Day Laborers Offered Money for Sex

Stories Against the Silence: HIV/AIDS in the Latino Community aims to bring awareness to this growing but silent epidemic. The series first ran in Spanish in “El Nuevo Sol,” a publication for Spanish-speaking college journalists at California State University, Northridge. It also aired on “Nuestra Voz,” a public affairs show on KPFK, Los Angeles, and in Fresno on Radio Bilingüe.

When a car pulls up to a group of day laborers waiting on the sidewalk, they swarm around in the hope of getting an opportunity to work. For the most part, these jobs are physical—painting, construction or carpentry—but sometimes, it’s another kind of work.

“People have come and offered us money for sex,” says Hugo Guerrero, a 29-year-old day laborer from Jalisco, before recounting how once a woman offered him $3,000 to appear in a pornographic video. He declined, but said these offers are not uncommon.

Whether or not they accept the offers, in a society affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic, day laborers who are solicited for sexual services must be informed of the risks and the ways to protect themselves.

“In Latin America, we never talk about sex,” Sanchez says. “We’re always overly concerned with what others will say.”

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