Paulina has worked as a sex worker on the streets of Lima, the capital of Peru, for 15 years. With no other form of income, this is how she supports her family.
“When you have children, you will do anything so they can eat,” Paulina said.
During all her years as a sex worker, Paulina has experienced countless acts of violence and witnessed the abuses suffered by other sex workers. She thought she had seen it all, until September 2022, when criminals murdered a fellow sex worker on one of the main streets of downtown Lima.
“They killed her for not paying and for reporting that they were charging a ‘quota,’” said Paulina, referring to the type of extortion that criminal groups charge sex workers in exchange for letting them work on the streets.
Fearing that she was on the criminals’ radar, and they would start charging her quotas next, Paulina did not return to work for two months following the murder.
“They told me that they were Tren de Aragua, and that if we didn’t pay the quotas they were going to kill us.”
Paulina
Her fear became a reality in November when she began receiving WhatsApp messages from supposed members of Tren de Aragua, a gang from Venezuela that has been expanding throughout South America. Tren de Aragua has become Lima’s main criminal threat, and the messages Paulina received were a clear warning.
Paulina was charged 400 soles (about $100) as a “registration” fee to continue working in the area where she had been operating for years. In addition to the registration fee, every week, she had to transfer 150 soles ($40) to an account and send a photo of the payment slip with her name on it.
Fearing for her life and that of her children, Paulina began to pay the quota. But before long, she began to have trouble paying the full amount.
“Whether you work or not, you have to collect their money because if you don’t pay them, they will kill you,” she said.
On some days when there were not enough customers, and she found it impossible to collect the full payment, Paulina would go without food to be able to pay the quota. She always sent the criminals what little she could get her hands on, but the criminals would threaten her for not paying the full fee.
“If you don’t like the rules, you better leave the area if you don’t want to die,” one of the messages said.
Although Paulina was afraid of reprisals, reporting the situation to the authorities was not an option. Sex work is legal but unregulated in Peru, leaving sex workers like Paulina unprotected from all kinds of violence. What’s more, security forces rarely help sex workers in situations like this, often discriminating against them and even exploiting them.
“You go to report something, and they say ‘No, I don’t think so, I don’t think they’re going to kill you.’ And when they kill you, [they say] ‘Why didn’t you report it? Why didn’t you say something?’ But when you call them, they don’t even show up,” Paulina said.
Sex workers in Lima have repeatedly faced extortion, beatings, rape, and even murder and disappearance at the hands of security forces, local mafias, and even their clients and families. But even living with regular mistreatment and abuse in their lives, the violence that sex workers face rose to new heights with the appearance of Tren de Aragua.
‘The Streets Are Tough’
Before Tren de Aragua arrived in Peru in 2019, local mafias were the main perpetrators of violence against sex workers. These mafias were led by “mamis” and “papis,” or pimps, who sometimes collected extortion fees from small groups of sex workers. The mamis and papis also operated regional human trafficking networks for sexual exploitation.
“There have always been mafias,” said Angela Villon, the leader of Miluska Life and Dignity (Miluska Vida y Dignidad – MVD), an association of sex workers in Lima. “They would cut [your clothes] and tell you, ‘if you don’t pay next time, we’ll do the same thing to you — exactly the same, but on your skin’ … It was terrifying, but they didn’t kill you.”
Besides the mamis and papis, members of the Peruvian National Police (Policía Nacional de Perú – PNP) and the Serenazgo Municipal, an institution in charge of citizen security, actively abused sex workers in Lima.
Taking advantage of legal loopholes in Peru surrounding sex work, members of the PNP and the serenazgos, or security forces, carried out operations against sex workers and arbitrarily arrested them, according to a dozen sex workers who spoke to InSight Crime. During these operations, the sex workers said they were beaten, mistreated, extorted and even sexually abused.
Another sex worker leader, Leida Portal, who heads Rosa Mujeres de Lucha, an organization dedicated to advocating for sex workers, was the victim of three police officers who broke into her workplace, beat her, stole her money, and took her to the police station, where she was subjected to further abuse and discrimination.
