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PUTA HISTORIA

By Marta GARCIA, Sol INFANTE

Documentary - Production 2022

Karina is a sex worker and an outspoken activist leading the charge for labor rights in Uruguay’s sex work industry. Now at the age of 45, she begins to imagine life working in another field. KARINA follows her fight for acceptance and fair pay trying to redefine her place in contemporary Uruguay.

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- URUGUAY, ARGENTINA
- Languages
- SPANISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 80 mn
- Director(s)
- Marta GARCIA, Sol INFANTE
- Cast
- Karina NUÑEZ
- Producer(s)
- Micaela SOLÉ (CORDON FILMS), Carolina ÁLVAREZ (AH! CINE), Natalia DE LA VEGA (NAVEGA CINE)
- Synopsis
- Karina Nuñez (45) is looking to change jobs. She has made a living as a roadside sex worker for 30 years. With the passing of time, her customers have become scarce. And so has her drive. As she survives with the bare minimum that she mainly earns by servicing truckers. Although she looks for job opportunities in other fields, they are few and far between due to her age, lifestyle and the social stigma attached to her line of work.
  The small town of Young in inland Uruguay has been her home for the last 15 years. Her work and activism take her across the country frequently, almost always hitch-hiking by herself, logged on social media and truck-borne.
  As a result of being a sex worker, she has six children. Karina’s income covers the rent and the wages of Nora and Amelinda, the women who raise her underaged children.
  She sees these two women as ”her kids’ moms.” They live in Fray Bentos, Karina’s home town, from which she moved out to “break the chain” and remove her children from her work environment. It doesn’t have to do with inheritance; it has to do with seeing it as normal. This is something Karina incarnated herself: her mother and her grandmother had been prostitutes.
  
  Karina is a member of OTRAS, an group of sex workers trying to unionize. They want to reform Law 17515 from 2002, which decriminalizes their job but does not recognize their rights as workers. There are several points that they consider priorities, including retirement pensions, Karina’s biggest concern today. Her struggle, which has been going on for more than 10 years, is no longer individual. Around her fellow sex workers, she is a motherly figure and a leader, and with them she shares the tools and knowledge acquired over the years.
  Her story accumulates events, which at first sight seem unfortunate and bitter. It seems an impossible path for any woman. Karina has been able exist from a completely different place: she was able to reconstruct herself and get out of the place the system had reserved her. She sparked the engine of an already ongoing body. She stepped away from inertia and stillness. Nomadic, she escapes from inertia and stillness.