Where 'Pimps' Roam Free
By Julia Scheeres| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Jul, 07, 2001
PUERTO PLATA, Dominican Republic -- A slow tourist season has hurt the T-shirt and coconut milk vendors in this scenic beach town, but it hasn't put a dent in the body business.
Evidence of the sex trade is everywhere as men in shorts and sandals duck into rent-by-the-hour "love motels" with Dominican women in bright dresses.
"There is always a demand for sex," said one Dominican prostitute as she lounged at one of the town's waterfront bars. "Men will always pay for it, especially in here ... where they can get anything they want at a discount."
Indeed, the Dominican Republic is one of the biggest sex tourism destinations in the world, thanks in part to Internet sites that extol the country as a "single man's paradise."
When Christopher Columbus sailed into the bay here in 1493, the sun's reflection on the ocean made the water dazzle like silver coins, so he called it Port Silver. Nowadays, Puerto Plata still dazzles millions of vacationers looking for turquoise reefs and palm-strewn white sand beaches.
But this sunny vacation mecca has a dark side: The area's thriving commercial sex industry has given it one of the highest HIV rates of any region in the country, according to the World Bank.
The tourism boom didn't hit this island nation until the 1990s, when resorts gobbled up miles of virgin beachfront property. Today, men looking for local action can choose from customized love vacations that include room, board, 20 alcohol drinks a day and the company of one or more local women.
That's hardly specific to the Dominican Republic. Plug "adult travel" into a search engine and you'll find dozens of membership-based sites where men around the world swap information on prostitutes, brothels and the price of oral sex in Brazil or Cuba.
The pricing schemes vary, but the content is the same. It's a war of sex-oriented bragging: Members send in their R-rated travel reports in which they boast about the number of women they've "nailed," including naked photographs of their conquests. They share tips and warnings, such as this post from a tourist who visited Boca Chica, a beachside town in southern Dominican Republic:
"If you go there, beware of a girl named Caroline. Bad, bad news: underage, pregnant and on drugs...."
At TSM, one of the busier destinations, a man describing himself as a retired Canadian steel worker now living in Puerto Plata wrote: "(I) love the Latin lifestyle: one wife and as many girlfriends as you can handle.... I would like to pass on my report on these bars in the Puerto Plata area with photos of my favorite girls that work in them."
Another popular site, the World Sex Archives, advertises discussion boards where "newbies learn from the experienced pros as to where they too can get 18-year-old girls for less than the price of a good steak."
Among banner ads for Viagra, members can shuffle through pictures of dull-eyed prostitutes engaged in flagrante delicto with the members/amateur pornographers.
The site owner, Mark -- who asked that his last name not be used -- said World Sex Archives is successful, although he refused to give exact membership numbers.
"WSA generates sufficient money from the sale of paid subscriptions that it will continue to operate as long as the Internet and the world's oldest profession exist," he said.
The global reach of the Internet has resulted in a tremendous increase in the sex tourism industry, said Donna M. Hughes, a professor of Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
"The Web has broken the industry wide open," Hughes said. "The scope and detail of this exchange is without precedent. These women are viewed as objects and rated on everything from skin color to presence of scars and firmness of their flesh. The guys running these sites are pimps."
In the Dominican Republic, as in many developing countries, many women are driven to sell their bodies by poverty and lack of alternatives. It is a profession that is illegal but tolerated by local authorities, who accept kickbacks to turn a blind eye to the seedier side of tourism.
In Puerto Plata there are so many streetwalkers competing for the attention of vacationers that one hair stylist said she doesn't leave her home after dark because she doesn't want to be mistaken for a puta. In the town's discos, bars and restaurants, solitary women stare suggestively at male tourists or rub up against them like cats.
"I don't have an education, and I've got two children," shrugged 15-year-old Belkis as she slinked along the busy beach promenade here in a hot pink Lycra dress. "Where else can I make such good money? To be a prostitute, you don't need schooling, all you need is your body."
Belkis' rates start at $15 for oral sex, and she charges $5 extra if a man doesn't want to use a condom.
"I don't need any more kids," she giggles, looking for an instant like a child instead of someone who aspires to turn "five to six tricks a night."
Its reputation for cheap and easy sex has given the Caribbean the second-highest AIDS rate in the world after sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank, which recently announced plans to devote $150 million to fight HIV/AIDS in the region's islands.
But that sobering statistic hasn't stopped the flesh trade on this sun-sparkled land. In some areas of the Dominican Republic, HIV infection rates among prostitutes top 12 percent, according to local activist groups.
Public health campaigns exhort men to use condoms with prostitutes to protect their families from the disease, which is the primary cause of death among Dominican men under age 45.
But this lesson seems to have been lost on some sexual tourists.
"Do I worry about AIDS/HIV? No," quipped "Joe," a TSM member who described himself as a well-educated tech professional in his late 40s. "Quite frankly, (I) believe that heterosexual AIDS is hard for a man to contract."
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