Things began to get even worse for sex workers, however, with the arrival of Venezuelan-based criminal groups in 2019. In about 2015, thousands of Venezuelans began to leave their country, fleeing the country’s economic and political crisis. Many of them headed to Peru, where 1.6 million Venezuelans currently reside, according to figures from the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants (R4V). When the flow of migrants traveling from Venezuela to Peru peaked in 2018, the criminal group Tren de Aragua began to expand throughout South America, using profits from migrant smuggling to settle outside Venezuela.
In Lima, one Tren de Aragua faction called the Gallegos began to displace smaller Peruvian criminal groups. Among the Gallegos’ main targets were networks that extorted sex workers in the capital city.
According to sex workers and members of the PNP who spoke to InSight Crime, the Gallegos announced their arrival in the area on the night of Thursday, January 9, 2020, when three men murdered Isaac Hilario Huamanyalli, known as “Cholo Isaac.” Isaac was allegedly responsible for collecting quotas in the Lince district, the epicenter of sex work in central Lima.
Cholo Isaac’s murder was a sign that Tren de Aragua was looking to control sex work in Lima. But it was not the only one. According to sex workers who spoke to InSight Crime, one of the Peruvian mamis opened the door to Los Gallegos.
“[One] woman got together with a Venezuelan. She taught him how to collect quotas, and the Venezuelan mafia guy took the woman out, and he took over everything,” said Roxi, a Venezuelan sex worker who has been working in Lima for three years.
The Tren de Aragua factions displaced other Peruvian mom-and-pop networks, and with the local competition out of the game, wrapped their tentacles around the sex workers.
Click to read the life stories of the women who spoke to InSight Crime.
Roxi, who is Venezuelan, soon found a job selling soft drinks when she arrived in Lima in 2021. But her wages were not enough to support her five children, two of whom depend entirely on her. A friend introduced her to sex work. “It’s not easy, and sometimes I wish I could do something else, but as a Venezuelan, it’s difficult to find work. I keep doing this so my children don’t go hungry or lack what they need.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Lucia lost her means of supporting her child and grandmother. After finishing a job, she was stopped by the police. “They opened my purse and took the money I had earned… they insulted and threatened me,” she says. The officers told her that next time, she would have to pay them an extortion fee. Today, she finds work through ads but has not escaped violence. She has been kidnapped multiple times and still hopes to find justice for the abuses she has suffered at the hands of both criminals and law enforcement.
Katherine arrived in Lima when she was eight years old. She thought she was coming to study, but in reality, her mother forced her to clean cars using a sponge and newspaper. She carried on working to help support her family, selling flowers, sweeping the streets, and cleaning more cars. “I had to bring home 100 soles (US$26), or my mother would beat me hard”, she recalls. She got into sex work out of necessity. But everything changed in 2023, when armed men followed her husband and murdered him in broad daylight. According to Katherine, the killers targeted him because she had refused to pay the extortion fee demanded in exchange for being allowed to work.
Liliana arrived in Lima in 2017. She was in love and left Venezuela with her partner, hoping for a better life in Peru. She worked as a receptionist and later as a street vendor selling drinks, but the meager earnings were not enough to cover her family’s needs. She entered sex work after responding to a newspaper ad and contacting a Peruvian woman who helped her place ads. Then came the Tren de Aragua and its factions—and with them, extortion. “I don’t have a fixed place to work because they’re always trying to charge me more,” she says. Today, she finds strength in organizing with other women to fight for their rights. “We are all in this struggle together,” she adds.
The Gallegos began by extorting Venezuelan sex workers, then turned their attention to Peruvian, Colombian and Ecuadorian workers.
“At that time, they would kidnap the sex workers and keep them for two, three days (…) in a space where they didn’t let them sleep (…) telling them over and over how they were going to kill them,” said Ángela.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, sex workers who could not go out on the streets of Lima began using messaging applications like WhatsApp to coordinate among themselves and schedule meetings with their clients. The Gallegos took advantage of this, holding on to sex workers’ cell phones and using group chats to collect the numbers of others, thus trapping new victims in their web of extortion.
“When we were still in the middle of the pandemic, they sent us the first message where they introduced themselves,” Ángela recalled. “They said that from then on, we had to pay the quotas to them.”
Pay or Die
Today, six years after Tren de Aragua’s arrival in Peru, all the women engaged in sex work on the streets of Lima must pay a quota to the group or to one of its factions, such as the Gallegos, the Sons of God (Los Hijos de Dios), or the Alayon Dynasty.
