette and Murray, 2016), such collaborations can also deteriorate rapidly amid shifts in sex work policy, (public) health and criminal justice systems. HIV activist organisations such as VÍA LIBRE have achieved vital material and symbolic gains, including helping to secure free HIV treatment (initially funded by the Global Fund but now state funded) and establishing laws that protecting people living with HIV against discrimination in health services and employment, in addition to initiating the HIV/STI peer outreach programme described above (Konda et al., 2009). The latter has secured vital prevention and treatment services for these communities and has had an influence far beyond the remit of health (Konda et al., 2009). However, Cáceres et al. (2008a) argue that the “low profile ‘public health’ discourses” involved has meant that sexual and reproductive health policies have typically avoided the “sexual”, limiting engagement in debates over sexual citizenship rights. Recent judicial review allowing trans people to apply to a judge to change their gender without “sex reassignment surgery” reflects important progress in this regard (Jauregui, 2016). However, attempts to include sexual and gender identity as protected characteristics in anti-discrimination and hate-crime law continue to be blocked by a conservative Congress, grounded in the notion that any such overt focus on these communities would pose a threat to children (Cáceres, 2015)―a 2017 presidential decree to institute this reform having been repealed several months later (Fernández Calvo, 2017).