Claudia Colimoro Sarellano

Claudia Colimoro has dedicated herself to rescuing young women from drug addiction, exploitation, pornography and child prostitution, empowering them through vocational training, understanding of their sexuality, and improvement of their self-image.

Claudia, concerned about the rise in child prostitution in Mexico, and conscious that the principal victims are children of the streets, has created the Casa de las Mercedes, a home for young women with no place to turn. Most of the residents are pregnant or already have children (often as a result of rape). They have been deserted by their families or have never known a family, and must reconstruct their lives anew. Claudia offers the women shelter, food, proper hygiene, clothing, and medical, psychological, and moral support. She also gives the girls a practical education to allow them to return to the labor market and withstand the pressures which lead to addiction, exploitation, pornography and child prostitution. She achieves this through an improvement of the girls' own self-image, based on vocational training and knowledge of their own sexuality, and an education that tries to eradicate the repetition of generational violence and provide a new role for the mothers with respect to their own children.

In the face of a tremendous void in the provision of services to prostitutes and their families in Mexico, Claudia's project is not simply a paternalistic attempt to offer shelter and a few basic necessities to adolescent girls. Rather, she is trying to build a sense of self-reliance in the girls, constructed on new values and experiences. In the Casa de las Mercedes the young women are beginning the process of acquiring new values. This is visible in their physical appearance and conduct -- they maintain good hygiene and get along with their children and amongst themselves. The girls form bonds with the rest of the group as well as the institution, improving their self-image and encouraging them to overcome their tragic circumstances.

Since the appearance of AIDS, many clients of prostitutes have tried to avoid the risk of this and other sexually transmitted diseases by seeking sexual relations with younger women or girls who have little or no sexual experience. Because of this, the demand for child prostitution has risen, and it is not difficult to find prostitutes due to the miserable conditions in which many children live. They face poverty, addictions, scorn for lower-class girls and adolescents, and marginalization from society, often combined with a history of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. The children choose or are forced to live in the street, and often turn to prostitution as a means of survival.

The growth in child prostitution is so rapid that existing governmental, non-governmental, and private organizations have not been able to address the problem fully. Although there are no statistics in the City of Mexico with respect to addiction, pornography, sexual or labor exploitation, many abandoned young women do not live to adulthood because of the combination of damage to their health from toxic substances to which they are addicted, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. 79% of the women in Casa de las Mercedes began working as prostitutes between the ages of 12 and 18, and a few even earlier. Prostitution is hidden in a variety of ways, and indeed girls who give some sexual service but are not paid in cash (but instead with clothes, food, or a place to sleep) are not counted as prostitutes in official statistics. This is the primary reason why it is difficult to accurately estimate the pervasiveness of child prostitution. Men and women who recruit child prostitutes often subject them to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, and convince them that it is the only way of life to which they have access.

Claudia created the Casa de las Mercedes, which at first began with the intent of giving shelter and a glass of milk during the night to pregnant street girls. She started with three adolescents who had been raped, and within an month had 10 young people. Reality soon overtook her initial, modest plan: more and more girls began to arrive after being physically or verbally abused by relatives, molested sexually by male relatives, or forced into hard labor to receive food and shelter.

The Casa de las Mercedes has several comprehensive objectives: to offer pregnant adolescents a space to live during pregnancy and after childbirth; to furnish gynecological/obstetric assistance and health services; to offer pediatric care to the children of adolescent mothers; to supply information about sexuality, family planning and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases; to offer literacy and technical training; to reintegrate the girls into the labor force through agreements with specialized organizations; to reestablish dietary and hygienic habits through individual and group work; to give psychological help to young people who require it; to offer information about child care; and to provide a nursery for the proper development of children while their mothers are at work.

To achieve this, Claudia trains volunteers during the weekends, who then search key areas of the city to find young people in need, and invite them to her shelter with the hope that they will stay. She also works in coordination with institutions like the Agency for Family Development, Hogares Provedencia, Casa Alianza, Fraternidad sin Fronteras, that do not have the facilities to deal with abandoned young pregnant women, and send them to Casa de las Mercedes so they can benefit from its services. In the realm of education the program has courses in basic literacy, vocational training, a beauty workshop, typewriting, dressmaking, and baking/pastry-making.

All this is possible thanks to Claudia's ability to relate to key personnel. Students in different social sciences and young people who have lived in the streets help with the field work. She has formed alliances with institutions like the National Institute for Perinatology, the Agency for Family Development, the National Pediatric Institute, the food bank of CARITAS (a Danish charity), municipal offices, the Office for Children's Services (Procuraduria General de Atencion al Menor), and Health for Women, which offer health services and food at low prices, and legal documentation which accredits the young people as Mexican citizens, among other services. Until now the Casa has attended to 136 young women and 87 babies. Monthly expenditures are $5,500 of which the Public Welfare Office pays $500, the Agency for Family Development $1700 plus $1800 in food, CARITAS $550 and Bazar Caritas $600 in provisions like diapers and milk, while sales of donated products provide $350.

At the national level Claudia is working to have the model replicated by other institutions with her advice, or creating new shelters based on this model. At the international level she hopes to assist other institutions which are creating similar shelters in Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Chile. One of her residents attended the International Summit Against Work and Child Exploitation in Geneva, Switzerland, on behalf of Mexico.

A prostitute herself at the age of seventeen, Claudia knows firsthand the physical and emotional trauma of this activity, as well as the abuses that prostitutes suffer from clients, authorities, and pimps. On one occasion she participated in a meeting where representatives of the health ministry informed prostitutes and brothel owners about the pandemic of AIDS. Claudia felt an urge to share this information about sexuality, safe sex, and HIV/AIDS, with the object of educating one of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, prostitutes themselves.

Since 1987 Claudia has conducted HIV and AIDS workshops with sexual workers throughout the country. She leads the organization Women for Health and Action against AIDS, which supports human rights of the sexual workers and disseminates information about sexually transmitted diseases. She presided over the creation of the first shelter for children of prostitutes, and together with CONASIDA (a program of the government health agency) conducted research about the use of the feminine condom among prostitutes and housewives. She has carried out further research in cooperation with Mexican and international health agencies, and participated in the International Women's Conference in Beijing.