“They are just interested in their money. Either you pay them, or they kill you,” said Liliana, a Venezuelan sex worker.
“They are just interested in their money. Either you pay them, or they kill you.”
Liliana
No one can escape the criminals’ reach. For some, like Paulina and Liliana, criminal groups send threatening messages to their cell phones and to the group chats they use to communicate with other sex workers. Others are cornered on the streets and even in their homes.
“Somehow or another, you end up in this circle of criminalization where, if you don’t pay, you don’t work,” said Luciana, a Peruvian sex worker who finds work through advertisements on websites.
Criminal groups track sex workers who use advertisements, like Luciana, through their phones, charging the quotas by text and sharing account numbers where those payments can be deposited.
“They constantly send you messages by WhatsApp. They see your ad, and right away they start threatening you,” Luciana said.
The price of the permit, or “registration,” as the extortionists call it, to work in the areas under the group’s control depends on the criminal faction and the zone, ranging from 200 to 400 soles ($50-100). The weekly payment ranges from 150 to 250 soles ($40-66), but can be as much as 500 ($130). Not everyone pays the same fees. Venezuelan women, who were the first to be extorted, pay more simply because they are Venezuelan. And if they fall behind in their payments, their debt accumulates.
Although the threatening messages almost always come from men, it is women — either Tren de Aragua members or other victims of human trafficking — who collect the quotas on the streets.
According to sex workers and leaders, these women collectors visit the sex work hubs every day to collect quotas. But not even these collectors are safe from the criminal group’s brutality, and one of them was killed after she tried to double-cross them, according to sex workers who spoke to InSight Crime.
“She used to charge us and was killed by the same [criminals],” said Katrina, another woman who spoke to InSight Crime. “She was the one who charged the Peruvian women, but because she got ambitious, she got together with [another criminal group]. But nobody plays with the mafia because if you piss off the mafia, they kill you.”
The consequences for those who refuse to pay or do not have Tren de Aragua’s permission to work in their territory are dire: the criminal group will threaten them, beat them, and may even kill them. And this violence is not random. It is a warning written in blood to other sex workers: those who refuse to pay will suffer the same fate.
Luciana was kidnapped by members of a criminal group in 2023. She had arranged to meet a client at a house, but upon arriving, she realized she had been tricked. Waiting inside the house was an armed man, who said that she was not on his list of women authorized to work and abused her at gunpoint. Although she managed to escape, Luciana fears she will be attacked again.
The families of sex workers are also targeted. In August 2023, Katrina’s husband was having lunch with his family. Unaware that gunmen were following him, he went outside to hail a cab. Moments later, the men shot and killed him.
“It was because I didn’t pay the quota,” Katrina said.
No One is Safe
In Peru, there is no official data on violence against sex workers. InSight Crime requested data from the Ministry of Women and the PNP, and neither provided any information.
According to records from sex worker organizations and InSight Crime’s press monitoring, at least seven women were murdered between 2018 and 2019, and eight women between 2020 and 2021. In 2022, 35 women were murdered, according to monitoring by Miluska Vida y Dignidad. Another 36 were reported missing, and several are believed dead.
“We didn’t find their bodies, but no one pays any attention to us,” Ángela said.
In 2023, they recorded 36 women murdered and 39 missing, and in 2024, at least 39 were murdered or disappeared.
It was not until February 2022 that this violence attracted national attention. That month, two sex workers — one Venezuelan and one Ecuadorian — were murdered in the middle of downtown Lima. Then the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the PNP began investigating some of the cases.
“But it was too late because [the city] was infested with [Venezuelan] mafias,” Angela said.
The authorities’ operations against Tren de Aragua and its factions had no effect on the lives of the sex workers, and the violence against them intensified.
Click to read the life stories of the women who spoke to InSight Crime.
Before becoming a sex worker, Paulina worked as a hostess in a club. Eventually, she felt that she had no choice but to turn to sex work to support her child. “I had to go work at a mine,” she recalls. Later, she returned to the capital, where she continued in the trade. She has little contact with her family and does what she can to provide for her children. She has been extorted both by Tren de Aragua and by the police, who she says have detained her multiple times without cause.
