[citation needed] The presence of relatively well-paid foreign oil workers greatly expanded the sex trade in port cities.
In particular, black women of a lower socioeconomic class who could not get jobs as domestics or selling sweets and candies as street vendors in urban areas turned to prostitution for money.
[2] Women and girls from surrounding Andean states, in particular Colombia, were also recruited to come to Venezuela and sometimes forced to work in the sex trade.
Prostitution became a big business and women from the Caribbean and even Europe (notably Netherlands, France, and Belgium) came to Venezuela looking for work.
They classified the activity, applied a city tax to the work, and required weekly medical examinations of the sex workers.
In 1930, an anti-venereal institute conducted a census of major towns in the state, and prostitutes were required to report where they worked to local offices.
A Ministry of Health report showed that the office needed over 3 million units of penicillin at any given time for the treatment of syphilis.
Oil companies started testing and firing employees with syphilis until unions got involved and called for treatment without termination.
Eventually, the public's sense of morality was offended by the effects of the growing sex trade, and night clubs with prostitutes and brothels were moved from downtown to red light districts on the outskirts of cities.
When police and Healthy Ministry workers raid nightclubs, women without these cards are arrested or expected to provide money and/or sexual favors.
Because then when they see you on the street, just imagine.”[9]: 148 The travesti face a penal system in which a complaint does not change police behavior but rather serves as a marker for possible future aggressions.
[citation needed] Marianela Tovar, an LGBT activist in Caracas at the organization Contranatura, explains that travesti experience violence from police and clients of sex work but still feel forced to do sex work because “it’s the only way that they can be their true gender identity.” [8]: 102 In other professions common for women in Venezuela, such as nursing, trans women would not be able to present as their chosen gender identity.
[citation needed] Another trend regarding Venezuelan travesti that has been investigated is the migration trans women from Venezuela to Europe to become transgender sex workers.
During the reporting period, alleged victims of trafficking from Venezuela were identified in Aruba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Greece, Portugal, Guyana, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Spain, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Venezuelan officials and international organizations have reported identifying sex trafficking victims from South American, Caribbean, Asian, and African countries in Venezuela.