Prostitutes and the law: uses of court cases against pimps in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of Twentieth Century

PEREIRA, CRISTIANA SCHETTINI

Honor, status and law in modern latin america

Duke University Press

Lugar: Durham; Año: 2005; p. 273 - 294

This chapter will analize a selection of criminal trials involving pandering during the early years of Brazil´s republic to reveal how those involved --police officers, jurists, the accused, and witnesses -- made use of the law in particular ways at different times. The trial records reveal changes in police strategies for controlling prostitutes and other groups of people who occupied the city´s downtown. By justifying police intervention as a moral imperative, the new law created a new instrument that police and jurists used in their attempt to reorganize republican urban space. Yet pandering trials also document some of the strategies prostitutes and madams developed in response to police attempts to control how the occupied public space. Finally, these trials sometimes provided prostitutes official backing in their attempts to confront landlords who charged exorbitant rents or even to work out conflicts in a troublesome love affair.