Twenty years ago, the juvenile police in Cordoba, Argentina gathered street sex workers together to gain information on children prostitution in the downtown area. Sex workers turned the agenda upside down, and used the opportunity to protest against police abuses, mistreatment and violence. We, sex workers, simply protested and shouted out loud in our own words all the indignation we felt inside. Our bodies were tired of coming in and out of police stations and of suffering systematic police abuses. The juvenile police left empty handed. Sex workers did not. In that moment of indignation we bonded and began to organise. AMMAR Cordoba is a sex workers’ organisation that has been running solid for over two decades now.
The abolitionist wave came later, much later. It is not that there were no abolitionists before. But in 2010-2012 the abolitionist perspective appeared as never before in the media, political forums, and foreign funding applications. AMMAR Cordoba confronted the shift in every way possible. We publicly challenged the conflation of sex slavery and autonomous, consensual, adult sex work, decrying it as a way of fostering secrecy, stigma, violence and exploitation. We argued that abolition would neither undermine mafia organisations nor make women less vulnerable to corrupt state officials. We joined the provincial committee against slavery, and although abolitionist organisations are also there we make sure our voices are heard.
We denounced article 45 of the Argentinian Code of Conduct, which punished “scandalous prostitution” as violent and discriminatory, until it was abolished. We pushed back against constant and systematic police detentions, and reported abuses committed by the rescue industry. We respond, loud and clear, every time somebody says that we do not know what we want, or do not want to do what we do, or that we do not do it by ourselves.
