Word: altos
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There are two things Ed Soares is devoted to. One is his job as a detective for the East Palo Alto, Calif., police department, where he has worked for five years. The other is a large garish tattoo of St. Michael casting the devil into hell that adorns his forearm. The image is a work in progress, and Soares, 33, has spent three years and $5,000 getting it just the way he wants it. So he faced something of a test of allegiances this summer when the department forbade all its officers from displaying tattoos...
...refuse to be STD-tested until we can work free from harassment," says Lily Cortez, president of the Night Workers of El Alto, the low-income city that borders La Paz, Bolivia's seat of government...
...angry mobs had taken matters into their own hands, burning more than 30 establishments. Hundreds of women and transvestites were forced to strip while their belongings were torched; dozens were beaten and mutilated as the police stood by and watched. "It was something we needed to do," says El Alto resident Roberta Quispe Mayta. "Now our husbands will behave better and the prostitutes will leave...
...Indeed, the Supreme Court ruling requires that the Ministry of Health take full responsibility for the sex workers' safety and medical services. But the government has turned a blind eye to the recent events in El Alto, and has ignored the demands of the prostitutes. That, says the union, has left its members no option but to put their clients' health at risk until their security is guaranteed. Some sex workers have gone as far as mutilating themselves and sewing their lips together in order grab the nation's attention...
...backlash against prostitution could escalate, however. El Alto officials are determined not to reopen any brothels within a 1,600-foot radius of schools, and there are rumors of similar citizen protests planned for the cities of Cochabamba and Sucre. The sex workers are hoping that the public health risk posed by their action forces the authorities to back down. But by refusing to undergo the medical checkups required to be able to work legally, it also potentially opens them to further police action...