In the streets of Bogotá’s infamous red light district, something new and colourful has begun appearing, pasted up between the graffiti on the walls.



Monica Quiroz, biting off strips of thick adhesive tape, is sticking up the laminated, fluorescent pages of this month’s edition of a newspaper written for and by local sex workers.

“Don’t let them see the camera,” Quiroz orders, nodding toward the notoriously violent drug den just behind her. This is how the second edition of La Esquina (the Corner) was distributed, fastened to the walls of Santa Fe, the dreary red light district, by its staff, who are sex workers themselves.



Quiroz is a 44-year-old transgender woman from the coffee-producing region of Caldas, who has lived and worked in Bogotá for 30 years. She is a trained beautician who turned to sex work 17 years ago.



She shares a one-bedroom apartment with two other sex workers, five dogs and six cats, and says that though the newspaper has been successful so far, it needs a cash injection.



“It looks good,” street vendor Estefanía says, wheeling around a rickety trolley with a diverse array of condoms, lubricant and thrush cream that she sells to the sex workers and their customers outside the neon-lit brothels.

Founded in July last year when a group of social activists and artists wanted to start a positive project in the neighbourhood, the paper is produced by a group of mainly transgender sex workers. The “mural” edition, the one pasted to the walls for their colleagues to read while they wait for clients, is the most popular, but print copies are also distributed around brothels and shops.

Ángel López, 23, a politics graduate, is one of the few staff members who is not a sex worker. He is the volunteer editor of La Esquina, and runs the weekly editorial meetings.

“The idea is that the project is inclusive. We didn’t want to create the image of people from outside the neighbourhood coming in and implementing their idea of the world through a newspaper. So we started finding ways of being able to speak to the women and getting them involved in the initiative,” he says.

“One of the things we had to come up with was the name. The women who took part in the first meetings came up with various options, but in the end they all agreed that La Esquina was the name which most identified with them: the street corner, the place where they carry out their work,” López says.

Monica Quiroz and Ángel López organise the page order of the second issue of La Esquina. Photograph: Nadège Mazars/Hans Lucas/The Guardian

The project is supported by two organisations based in the heart of Santa Fe. The Sexual Diversity Attention Centre (Caids) – a government-supported project that helps people who have been harmed psychologically, sexually and physically – and MovilizArte Foundation, which organises artistic projectsfor sex workers.

“Below Caids, you have women carrying out prostitution, there are homeless people and there is drug-dealing going on. It is a meeting point between many realities, so the mural newspaper is strategic,” López explains.

The team used a survey to ask locals what they wanted the paper to cover. Politics got a clear thumbs down, while residents said they really wanted to hear about security, health and events.

Aura Francesconi, 42, a heavy metal enthusiast and fortune teller, writes the horoscopes, and is the only cisgender woman on staff.

Although not a sex worker herself, she is a local resident and has a deep understanding of Santa Fe’s complexities.

“This neighbourhood is depressing. It has a high level of violence and drug addiction and many social problems, so we want to bring a little more happiness to the community. The project could also mean that people in the neighbourhood have a bit more culture, because culture is power.”

The latest edition has a gossip section, a “Monica recommends” column and a budget recipe – how to make a meal for less than 10,000 Colombian pesos (around £2.50) – for the poorly paid workers.

But La Esquina also covers more hard-hitting subjects, including the horrifying reality of botched plastic surgeries that often afflict the country’s transgender women.

Two of the paper’s staff – Marta Sánchez, 61, and Lorena Barriga, 49 – shared their stories of injecting vegetable oil into their breasts in an effort to enhance them for better business.

Marcela Agrado, an aspiring photographer. She took part in the painting of the wall. Photograph: Nadège Mazars/Hans Lucas/The Guardian

Sánchez’s breast implants were destroyed as a result of injecting the substance and she wants others to know about the practice. “I injected the liquid and some months later it started to go wrong. I was unable to breathe properly. I went to the doctor and he told me that what I had injected was going to have to find somewhere to come out, and that I had to wait.”

“A few weeks later it burst from my side, just under my breast. I had to hold a piece of cloth over the wound for a few days before I could see a doctor,” she says.

Another staffer, Lorena Daza, 24, takes the two-hour journey to Santa Fe most days from Soacha, an impoverished sector on the outskirts of Bogotá.

“I left home because I wanted to be independent and live alone,” she says, adding that the religious conservatism of her home city was oppressive.

Being on staff allows her to meet more girls in the neighbourhood, and she says the project helps take her mind off the negative aspects of her life.



“People think it is really cool. I thought to myself, ‘Is anybody actually going to read this?’, but they do, and they like it,” she says.



An aspiring photographer, Marcela Agrado, 48, takes advantage of the newspaper to improve the reading and writing skills that she is honing at classes with another NGO in Santa Fe.

In a neighbourhood where violence and murder usually steal the headlines, La Esquina is making an impact in gentler way.

“This is a neighbourhood filled with survivors,” says Francesconi. “It’s filled with people who have had their lives plagued by thousands of obstacles and here they have the opportunity to show themselves for who they really are.”