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Lydia's open door: inside Mexico's most modern brothel

In Lydia’s open door, Patty Kelly explores the Galactic Zone, a state-run ‘modern’ brothel in Chiapas, Mexico. Kelly examines state-regulated prostitution from the perspective of sex workers, clients and municipal authorities. She offers a rich ethnography and brings texture and feeling to the lives of the 140 women who work within the Galactic Zone as sex workers (men are not legally permitted to engage in commercial sex in or outside of the zone). Kelly explores the ways in which power is constructed and employed through gender, sexuality, national identity, ethnic background and class. For Kelly, stateregulated prostitution is a form of patriarchy, a method of controlling women’s sexuality, and is a symptom of a ‘global shift from subsistence to service’ and systemic gender inequality (212). A dominant theme in Kelly’s work is the role of ‘structural adjustment’ and neoliberalism in sustaining structural inequalities based on gender, class, national identity and ethnic background. In the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank gave conditional loans to Mexico and other developing nations that encouraged a shift to agribusiness and the privatisation of the oil industry. These loans limited poor Mexicans’ access to resources and forced Mexico into a global economy. Neo-liberal reform encouraged participation in the free market by encouraging privatisation and individualism. Despite an emphasis on individualism, some aspects of society were tightly controlled by the state. The Galactic Zone was established in 1991 as part of Chiapas’ Zona Rosa Project, an effort to regulate commercial sex. The zone relegated legal commercial sex to a space four miles outside of Tuxtla, the capital of Chiapas, in an effort to bring ‘social order’, modernisation and commerce to Chiapas. Kelly argues that neo-liberalism, modernisation and participation in a global economy have marginalised the poor and working class in Mexico: ‘free trade and free markets do not make free people’ (4). Few women who work in the Galactic Zone are ‘obligadas’, women forced into prostitution and managed by pimps. However, their options for employment are limited by gender, class and immigration status (many zone workers are migrants from Central America). Sex work is the most financially rewarding job available to poor uneducated women in Chiapas and elsewhere. For Kelly, sex work is a symptom of structural gender inequality. The regulation and stigma of prostitution limits classconsciousness and agitation for better working conditions, higher pay and respect. National identity, race, class and ethnic background are employed as constructs of power that marginalise poor and immigrant women both in and outside of the zone. Chiapas, a southern province of Mexico, draws migrants from Central America looking for work and political freedom. Many of the women who work in the zone are undocumented immigrants and are viewed as criminals, ‘delinquents’ and transmitters of sexually