Sandra Cabrera 27 October β 27 January was an Argentine street-based sex worker, trade unionist, and campaigner for sex worker rights. She was killed in when her anti-corruption efforts started being successful and threatened police corruption networks and her defense of street workers' rights threatened brothel owners.
Cabrera was born in San Juan, Argentina [1] in She moved to Rosario in , leaving two children with her mother. People who met her remember her eyes, dark enough to seem black, a wealth of black hair, and her direct gaze, sometimes interpreted as inquisitive, [2] sometimes as defiant.
I was working in a corner of the Terminal area and a group of pimps and bouncers from a bar in the area beat me up pretty badly. I reported that in the media and there the girls from Buenos Aires showed up. At first I didn't take them seriously, but the following year, when a group of police beat up another coworker in the south area, we began to work with everything. During Argentina's economic crisis in , Cabrera discovered the power of union association. She complained publicly that the lack of cash had left the women on the street desperately poor, to the point of not knowing if they would have food for their families on Christmas.
The Ministry of Social Advancement gave the union sacks of food that Cabrera distributed, [3] working from 8 in the morning to 10 at night. At pm my daughter and I fell asleep and when I woke up the other day I worried because we had not celebrated Christmas, but she her daughter Macarena, 7 years old told me not to worry about it, because thanks to what we had done the day before, many of our companions had something to celebrate.
Cabrera seems to have been a devoted mother to the daughter she called "Maca". She encouraged her education and ensured that she learned computer skills. She took her to the theater. At the time of the murder, Macarena was away at a scouting camp in Mendoza.
