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Posted on 06/28/2006 8:37:59 AM PDT by North Jersey Conservative
On an idyllic beach where necklaces of white sand and coconut trees ring a half-moon bay, tourists can find prostitutes ranging from young women to even younger boys. They pay anything from $15 for a quick tryst in a beachside shack to $60 for rooms in brothels and $100 for the more upscale women who work the town's discos and dress well enough to slip into luxury hotels.
"Put enough money on the table and you can get anything you want right here, right now," said Jessica, a 20-year-old "manicurist" who reels off her prices soon after introducing herself at a Sosua beachside bar.
And it is all not only tolerated but quite public, part of a prostitution industry of long standing that is as prevalent here as its more internationally publicized counterpart in nearby Cuba.
Some 100,000 women and men now work as prostitutes here and 40,000 abroad, according to social work groups, making this nation of only 7.6 million people one of the leading suppliers to the international sex circuit behind Thailand and the Philippines.
Fueling the prostitution -- social workers prefer the term "sex work" -- are the abject poverty of the hemisphere's third poorest nation and a macho culture where some fathers still pay for their sons' first trip to brothels.
Dominican women have long been recruited as "dancers" for European and Middle Eastern cabarets, with some returning home later with tales of being forced into prostitution and drugs while their bosses held their passports.
Boom in tourism
"Sex work is a historical phenomenon in the Dominican Republic," said Santo Rosario, head of COIN, a volunteer group that teaches prostitutes about the dangers of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
But what gave the sex industry a real boost here is the boom in tourism that saw the number of foreign visitors, mostly from Europe and Canada, jump from 900,000 in 1989 to 1.57 million last year.
Estimates of the tourists who come primarily for sex range from a low of 5 percent to as high as 30 percent, but there's agreement that many of the visitors find the local prostitutes and low prices irresistible.
The widespread prostitution is one of the key factors behind the AIDS epidemic here, the fourth worst in the hemisphere. Yet ironically, prostitutes are no longer considered prime targets of the epidemic because of programs launched since 1990 to educate them on the need for condoms.
"Sex workers are actually more aware and better protected today than the average Dominican," said Petronila Brazoban, 37, a former prostitute who founded a self-help group for HIV-positive sex workers in 1992.
COIN now offers brothels and cabarets free condoms if they require the women to use them with clients. Brothels are not illegal here, so COIN can only threaten brothels with health inspectors who can close them down.
Most brothels and cabarets also require that employees be tested for sexually transmitted diseases once a month, though Rosario and a cabaret owner admitted the women can move from bar to bar to continue working even if sick.
Comic books featuring characters such as Maritza the Streetwalker and Mario the Tiger use racy language and drawings to show prostitutes how to argue with customers who don't want to use condoms and how to spot diseases.
COIN publishes a bimonthly newsletter for prostitutes, The New Story, which bills itself as "a newspaper of the evening," and organized a prostitute's convention at a luxury Santo Domingo hotel in 1994.
And COIN even sponsors a theater troupe of men and women prostitutes who go to bars in early evenings and put on skits designed to persuade clients to use condoms and not try to cheat the prostitutes on their fees.
Prostitutes' union
On the drafting table is a prostitutes' union that would negotiate with bars such things as vacation time and commissions -- the bars keep about 25 percent of a prostitute's fee -- and lobby the government for improved medical care and perhaps even a retirement fund.
But social workers like Rosario and prostitutes like Brazoban say the only way to significantly cut into the industry is to attack the country's poverty, offering more jobs or a better social welfare network.
A COIN poll of more than 500 prostitutes in 1990, repeated in 1992, showed that 72 percent said their primary reason for joining the industry was economic need. Two-thirds were single mothers with an average of two children.
Ages ranged from 15 to 45, though the average was 25, and none had finished primary school. About 16 percent were illiterate, and most had come from rural areas.
The younger women were concentrated in cabarets, but as they got older they tended to move down to brothels, bars and finally to the streets, where they are picked up by clients in passing cars, the study showed.
"Find me a job where I can support my two baby girls and my mother and I'll stop everything," said Ronny, a 30-year-old waitress-prostitute in one of the scores of thatch-roofed bars that line Sosua's main beach. As recently as 1990, European tourists could buy "full costs" travel packages to Sosua and the nearby port of Puerto Plata that included the price of female or male companions of their choosing.
Now, local officials aiming for a richer class of tourist have tried to clean up the area. Prostitutes are not allowed at an immense tourism development nearby, a complex with 12 hotels, more than 20 restaurants, a golf course, a polo field, several tennis courts and miles of white sand beaches.
But in Sosua Beach, European families with little children sun themselves next to European men pawing and kissing young Dominican women and disappearing briefly behind beach shacks.
Seductive looks at beach
A muscular teenage boy on the water's edge made equally leering passes at European women and men, while a boy of about 10 strolled the bars, giving foreigners suggestive winks and wiggling his hips.
A woman vendor with a cardboard case full of watches and sunglasses told a visitor two weeks ago that she had sold nothing all day and needed money for the bus home.
Buy a $40 fake Rolex, she urged the man, or a $15 pair of fake RayBan sunglasses. Or pay for the $5 taxi to her apartment, she added, and get a $50 tryst for only $40.
"It's the end of the winter season and we have only the cheap tourists around," she complained. "During the high season in January, I don't even bother with the watches."
LOL! That's a classic cat expression.
Is that like a Viking funeral?
I just returned from the Dominican. None of the men in our group were propositioned - unless you count the flirting that was directed at the attractive 18 year old in our group!
Oh please let's not got apologizing for Rush Limbaugh. He's a passable talent and drug addict, serial marrier and a general mess.
Screw him.
He's an embarassment.
Uh...this article is NOT about Rush. The OP was clearly trying to SMEAR Rush by posting this article to imply he was in DR for "sex tourism." The fact that you don't have a problem with cooking up false accusations demonstrates that you are the embarrassment here.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Viking Kitty/ZOT ping list!. . . don't be shy.
ROTF!
ZOT ping
Love your #20!
Are you toast yet?
Or is this posting cooincidental with Limbaugh being there?
"So, this is why brsmith34 needed Viagra."
There, corrected it for you.
Loser.
Pop quiz question: What does IBTZ stand for?
Bonus question: What do moose, host, hugh, beeber, ASH, stuned, cheese, and series have in common?
(thinking) Which ZOT should I use on this twerp?
Post 4 as well.
So, you're a DR prostitute from DU?
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Viking Kitty/ZOT ping list!. . . don't be shy.
Good one!
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