The Ethnographic Case

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¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 By Anna Wilking

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 As a visual anthropologist, I went to the field with the intent of making a documentary film about one of my informants, while also conducting ethnographic research with sex workers who worked on the streets of the historic district of Quito, Ecuador. Over the three years I ended up staying in the field, I spent time with 40 women. I examined how they negotiated their multifaceted identities as mothers who were also sex workers—subjectivities frequently viewed as mutually exclusive in Latin America, where religiously inflected gender norms often position mothers as saint-like figures in the social imaginary and sex workers as fallen women, sinners in the eyes of the Catholic Church. I planned to make a film that would use one woman’s story to represent the lives I saw around me—a narrative based on a single mother who had turned to sex work to support her children. Instead, I made a film about an exception. This case is about this (mis)representation.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 In Ecuador and throughout Latin America, where sex work is decriminalized, prostitution is a viable work option for women who lack formal education. Although they typically earn roughly the same amount as the other jobs they qualify for in the domestic service industry or manufacturing sector, these women chose sex work, and in particular, street prostitution, because as freelance workers they could set their schedules around the needs of their children. Indeed, the women who solicited clients on the streets of Quito’s historic center worked regular 9:00 to 5:00 hours, coming and going as they pleased in the middle of the day to shuttle their children between school and daycare.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 They also confined their work to daylight hours because they worked in a neighborhood that transformed into an open drug market at night. They were not organized in any formal way, but due to the rapid gentrification occurring throughout the historic district, my informants were starting to unite to fight for their right to remain in the area. In my film, I wanted my viewers to see that these sex workers were typical Ecuadorian women, who had jobs that they treated like any other.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 It will resonate with anyone who has ever made or attempted to make a documentary film, that I had series of false starts. I started filming Javier and his children one day while waiting for my intended protagonist to show up. Eventually, Javier and his children became my primary protagonists. He was the partner of one of the sex workers—Kati—and was always on the streets. Their household was unusual for Ecuador: Javier was the main childcare provider for their three children, while Kati supported the family through sex labor. Their youngest child, Josue, was born with severe cognitive and physical delays and needed full-time care, which Javier lovingly provided. In fact, part of why Javier was the principal parent because it was he, rather than Kati, who had the patience and skill to care for Josue, as my film depicts in several raw, emotional scenes.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Javier, his children, and I spent our days on the streets so it comes as no surprise that he became one of my closest informants. Javier described the complex social relationships, and in particular, the dynamics of drug trafficking in the neighborhood. Early on, he established himself as my unofficial bodyguard during fieldwork, a role magnified once I told him my plans to start filming. Javier thought I was extra vulnerable in the area as an outsider, which was probably true, though over my three years in the field, I became comfortable and as long I left before sunset, I always felt safe. We made a deal that he would look after me, and in exchange, I would take him and his children to Carmen’s cafeteria, where lunches costs $1.50 for soup and a main course.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Even though I had been worried about the ethical issues involved with making a film with any of the sex workers, my discomfort was compounded with Javier and Kati because they were more marginalized than my other intended protagonists. They were both addicted to base, a yellow powder that has a similar effect to crack cocaine. Significantly cheaper than cocaine at $1 a baggie, base is the drug of choice of South America’s most impoverished citizens. Although the possession of all drugs for personal use is now legal in Ecuador, I was worried about exposing their consumption. Though it was farfetched, I wondered if they could get in trouble with Ecuadorian child protection services. I was also uncertain to what extent their families knew about their drug use and Kati’s involvement in the sex industry.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 I discussed my plans with Javier and Kati for the final product—that I hoped the documentary would travel widely on the international film festival circuit, obtain theatrical or televised release, become available publicly online, and ultimately, receive distribution. There was the potential for countless people to become intimately acquainted with the details of their lives, which anyone, regardless of their subject position, might feel uncomfortable with, but for individuals who were already facing discrimination and stigmatization, the stakes seemed particularly high.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 I was particularly cognizant of how the final product might produce surprising results as neither my protagonists nor I could have anticipated the success of my first film, Carmen’s Place (2009), which focused on transgender teenage sex workers living at a homeless shelter run by an Episcopal priest in Queens, New York. It played widely on the international festival circuit, obtained distribution, and is still in circulation today. I had thought I was making a film in obscurity that would never amass a public audience, so I had not approached my protagonists with the same caution. The success of Carmen’s Place caught us all off guard, but luckily, the people in my film had been supportive of me throughout the process and were pleased with the end results.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Having learned my lesson from Carmen’s Place—that my film with Kati and Javier might circulate more widely than I anticipated and that I would not be able to control its path once it was released—I started running through possible outcomes. What if, for example, Kati’s mother was to find out about her drug use by watching my documentary on You Tube one day? (This particular worry turned out to be moot because during the filming, Javier, desperate to get Kati into rehab, told her mother every detail of their lives.) What if my narrative about Kati was viewed as representative of all the sex workers in Quito’s historic center? I did not want my audience to associate drug use with sex work, since most of the women did not consume drugs. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by Kati and Javier’s story because they were one of the few dual-parent households that had a father as the primary child provider that I had come across in Ecuador.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Filming went relatively smoothly for a while, until “it” happened—the major climax of the story. Kati disappeared. I had become extremely close to them by that time and when Javier called me to say that Kati had not come home in two days, I feared the worst. I was absolutely distraught and as Javier and I checked the city’s morgues, hospitals, and prisons, continuing my film was the last thing on my mind. I have almost no footage from that day, or the days that followed. The footage I do have is terrible quality; as the snippets I include in the film show, much of it is out of focus, has inconsistent audio tracks and is riddled with other technical difficulties. For many in my filmmaking circles, this wrinkle in the plot was viewed as narrative gold: my film had achieved a punctuated climax that many other filmmakers only dream about. But for me, due to the unusual duration and intensity of my filming Javier and Kati, my interpersonal relationships with them took precedence over getting the story. My professionalism as a filmmaker had worn thin, which I accepted as a natural consequence of this project.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Filming came to a halt in the days and weeks that followed Kati’s disappearance as we began to realize what had happened. Kati had moved to a nearby city, Ambato, with her lover and she was not coming back. Javier and the children went back to his family’s house in Guayaquil—his natal city on the coast, while Kati and her new partner established their lives in Ambato. At this point, I decided to put the film to rest. It had taken an emotional toll on me and I felt depleted. Now that Kati and Javier were living in different cities in Ecuador, I also knew it was not feasible to continue on a practical level. Kati had left her children and I did not want to make a film about a “bad” mother.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 1 However, for my own sake, I felt compelled to go to Ambato to find Kati to verify that she was alive and well. I brought my camera in case she wanted to record an interview about the struggles she had faced leading up to her decision to leave. When I finally found her in the red-light district, Kati wished to share her story on camera.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 1 This clip is from Javier’s first week back in Guayaquil, where he is staying with his brother in Kati’s absence. Prior to this, Kati and Javier had claimed that Josue’s developmental problems were related to Kati having fallen on three different occasions during her pregnancy; this is what they told doctors, family, and everyone on the street. But here, in the interview, Javier shares with the audience that Kati smoked base throughout her pregnancy with Josue, who was born with severe cognitive delays.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 1 Everyone sympathized with Kati, but no one was fooled. It was common knowledge that Kati and Javier were addicts, especially since they procured base from dealers in the neighborhood and lived in a single occupancy hotel known for its drug consumption. When Javier showed up with Josue in his stroller, the sex workers were always cordial but as soon as they were out of sight, they gossiped wildly about Josue’s condition, all of them shaking their heads and tsk-tsking. As a result, the above clip is powerful because Javier finally acknowledges that Kati had never fallen during pregnancy.

