Struggling Chilean Sex Workers Go ‘Virtual’ To Survive Lockdown

LOS ANGELES—Like their counterparts in neighboring Bolivia, where sex workers already living near the poverty line saw their incomes destroyed by the coronavirus pandemic, Chilean sex workers have also seen vital revenues evaporate due to the pandemic, and the lockdown measures put in place to control the spread of the disease. But in Chile, according to a new Reuters report, a younger generation of mostly middle-class sex workers have not only taken their business online, but are also teaching older women who have spent their lives in the sex industry how to make use of new technology to stave off poverty in the crisis. In Chile, where 281 people have died of coronavirus infection — out of more than 23,000 cases in a country or only about 19 million — the government last month announced a $2 billion economic relief package for “informal” workers, on top of the previously announced stimulus package worth $12 billion, or five percent of the country’s gross domestic product. A government spokesperson told Reuters that sex workers were eligible to collect relief payments “like any other person.” But according to the Reuters report, about one third of the country’s estimated 60,000 sex workers are undocumented immigrants, who are not allowed to receive funds from the relief package. Still others “were too afraid of stigmatization or investigation by government agencies to request one of the recently-announced hardship payments offered to those left destitute by the pandemic,” according to Reuters reporter Aislinn Laing. Sex work is legal in Chile, and sex workers must register with local governments. But the conditions under which they may work legally are heavily regulated, and organizing or managing sex workers remains illegal.  But many younger sex workers have taken to offering services via video chat — and are also instructing older women how to do the same to recoup at least some of their lost income. We call them ‘the virtuals’, and some can make a lot of money,” a former exotic dancer Herminda Gonzalez Inostrozam who is now spokesperson for the Margin Foundation — a charity that benefits sex workers — told Reuters. “They’re teaching others over WhatsApp how to get into it, how to find clients, how to set up an account to charge credit cards, how to sort a webcam,” Inostrozam said. “For the women over 45, it’s not easy but you can always learn.” Even prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, sex workers were suffering in Chile due to a government curfew intended to quell an outbreak of social unrest, as demonstrators took to the streets of major cities to protest extreme social and economic inequality in the country — with the protests often turning violent. Photo By Horst Engelmann / Pixabay