Sometimes the Rescue Industry reverts to farce. Take the recent history of Brazil with its efforts to appear ‘modern’ and world-powerful through militaristic social-control operations. Before I even got to the part of this article that mentions carnaval, I had thought ‘circus’ to describe what I was reading. These are excerpts from Operation Princess in Rio de Janeiro: Policing ‘Sex Trafficking’, Strengthening Worker Citizenship, and the Urban Geopolitics of Security in Brazil, by Paul Amar, in Security Dialogue 2009; 40; 513.
. . . Operation Princess and its sister campaigns were launched by the police in seeming disregard for the fact that prostitution is legal in Brazil. The Pentecostal evangelical leaders of Rio . . . gave biblical legitimacy to the campaign, brushing aside questions of legality or sex workers’ resistance to being ‘rescued’. . . .
. . . proclaimed he would purge corruption and promote moral rectitude . . . by bringing back the spirit of the Vice Police stations (Delegacias de Costumes), which had been closed for the most part in the 1940s when prostitution was legalized. Simultaneously, President Lula declared a nationwide war against sex trafficking . . .
. . . ‘Operation Princess’ resonated perfectly with the 19th-century iconography of missionarism, child rescue, and abolition in Brazil. . . Avenida Princesa Isabel is the grand boulevard that brings travelers . . . into Copacabana Beach, a mixed-class and mixed-race coastal community that also serves as a center of sex tourism and international diplomatic conferences. Copacabana was a focal point of the new vice-policing operations. . . the statue of Princess Isabel, with her arms outstretched, blessing those she liberated from slavery and radiating a spirit of tolerance and welcome at the gateway to the topless dance clubs and all-night saunas of the Lido. . .
. . . [the] Black Movement in Brazil ha[s] rigorously critiqued the ‘Princess Isabel Syndrome’, or the commemoration of this child monarch as the agent of abolition. . . it takes credit away from the centuries of sacrifice and mobilization among Brazil’s Afro-descendants and their efforts . . . Thus, the princess metaphor in Rio de Janeiro . . . resonates vibrantly with the politics of social ‘whitening’ (embrancamento), infantilization of black slave agency, and religious moralization.
. . . By the time Lula assumed power in 2003, a massive child-rescue initiative was deemed essential to Brazil’s plans to legitimize and empower itself on the world stage, as well as to address social-justice concerns at home. For Brazil to assume leadership of the democratic global south and make a claim to the proposed new seat on the Security Council, it wanted to change the image of Brazilian law enforcement from death squad to rescue mission, authoritarian to humanitarian. The national landscape had to be cleared of lawless, victimized children.
‘Operation Carnival’ became the first test of this revived vice-police campaign. As if to mock the new police operations, a ‘Group A’ Samba School . . . celebrated ‘Prostitution in Copacabana’ as their theme that year; their 4,000 sequined dancers, the ‘Lions of Nova Iguaçu’, marched through the downtown Sambadrome, singing a samba about the joys of the sex trade. In its debut, the police’s anti-sex-trafficking campaign netted a total of one arrest . . .
During ‘Operation Shangrilá’, the Federal Police raided a showboat in Rio’s Guanabara Bay. Forty Brazilian prostitutes and twenty-nine American tourists were arrested for having committed the crime of ‘sex tourism’. This incident was immediately trumpeted as a major bust of a ‘human trafficking’ operation. . . . But . . no Brazilian law had been violated. None of the prostitutes were underage, nor had they violated any pimping or brothel laws. The only way this situation could be imagined as ‘trafficking’ was because the tourists had crossed international frontiers, although without breaking any laws or visa restrictions. Furthermore, ‘sex tourism’ is not against any Brazilian law, unless one assumes that sex tourism is the same thing as forced sex trafficking.
–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist
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The exploitation of prostitutes in Rio cannot be stopped by the present policing system. If you go to any of the Rio brothels (especially Monte Carlo, L’uomo, Centurus, 4×4, 65 and many many more, the so called higher end brothels) you will find the police get free entrance and there is a police bribing system in place. This is the only way the pimps can operate so openly outside the law. I doubt there are many male officials that could stand up and fight for the rights of the prostitutes, as they probably use their position to gain access to the prostitutes in these brothels. I would expect the prostitutes are required to keep these key people happy just to maintain the status quo.
This is not the real problem. Travel anywhere in small town Brazil one thing you will find no shortage of is pregnant adolescent girls. The systems of local government throughout Brazil are intentionally disorganized. This makes it easier for local officials to steal money intended for education, health care and infrastructure maintenance. Until the Brazilian central government instigate disciplined audit procedures through out local government Brazil. The education and pride of the Brazilian people will not improve. Spending money on cleaning up the image of tiny areas where the privileged Brazilians live will not help the rout cause (just helps the privileged Brazilians sleep better at night). It makes it worse, as more people will travel to these rich areas to try and fulfill their dreams. Many of these people will be young girls who will find out very quickly that there poor rural education leaves them with limited options. Rich Brazilians are the worst at paying there domestic staff and are lousy tippers. So the choice of these girls is earn a minimal salary in a crap job or if they have the physical attributes, they can earn a month salary in a few hours by prostituting themselves. Their are many pimps (male and female) flying lazy circles looking for fresh meat. The pimps now have the advantage and steer these girls along this new career path.
[To the immediately preceding commentator]
Sorry.
I and my wife are researchers in Rio de Janeiro and we’ve been looking at prostitution for close to a decade now.
“Pimps” – at least in their more traditional and alarming aspect – are relatively thin on the ground here. While you are correct that many women can earn a month’s salary in a few hours of sex work, this in and of itself mitigates against the role of the pimp, as you describe it. Women are intelligent beings and can do math. They can figure this stuff out for themselves. Most prostitutes in Rio are not poor little girls who were ignorant about sex and the possibilities of selling it until some big, bad pimp came along and told them.
Our research idnicates that most women who get drawn into the sex trade here in Rio are recruited by FREINDS, who show them how much money they can make.
Your post detracts from the underlying rout cause of why these girls go into prostitution.
Its not about what the first girl said to the second girl.
In your ten years of research what percentage of your research subjects after say three years of multiple clients a day have no emotional problems or even what do the have to show for it.
Ask the brothel girls what are the repercussions of not meeting quota.
Most would have contracted some form of STD. Condoms are not 100 percent protection. Its no point asking them you will not get the truth.
You said it yourself “Most prostitutes in Rio are not poor little girls”. What about the ones that are in a desperate situation and are being exploited as a result of poverty. While the police are receiving money from the brothel pimps to turn a blind eye. There is no system in place to protect the more vulnerable, as the police are then are more likely to turn a blind eye to every layer of prostitution.
Are you just doing your research in the Copa and Ipanema or are you also looking into the lower budget women who are not blessed with the physical attributes of the higher end prostitutes. These women are far more at risk from disease and physical abuse.
The precedent is being set higher up the food chain.
The question is are you serious researchers or a privileged couple turned on by the promiscuity of the erotic environment. If so would you be able to indulge in this fantasy outside the social economic of the third world.