"My mom put me in a brothel with 14 years thinking I was doing the best for me"

WARNING This interview includes explicit badual content.

At the age of 14, Colombian Beatriz Helena Rodríguez Renfigo was taken to a brothel by her mother.

Yes, for his mother. And there he stayed. She has been a prostitute for more than 20 years, moving from one bad estate to another.

"I only did what I had learned to do when I was small, the only thing I knew how to do," he says at his 50's, the eyes misted with tears while he was remembering the horror he had experienced.

It took him a lifetime to get out of this world he calls "true torture".

But he did it. With 20 other brothelmates, she learned how to make sausages and set up a meat-making business that allowed them to earn enough money to stop prostituting themselves.

Today, Beatriz is one of the leading Colombian activists against prostitution. She is director of ASOMUPCAR, the Association of Meat Producers of the Department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia.

It's an organization that helps badually exploited women to leave this world.

Beatriz participated in an international congress on prostitution in Madrid organized by the Coalition against Trafficking in Women and the Commission of Inquiry into the Abuse of Women. And in this scenario, he shared his story with BBC Mundo in this interview.

– You were 14 years old when your mother put you in a brothel …

– Yes it was.

– If I'm not mistaken, it's because you lost your virginity with a boyfriend.

– As such. They raised my mother like that, thinking that a virgin young woman, married, dressed in white and wearing a long shawl that did not come out of her house was worthless.

My mother felt that I could not give society to a woman, a girl, that she was not married and that I could not get married because I was already in the process of " jump".

So, like Pilate, he washed his hands and handed me my aunt, my dad's sister, who owned a brothel. He said, "Look, this girl is here, I have nothing to do with her, I already told her, I had already warned her, I had warned her, but it does not mean anything, so I'll leave it there. "

My aunt replied, "Leave it quiet" for the house where I know what to do with the girl. " And they left me there, in this situation.

– How long have you been a prostitute?

– 22 years that I have spent all my life. I had three children, imagine. And I raised them all in prostitution. At 16, I had my little girl, at 20, I had the little boy and at 24, I had the last one. Of course, I do not know who his parents are.

– What is the worst of being a prostitute?

– Absolutely everything. Being a prostitute is a torture, supposedly spoiled because there is money. But it's a permanent torture, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, pregnant, with the period, sick, postpartum …

It's a torture, day and night, day after day. It is a torture to dress, to repair, to take a bath, to smile, to put on a miniskirt, heels … A torture has granted to the money.

– Exactly, because there is money in between, prostitutes are not usually considered victims …

– Yes, a rape, for example, is heading for attention, and yes, it was a very painful episode of her life to have suffered a rape. But a prostitute goes through ten, fifteen or twenty times a day.

That has touched me. When I was in prostitution in Caquetá, they were twenty times a day. I found myself with my bad so swollen, throwing me the night Vaseline or a refreshing cream to sleep.

And if you can not sleep, it does not matter, because you have to get up early. All day, all day. I do not know what is the worst: if it is the abuse of your body, the penetration of your soul, the surrender of your being … I do not know .

– And how did you survive all those years of torture?

– Do not think about it, do not badyze it. The only thing you ask is: I have to do it, point to line.

– You went out of prostitution. If I am not mistaken, thanks in part to the former mayor of Florida, Lucrecia Murcia, capital of Caquetá.

– Yes, as a mayoral candidate, she went to do business, went to brothels, stayed up late to try to convince us, to get us out of there.

He gave us this first opportunity, he believed in us. And we, that fear and pain that we felt, managed to overcome it and we managed to get out.

We have qualified and it is thanks to the qualification and knowledge of our rights that we have managed to become the social platform that we are today in Colombia.

– You and your housemates have learned how to make sausages and start a meat products business, is not it?

– Yes, we have today several companies in the 16 municipalities of the department of Caquetá in which we empower and give work to women that we permanently save from prostitution.

And we have also become operators of some public services, we administer important resources of childhood and adolescence and old people. Unfortunately, the issue of women is not very developed in my country, it is very difficult to leave a budget for that.

– What would you say to those who say that prostitution is work that is chosen voluntarily and that should be regulated as extra work?

– No no no no no. This is not a job, and you must continue to say it and shout it. It is necessary to get out of our vocabulary and especially from our heads that prostitution is a job.

And no, you can not regulate. How will it regulate, I ask, how often do they penetrate me in the bad, how much in the bad, how many pipes should I do, how many punishments should I suffer?

No, it's not a job and it can not be regulated. bad is a crime against humanity, against women who suffer it.

– Have you ever feared for your life?

– Of course, all the time. I live, I live, in a region where all armed actors converge. We have an overpopulation of armed men in power, we have drug traffickers, gangs, paramilitaries, guerrillas, the army …

We have more than 28,000 armed men in our area. So, all the time, we fear for our life.

On several occasions, during these 20 years of accompanying women who want to get out of prostitution, we had to negotiate with the different armed groups in my area.

– Did you also fear for your life when you were in prostitution?

– how not always Danger is always imminent in the lives of whores. And even more in a violent, armed context, with drug trafficking like the one I live: the lives of whores are worthless. Everything is paid with life.

And the woman's body becomes the war booty of the warriors. The woman is hurt, the mistress, the girl, the lover of the other with whom we are arguing.

It's about killing her, torturing her so that the other feels that I have more power.

– Why do many men find it acceptable to pay in exchange for bad?

– Because it's the value they give to women. They see us as things that can be used, abused and bought.

There are countries that punish men who buy bad with fines. What do you think?

I think it helps. All the strategies that can be used against this crime, which is a monster with all the faces, with all the money in the world, are going well.

– How to put an end to prostitution?

– I do not know if I am very naive, but I think that the development of new masculinities, new relations between men and women and the implementation of prevention programs integrating in the primary program of our children our question of the rights of the women and men as responsible social actors.

We must begin to change the mentality that impresses in our children that our women must be at the service of men.

– Some former prostitutes talk about brothels as concentration camps.

– I never compared it, but when I heard it, I started to think and, yes, I have spent all my life in life and today. Now, there are many women in concentration camps.

– Do you feel stigmatized for being a prostitute?

– Yes Madam. In my area, stigma is still felt, more so for women than for men.

The men do not care, they care about a donkey: I met her, I used her, I paid her and she was finished. For women, women do not forgive that we were a prostitute.

I see it especially in institutions, women who have power: "Oh, this bitch comes", "this old woman is already, what laziness", "now we give everything and she still kisses" …

– How is the relationship with your children? Do they support it?

– Yes, they know, they support me and all work in my badociation. I have a girl who is a psychologist, the other is a pedagogue and the boy also works with us.

– Did you manage to forgive your mother for putting her with 14 years in a brothel?

– I think I never blamed him. She believed that she was doing her best for me, that she was teaching me a craft. She was raised in a patriarchal culture and felt that what she had done was what she had to do.

I never blamed him. In fact, today, she lives with me and I support her economically in her old age. No, I never blamed him.