Los Angeles Times
Posted January 13 2005


TIJUANA · Outside El Burro Bar, Monica and Juana saw the seedy landscape of this border city's red-light district gradually take on a new look with swaying palm trees, pastel-painted hotels and fancy lampposts.

Then city inspectors ordered Monica and Juana and all the other prostitutes off the streets and inside the smoky bars and hotels. The new sidewalks, the inspectors said, were for tourists, not the dozens of hookers who crowd the doorways and sidewalks of Callejon Coahuila.

The women -- called "las paraditas," or "the little ones who stand" -- rebelled, triggering a classic only-in-Tijuana civic battle that pitted community leaders against the city's storied and stubborn tradition of vice.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/caribbean/sfl-hmexprostitutes13jan13,0,4432765.story?coll=sfla-news-caribbean