Venezuela's months-long economic crisis has worsened, with citizens scrambling to get access to everything from condoms to toilet paper , and now, Venezuelan women are turning to prostitution to get by, a new report from Fusion suggests. Prostitution is legal in Colombia, which is where more and more Venezuelan women are going to work. According to Fusion's Manuel Rueda, most women head to places like Cucuta, a busy border town, for a few days of work before heading back home to Venezuela.
Although the Colombian government is cracking down on undocumented sex workers, saying it wants to stop the spread of STDs, it's easy to cross over the border from Venezuela to Cucuta, with only a bridge separating the two and no officials checking documents at the border. Other Venezuelan women aren't just selling sex — they're selling money.
A Bloomberg story found that prostitutes near places like Puerto Cabello, a Venezuelan port town, could double their earnings by being paid in dollars from visiting foreign tourists and then selling the dollars to local businesses for bolivares at high rates. One woman, Giselle, said she could make more in two hours as a prostitute in Puerto Cabello than working a month doing anything else.
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