Just the mention of La Merced, a neighborhood located in central Mexico City, conjures up the idea of a zone where crime, business and prostitution converge. Many of the 3, women working in the area's sex trade have devoted the greater portion of their lives to selling their bodies, thus damaging their physical, emotional and mental health.
Currently, estimates are that there are approximately 70, women immersed in the sex trade in Mexico City, a figure that includes women being held in slavery-like conditions or in sexual servitude. Via community strategies, following cases and art, health and creative workshops, the experts managed to make contact with many of the women with an eye toward understanding and attending to their main problems.
La Merced, when they were just 25 they were already considered old for their work, and at age 35 they were considered non-productive," Martinez said. In response to this problem, the two specialists, along with Karina Lopez and Maria Elena Garcia, the latter a professor at ENTS, decided that - via Lady Meche - they could offer the women the chance to have "real" jobs based on preparing and selling cosmetic products.
We didn't plan for them to abandon their sex activities but rather for them to be able to choose where they wanted to be," Martinez said. And it was the women who got involved with the project who told them of their desire to have something of their own, a business, something formal and established, rather than their informal street work. So, the experts came up with the idea to create homemade lipstick under the Lady Meche brand, which they hope to bring onto the market during the second half of this year.
The lipstick line will come in three "flavors" - sweets, flowers and fruits - and it will be homemade right in the neighborhood. However, the social workers feel that the project has already had an impact on the women who have worked with it. The plan is - in the future - for the women to be able to acquire beneficial social and psychological habits and to develop a tolerance for frustration. Ultimately, they acknowledge that the main objective is to establish the project as a company that has a social impact.
