Report
In January 2000, two Chilean architects received a grant from the government's funding organization for culture, Fondart, to construct a glass house in the center of Santiago. The project was named "Nautilus" and the house was designed so that viewers could watch the everyday activities of the inhabitant, the young and attractive actress, Daniela Tobar, as she did her household chores, showered, bathed and went about her daily business.
"Because my addiction is money, and my professionalism as well."[1]
He was 21 years old, an Afro-Cuban sex worker in Havana. He started the work when he was 13 and the Cuban economy was at its worst, two years into the "Special Period During Peacetime" but one year before the state reluctantly legalized the dollar for internal exchange in 1993.
Prostitution was a profitable profession for some women prior to the Cuban Revolution. So lucrative was this vocation that those who engaged in sex for money knew no other trade and it was not uncommon to see a young child in her preteens soliciting men in one of the red-light districts.
Peruvian women appear to have made genuine strides during Alberto Fujimori's ten years in power. A Ministry of Women and a Public Defender for Women (an adjunct to the Public Defender for the People) were created.
Last year, at 24, Sebastián Tol was a "champion" cane cutter on the agro-export plantations of Guatemala's Pacific coast, averaging over ten tons a day.* At the end of the harvest season, however, he returned home to the highlands with shoulder pain that made it difficult to do even routine chores.
In the early 1990s, I went to Mexico's northern border to study the role of gender in global production.[1] In Mexico, the bulk of such production takes place in maquiladoras (or maquilas)—export-processing factories owned by foreign (usually U.S.) capital.
In Mexico's presidential election last year, many progressives were seduced into voting for Vicente Fox, candidate of the right-wing National Action Party (PAN). When the votes were counted, it was clear that Fox's margin of victory was provided by votes that ordinarily would have gone to the left.
In November 1999, feminists from throughout the region convened in Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, for the Eighth Latin American and Feminist Encuentro. Since 1981, feminists have attended these meetings to share experiences and debate the most pressing issues facing the regional movement.
