This century-long history of prostitution in Peru begins with nineteenth-century proposals to implement regulation intended to control venereal diseases, and it ends with the triumph of abolitionists opposed to regulation in the 1950s. In his thoroughly researched monograph, Drinot recreates the social and intellectual context for understanding the establishment in 1928, and the subsequent closure, in 1956, of Lima's red-light district, the barrio rojo. He explores how interrelated medical and moral discourses shaped the history of prostitution in Peru, and he places these in dialogue with a global historiography linking prostitution and government regulation and a Latin American historiography on state-building. The voices of numerous social actors enliven the narrative, including non-elite actors such as prostitutes, who contest dominant discourses.
A medicalized discourse on prostitution in Peru, influenced by similar debates in Europe, emerged in the nineteenth century with doctors like Leonardo Villar, who called for state regulation to control the spread of venereal disease. Prostitution was accepted as a “necessary evil” that could help reduce adultery and homosexuality among men. Yet, regulationist views were slow to take hold, and in 1892, Manuel Gálvez, the attorney general, rejected regulatory proposals on the grounds that they restricted women's freedom while doing nothing to limit venereal disease. His position reflected evolving views about the role of the state in society. During the 1900s and 1910s, the arguments of doctors and lawyers for regulation gained strength and fueled a state campaign that led to the creation in 1928 of the barrio rojo, in La Victoria, a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Lima.
By this time, public debate had extended well beyond the confines of medical circles. Freemasons, anticlericals, anarchists, and feminists began to argue against regulation by questioning earlier social assumptions about male sexuality that helped to justify prostitution as “a necessary evil.” The Freemason journal La Linterna even blamed men for prostitution. Conservative voices expressed the fear that prostitution could generate a kind of “moral contagion” and fuel transgressive sexual behavior among women. The challenge posed to traditional models of femininity by the advent of new women's fashions such as short hair, and by women's growing participation in the labor force, all contributed to reinforce this fear.
Regulation reshaped the geography of prostitution in Lima, reinforced class and race divisions, and perpetuated social prejudices. Regulated brothels (casas de cita), which often employed European prostitutes who had arrived during World War I, were intended to protect upper- and middle-class men from venereal diseases. Meanwhile, clandestine brothels catering to lower-class men, often Afro-Peruvians, were subject to closure, thus forcing working-class men into an unregulated clandestine sector. Lima's Chinese population received the blame for spreading venereal diseases.
The barrio rojo helped to isolate prostitution and keep it out of the view of Lima's respectable people. Yet, as Lima grew, the barrio rojo became integrated into the city, and it became the object of moralizing discourses that presented it as a kind of stain on its respectability. Its closure in 1956, a victory for abolitionists, also strengthened the criminalization of women engaged in prostitution.
Clandestine prostitution contributed to undermining arguments about the effectiveness of government regulation. It also prompted registered prostitutes to complain that it endangered their livelihood. Meanwhile, military doctors and doctors at the Asistencia Pública, the state regulatory agency, expressed the growing consensus in the medical establishment that venereal disease ought to be decoupled from prostitution and viewed as a larger social problem, to be addressed through a combination of medical treatment and public education. Efforts at education date back to the later administrations of President Augusto Leguía (1919-30), which had mandated “sexual hygiene” classes in the schools. Medical treatment improved dramatically with the availability of penicillin in the 1940s.
With its detailed analysis of competing discourses and vivid glimpses of city life—the dance halls, streets, and brothels where prostitutes sought their livelihood—this book is a welcome addition to Peruvian history and a valuable contribution to the history of gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, and state-formation. We can hope that it will inspire further research into prostitution in other regions of Peru.