When Carmen ran away from home in 2005, she was searching for a better life. For a while, she worked as a waitress at a bar, but a few years later, the owner told her she would have to start doing sex work. “[My friend] told me not to be afraid, that she would take care of me.” With no other options, she agreed. “I had to work every day because the police would come and demand money from each of us, and if we didn’t pay, they would take us to the station. “ She has been detained multiple times, had her money stolen by police, and even lost her documents and cellphone to them, she told InSight Crime.
Marcela’s first job was washing clothes. She was eight years old, and her family didn’t look after her. “At 13, I ran away from home,” she remembers. A friend took her to a bar, where she started working as a waitress before being sexually exploited. “The owner, ‘la mami,’ controlled me—everything I earned went to her,” she says. She later moved to a remote city to work before returning to Lima. But violence followed her. Since returning, she has been beaten, raped, and threatened, she says. “There was never any justice for me. That’s the worst part.”
Fernanda turned to sex work while searching for another job. She had been working at a bakery, earning just 500 soles (US$130) a month for long hours. She answered an ad for a job at a sauna, but soon realized it was a front for sex work. Needing the money and seeing her coworkers earn significantly more, she decided to enter the trade. ”I remember telling them I wanted to be part of that world,” she says. But she quickly realized the dangers that came with the job. She is the sole provider for her disabled mother. “I would like to have a normal job, but it’s not sustainable for me. So I stay in this world.”
In early 2023, amid a wave of violence, Tren de Aragua carried out two brutal murders that became a symbol of the sex workers’ crusade for justice. In Peru, 62% of trans women work as sex workers, and in February, Tren de Aragua murdered two of them — Rubi Ferrer and Priscilla Aguado — to send a message.
It all started with an altercation between the local quota collector and a sex worker who refused to pay the extortion fee. To send that sex worker a message and scare her into paying her quota, Tren de Aragua members kidnapped Rubí. While filming on their cell phones, they shot her 31 times. Priscilla was killed a few hours later on the outskirts of the city.
“They film [the attacks] so that all the girls fall in line. So that they all see that they have to respect Tren de Aragua members,” said Liliana.
SEE ALSO: Extortion and Sexual Violence: Women’s Unspoken Suffering
The murders and dissemination of the video of Rubi’s execution sparked fear, but also fueled anger and indignation among sex workers in Lima, who are tired of the violence. Sex workers’ organizations have mobilized, organizing marches and sit-ins demanding justice.
“A lot of people rallied together,” Angela said. “They are killing us because we are prostitutes.”But little has changed. Despite authorities capturing one of Rubí’s killers and alias “Andrea,” the local quota collector who allegedly ordered the crimes, trans sex workers in Peru remain in the crosshairs of criminal groups. On February 15, 2024, two days after a march to demand justice for Rubí and Priscilla, trans sex worker Jazmin was murdered in northern Lima for refusing to pay a quota.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Most sex workers do not report extortion, believing that speaking out is useless and exposes them to retaliation. Years of abuse and discrimination by the PNP and the Serenazgo Municipal have generated a deep distrust of the authorities. The situation is even more complicated for Venezuelan women, who often have an irregular migratory status.
“[Before, the police] raped you, assaulted you, threatened you — they threatened us and now the Venezuelan [criminals] come and take our money, and we think the police are going to help us (…) [But] no, they don’t help us.”
Carmen
“[Before, the police] raped you, assaulted you, threatened you — they threatened us and now the Venezuelan [criminals] come and take our money, and we think the police are going to help us (…) [But] no, they don’t help us,” said Carmen, a young sex worker.
In the few cases when women do decide to make a report, they are often revictimized by the members of the police who receive their cases.
“When you’re already dead, that’s when the news reports, ‘they killed a sex worker,’ but it could’ve been one of us that had come forward to make a report, and her complaint got ignored,” Luciana summarized.
Lima’s sex workers have found support and safety among themselves. To protect themselves from violence by Tren de Aragua, clients, and members of the police, they have strengthened their support networks through community organizations that demand their rights. WhatsApp groups, hotlines, and shelters are financed with the resources they manage to collect together and what they get from international cooperation. But these are just a band-aid solution to a systematic problem and a violent criminal group that the authorities have not been able to deal with.