On June 2nd we commemorate the International Day of Female Sex Workers, when we remember the fight of 150 female sex workers demanding an end to police violence. That event occurred in 1975 is the first historical record of a female sex workers’ strike of great magnitude, which expanded to other cities in France and won the support of the people.

36 years later, female sex workers in Latin America and the Caribbean —not only remembering those acts of violence but vindicating the fight of our fellows— we celebrate what has been achieved. We, who decided to create and integrate RedTraSex, we fight for those demands and more: for making our voices heard.

We are united in the fight against exploitation, abuse of police forces and for the removal of any legislation which violated our rights as individuals. On the way we grew, we strengthened our organizations and we achieved greater awareness about our issues. Our proposals began to be considered for the design of public policies, increasing the presence of female sex workers in political areas at national, regional and international levels.

We work in preventing HIV/AIDS with our fellows, developing strategies among peers. And they began to invite us to conferences and forums on gender, sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS to hear our story and to replicate our methodology. Then we increase the visibility of female sex workers and cease to be for many media «whores that were not worth» to become the protagonists of our life stories, stories of fight.

The organization help us to understand that regardless of the particular problems we face for being women and for being sex workers, we are part of excluded people who demand for their human rights. We are not alone; the strength of a story of fight sustains us.

Today, as authors of our lives, we know and we say what we need: the recognition of our work as work and that our activity benefit from the same rights as all other workers. We demand to be treated as subjects of rights: to live and work in dignified conditions, without violence, with comprehensive care of our health, without stigma or discrimination.

We are encouraged to speak with our own voice and to organize ourselves, awakening the desire to transform the world. We will never allow again deciding or speaking for us. As my fellows from UNES (Paraguay) say: “before we hide to die and today we face to live”.

Elena Reynaga