Based on ethnographic observations and detailed interviews, this article analyzes the unequal power struggle between different agents involved with transvesti prostitution in the urban margins of southern Lima, the capital of Peru. If young transvestis are the targets of violence and subject to forms of domination by customers and the police, they react by implementing oppositional strategies to make sex trade possible and ensure their own survival. The study of these interactions shows the individual and collective logics characterizing this precarious social space, marked by exclusion and transgression due to the sexual orientation of adolescents and youths involved in prostitution.
violence; travesti prostitution; youth; Lima; Peru
