Contact Admin. The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures. Unlike many of the prostitutes who line the urine- and graffiti-spattered walls next to the train tracks snaking around downtown Guatemala City, Johanna is selective and demanding in her clients. Clad in cheap black fishnet stockings, a see-through bustier and heavy makeup, the former nursing assistant says she requires her customers to wear condoms, does not perform anal or oral sex and will not take on police officers.
A short time later, a boyish-looking policeman sporting a bulletproof vest and a shiny Uzi machine gun gets off his motorcycle to patrol the four-block strip of dilapidated buildings. His partner remains on the bike and the women ignore their presence. Johanna, as she asked to be called, says the officers who show up occasionally to arrest drug dealers and reprimand troublemakers do not bother the prostitutes.
The gang-ridden turf is widely known as a drug-dealing area where evening shootouts are the norm and police do not dare patrol at night. While prostitution is illegal in Guatemala, law-enforcement officials do not crack down on the women. The Health Department provides them with sex education, free condoms, a journal to keep track of their visits and regular checkups for sexually transmitted diseases.
The single mother, like her colleagues, rents a shabby room in the crime-ridden neighbourhood. Some rooms are tidy and have newspaper clippings of scantily dressed women in provocative poses.
Johanna keeps her room clean and has decorated it with some posters on the walls. Johanna, a mother of two who has also worked as a tortilla maker, maid and stripper, says she turned to prostitution because nursing did not cover medical bills for her daughter's severe sinusitis.
