To browse Academia. Skip to main content. You're using an out-of-date version of Internet Explorer. Log In Sign Up. Venereal diseases, particularly syphilis, were associated with prostitution and both were interpreted as symptoms of social degradation resulting from slavery. During this time, state proposals regarding prostitution were inevitably mired in the complex political spirals of the growing anti-slavery struggles.
The call for abolition of slavery and prostitution was deployed as a modernizing and civilizing proposition: to abolish slavery and prostitution was to promote social and political progress. Though this episode is remarkable, state intervention did not shift towards the abolition of prostitution, nor was the so-called French model of regulation adopted. This model prescribed the definition of restricted zones for the exercise of commercial sex red light districts and systematic public health intervention to prevent venereal diseases among prostitutes as a way to protect spouses and families.
Such a move would have been politically unacceptable in light of the calls for abolition of slavery Pereira Liberal repudiation of state regulation of private life might have also played a role in this unusual policy restraint. Even after slavery was abolished in and the Republic established a year later, the Brazilian state neither adopted the French model — as happened in Argentina, 11 A key partner in this exercise was Adriana Piscitelli, an Argentinean anthropologist who lives in Brazil and teaches at the Federal University of Campinas and is recognized as one of the leading researchers on matters related to sex tourism, prostitution and trafficking in Brazil.
We also thank all women who graciously made time in their busy agendas to be interviewed. Uruguay and Colombia — nor did it assume a strong abolitionist position with regard to prostitution. This unresolved debate left a lasting imprint on Brazilian state response to prostitution. The current legal frame borrows from the abolitionist frame of criminalization of those who exploit prostitution, but does not go as far as to criminalize soliciting or the practice per se. Since the 20th century, and most particularly after , the state invested heavily in the control of venereal diseases, but did not implement well-defined zones or health identity cards for prostitutes.
Though these were not based on written rules they affected the lives of sex workers negatively. But there are other angles to prostitution in the late 19th and early 20th century which also should be highlighted. It kept alive the latent 19th century notion of prostitution as a necessary evil, while allowing for prostitution to be portrayed as a realm of seduction, pleasure and freedom in literature, cinema and on television.
