“Sometimes the customers are very bad and make you do it without condoms.”

Fernanda loved to decorate her room and moved around the furniture every few weeks. After she got a TV from a client, she endlessly played videos of pop stars like Spain’s Mónica Naranjo. Another of her regular pleasures was smoking crystal, which she bought around the corner. A US$3 packet was enough to get high with a friend. She made pipes out of old lightbulbs (globos) by removing the electrical part and piercing a hole at the widest diameter to let in air. In the Zona Norte, “Do you want a globo?” means “Would you like to smoke some crystal?”

A recent study of more than 2,000 transgender women in Los Angeles found that smoking crystal meth doubled their risk of becoming infected with HIV. Globally, transgender sex workers have an HIV prevalence of 27.3%, according to the most authoritative estimates available. Fernanda understood that she was at high risk of infection and used condoms regularly— but, she acknowledged, not always. “Sometimes the customers are very bad and make you do it without condoms.”