Bringing transgender sex workers and local police together to raise awareness

Fortaleciendo Identidades y Diversidades, a community organisation involved in the Vida Digna (Life with Dignity) project, has organised awareness raising workshops for transgender sex workers and local police to challenge stigma and discrimination which undermines HIV prevention work and access to HIV services.

Transgenders frequently become involved in sex work as a means of survival. This work is often characterised by violence, extortion and human rights violations. A participatory community assessment carried out in July and August 2005 identified that transgendered people experience violence and discrimination from their families, neighbours, partners, work colleagues and clients. This includes psychological violence, threats, persecution, rejection, physical violence and homophobic crimes. In addition, transgendered people are denied access to education, to work, and to benefits. Stigma and discrimination by public service providers, such as health service staff and police often leads to the denial of services, as well as harassment, violence and unjustified imprisonment.

In order to address these problems, a group of transgenders came together to establish Fortaleciendo Identidades y Diversidades, a community organisation which became involved in the Vida Digna (Life with dignity) project. The three-year project aims to reduce the HIV-related stigma and discrimination experienced by sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people living with HIV in four cities in the central states of Mexico: Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. By challenging this stigma and discrimination, the project aims to make the work being carried out to improve access to services and HIV prevention, the provision of information, and outreach peer support work, more effective.

Fortaleciendo Identidades y Diversidades received seed funding, training, and technical support to implement a project aimed at reducing aggression and human rights violations against transgenders who work as sex workers on the streets of San Luis Potosí. The first steps in this project were awareness-raising workshops for transgender sex workers and local police.

One transgender participant commented after the workshop: “Getting to know about the lives of my other transgender colleagues made me want to denounce the injustices I had suffered and those suffered by them”.

Before the workshops, some of the comments from police participants included:

  • “It now seems they are victims of how they are, and we are portrayed as the bad characters of the film…they commit crimes for which they must be held accountable.”
  • “They are arrested because, where they work, families walk by and children can see them, they are standing there from eight in the morning and children walk by in order to go to school, is not well regarded.”

After the workshops, their attitude had changed. They showed more respect for the transgenders and thanked them for sharing their stories.

  • “These workshops are very beneficial as we get to learn the reasons why they have the job they have and we get to respect them.”
  • “We learned not to judge them based on what they are wearing.”
  • “It would be very beneficial for the senior management to participate in these workshops as it is they who give the orders to arrest the transgenders and we have to comply with them.”
  • “Some of our colleagues bother them just because they think that’s the way it has to be and that they like being teased, but we don’t know what they’ve had to go through for them to be able to work on the streets and that they need the job to be able to pay the rent and their food”.

The police participants submitted a very positive report to their superiors, and requested training for a further 1,200 police.

Colectivo Sol, the Alliance organisation in Mexico, coordinates the Vida Digna project and provides technical assistance.

Work carried out as part of Vida Digna includes advocacy for access to services and HIV prevention, the provision of information, and outreach peer support work. Strengthening groups to respond to stigma and discrimination is a key part of making this work more effective.