Prostitution in Mexico

Some Mexican cities have enacted "tolerance zones" ("zonas de tolerancia") which allow regulated prostitution and function as red-light districts.

Though the French enforced supervision of prostitutes as a way of protecting themselves from infections, similar regulations remained when Mexico regained control of the country.

[11] During the authoritarian regime of Porfirio Díaz in the late 19th century, regulations in the forms of monthly quotas, medical examinations, and photographic documentation were imposed upon prostitutes.

[12] Regulatory practices were most severe on the eve of the Mexican export-mining economic collapse, and had been met with backlash from women's rights groups in Oaxaca, Yucatán, and Veracruz.

The access to Mexico via the railroad from the United States and the economic success of prostitution gave way to a surge of Mexican women participating in this kind of labor.

[15] In translocal border cities such as Mexicali in Baja California, local brothels and vaudeville theaters became spaces for American tourists, Asian laborers, and Mexican-American sex workers to intermingle in the 1930s.

[17] It has been argued that neoliberal reforms instituted in the 1990s under the PRI administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari—including the signing of NAFTA in 1994—incubated adverse economic conditions that caused the migration of indigenous women from southern Mexico to northern border locales to find work in the sex trade or in maquiladoras.

Mexico as a country overall follows the idea of machismo, meaning many of the men have a sense of strong and aggressive masculine pride which results in them seeing themselves as above women in many aspects of society, so to see a man engage in this line of work, especially if its homosexual sex work, it can strip away their sense of masculinity and bring upon more shame to them that extends that of just being a regular sex worker.

When that negative view is applied to prostitution, it gets amplified and is seen as evil, and any woman who doesn't abide by these stigmas is ultimately stripped of their womanhood.

[citation needed] Child sex tourism persists in Mexico, especially in tourist areas such as Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Cancún, and in northern border cities such as Tijuana[28] and Ciudad Juárez.

[29] Casa Alianza director Manuel Capellin is quoted as saying "More than 16,000 children are sexually exploited through networks involving foreigners and military, police, government and business officials.

Mexican women and children, and to a lesser extent men and transgender individuals, are exploited in sex trafficking in Mexico and the United States.

[31] Young female migrants recounted being robbed, beaten, and raped by members of criminal gangs and then forced to work in table dance bars or as prostitutes under threat of further harm to them or their families.

The majority of non-Mexican trafficking victims come from Central America; lesser numbers come from Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, China, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Uruguay, and Eastern European countries.