Where Affection is Peddled by the Drink, Lonely Immigrants Provide a Market

(Article 3)

By Chris Hedges (The New York Times - March 19, 2001)

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — A cluster of women in tight jeans and halter tops waited for a turn at the phone at the Crystal Night Club. They cooed and whispered into the receiver. They talked of longing and of dreams, of being lonely and desiring company. They spoke of love.

And to the men listening, seated in small apartment rooms with two or three other companions, far from wives and children, yearning for the soft touch that comes with affection, the bait doled out over the line was irresistible. Central American laborers, with little education, no English and lacking valid immigration documents, they soon arrived at this club, or some 20 others grouped in downtown Hempstead, to be relieved of their weekly pay.

The calls were not by chance. The bar, like most, kept a list of who gets checks on Friday.

"We have clients who are in love with us," Selsa Ortiz said in Spanish. Ms. Ortiz, 33, was dressed in a floor-length black dress that had slits up to her hips and a rhinestone pin on the collar. "They have no women except us. They come night after night until they cannot afford to come anymore."

The men, their hands callused by rough work, buy rounds of $10 drinks for the women, nearly all from the Dominican Republic. The outings always end with the same frustration. The women disappear shortly before dawn in vans to the Bronx, Queens or Brooklyn, or leave their dates bereft and often drunk at tables when the money is gone.

There are many ways to prey on the weak and the lonely. But one of the most profitable is to peddle love. Many of the estimated 100,000 Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan pot washers, construction workers or landscapers on Long Island frequent these seedy hostess bars just as legions of male immigrants, from the Chinese to Eastern Europeans, did elsewhere in earlier eras. The deafening blasts of music, gyrating women and booze-soaked conversations have been repeated long before in other tongues.

The clubs, with hallways stinking of urine and with men collapsed on steps in an alcoholic stupor, offer a brief and finally bitter respite from a dreary and marginal life.

Ivan Escalante, 24, from El Salvador, has worked for five years as a pot washer on Long Island. He lacks proper documents and so cannot open a bank account. He shares a $400-a-month room with two other men and sends $150 weekly to his family.

Payday, for him and many others, is the hardest day of the week. "We live a life for others, for those at home," he said in Spanish. "We have no lives here. As soon as we are paid we become vulnerable. We cannot keep money in our room; someone will steal it. None of us have cars, so we must walk. And on the streets of Hempstead there are a lot of assaults from the Salvadoran street gangs. The only distractions we have are the bars, but once you get there it is hard to stop. The cash is in your pocket. It is so nice to talk and dance with a woman."

The cost is paid not just by the workers, but also by their families.

"When you wake up and realize your money is gone, that it has been wasted on girls and drinks, you are depressed," said Juan Antonio Hernandez, 37, a Salvadoran dishwasher who works in Bayville. "You know your children in El Salvador will not get enough to eat this week. It is horrible."

Law enforcement officials say that Salvadoran gang members, from groups like Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gather on street corners near the clubs. Some sit sullenly in the backs of clubs nursing beers, avoiding the women and looking for easy targets.

"The gang members watch who gets drunk," said Detective Joseph Wing of the Hempstead Police Department. "They follow them outside and take them off."

About 3 a.m. on Saturday morning, a brawl including about 10 members of the MS-13 gang outside La Plaza Bar at 248 Front Street left Jose Hernandez, 23, from El Salvador dead and another man wounded with a knife wound to the chest. There have been no arrests.

The Hempstead police, with the surge in gang activity over the last few years, have created anti-gang units and bar patrols to curb violence and monitor activities in the clubs. The police said the special units had contributed to a reduction of almost 30 percent in the crime rate.

Bars like Crystal, the largest in Hempstead with 30 hostesses, as well as places like Macarena and El Pacifico, operate in the same manner. Vans deliver the women from the city about 9 p.m. and return to pick up the hostesses about 4 a.m.

The women make money on each drink they get a client to buy for them. A plastic, fluted glass filled with ice and an ounce of cheap wine earns about $4 for the hostess and $6 for the house. Some women can drink 40 or 50 glasses a night.

On a recent Friday night, Luis Tejada, 32, stood behind the bar of the Crystal swiftly refilling fluted glasses, collecting money and putting a mark on a yellow pad next to the name of each woman who asked for a drink. A large wad of bills was in his left hand. The roar of the music, a Puerto Rican pop song, made communication difficult. He and his hostesses shouted.
"This is where men come for the concept of having a girlfriend," he said in English. "All the bars in Hempstead have dancing waitresses. They dance, sit and converse with you as long as you buy them drinks. The men fall in love with the girls. This brings them back night after night. Every once in a while one of the girls elopes with a customer, but once that happens they are out of a job.

When a customer finds out he cannot get a girl, he will leave for a few weeks," he added. "But he will usually come back and try with another. I go for the drinks, not what the girls look like. I have some Petunia Pigs that drink a lot more and are worth more to me than the Christie Brinkleys. This is strictly about money. Besides, these guys are not Tom Cruise."

 Juana Franco, 29, who has five children and studies at Bronx Community College, is one of the hostesses at the Hempstead club. Dressed in tight blue spandex pants, she shifted to allow a group of men, who turned to leer at her, pass into the club. "They all say they are single," she said in Spanish, "even when they are married. No one put a gun to their heads to make them come here, but still you feel sorry for them. We all have feelings."

After drinking at a Hempstead club, Jose Hernandez was killed and another man seriously wounded.  Who was responsible?  The law would probably hold the members of the MS-13 gang responsible.  Who else was responsible?  In your essay, discuss the roles of the following parties. 

•  the women who lured these men to the bar and encouraged them to drink.
•  the owner of the bar
•  the immigrants who come to the bar

Poor lonely immigrants are being lured to drinking clubs to spend most of their meager paychecks.  Many of them become victims of crimes by gang members afterward.  What, if anything, should the police and other government agencies do to help prevent these crimes?  Make sure the actions set forth in your proposal do not interfere with the legitimate rights of other parties.