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Immediately following Javier’s disclosure, we see Kati share her story. This was the interview I filmed in Ambato after her disappearance. It was one of the last times I ever saw her. In the interview, Kati explains why she abandoned the family: she was fed up with Javier’s abuse, of being the breadwinner, and of working in the sex industry. The interview ends on a heartbreaking note. When asked whether she would see her children again, Kati wistfully states that she would indeed, once she gets her own apartment, where she will bring them—one day. We later learn that Kati does not contact her children over the next several years.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Although everyone understood why Kati would leave Javier due to abuse or because she fell in love with someone else, no one in their social circles, including her family, could comprehend why she would leave her children. Back on the streets in Quito, the sex workers were horrified by Kati’s decision, as many of them were single mothers who had turned to the sex industry to give their children a stable future.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 1 I decided to continue with the film. I took a long break to regroup and figure out how to move forward. The film’s narrative arc ended up focusing on Javier’s redemption story. Over the next couple years, I traveled to Guayaquil once a month to film Javier as he gets back on his feet. Indeed, he makes a lot of positive changes. First and foremost, he gets sober after 33 years of smoking base. He also applies to government aid for families with special needs children and settles into permanent, family owned housing.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 My story did not turn out to be about a sex worker or the plight of a single mother. Instead, it is the sympathetic portrait of a single father, the ex-partner of a sex worker, who may or may not have been abusive.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 While conducting my research and in writing, I had not wanted to present sex workers in a bad light. In hindsight, I can see how problematic it was that I had wanted to construct a decidedly positive portrayal of sex workers’ lives, a portrayal reminiscent of the old ethnographic “noble savage” trope. In turning away from the story of a heroic mother and toward a struggling father, I have also seen the value of focusing on what is neither obvious nor representative.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Javier remains the only single father I have met in Ecuador. That I could have initially overlooked the value of his story, strikes me as telling of the lack of space that exists—not only in the gendered politics of Ecuadorian life, but in anthropological stories as well—for men to be caregivers.

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 1 This is an important lesson for the anthropology of sex and gender. As a woman interested in gender equality, compelled to study female sex workers because I was drawn to their specific struggles as women, it finally dawned on me the extent to which I had privileged the female experience in all of my work. Although I had been hesitant about using Javier as the protagonist because I had wanted to do a film on a single mother, the film continues to be a story about parenthood—not a simple, glorious parenthood, but a messy parenthood, fraught with contradiction. In this sense, my documentary is not just a (mis)representation, but it is also an interference, shifting the collective gaze of sex work away from the body of the woman, while making room for vulnerable, nurturing masculinities to be part of the story.

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¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 The story I set out to tell never materialized, but as is often the case, I ended up with something much more powerful. Lesson learned. As filmmakers and ethnographers, our most compelling contributions are often those that emerge once we let go of our burdens of representation—in the sociological sense—of having a case stand in for the majority.

¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 I am not suggesting that we no longer think about how we represent our informants. Making the film was arduous, but I am grateful for my anxiety along the way. I still remain unresolved and somewhat uncomfortable with Kati’s portrayal, which is part of the reason I write to address these issues. Representation of any sort is fraught, its ethics slippery rather than black or white. Perhaps that discomfort is part of the exchange, something that accompanies the gift of my protagonists’ stories; perhaps the question—could it have been done better—is something that should haunt us, forming part of our ethical responsibility.

¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 Anna Wilking is a writer, anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, and adjunct professor based in Brooklyn, NY. She is also a community organizer, working with undocumented Latina sex workers in the South Bronx. She earned her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from New York University in 2015. Her research focused on street prostitution in Quito, Ecuador and she is currently writing a book about her work. Sea La Luz (Let There Be Light) http://belightfilm.com/ won the AAA’s award for best graduate student film of 2014 and has screened in festivals internationally.