Putas Políticas: The Brazilian Prostitutes’ Movement during Redemocratization

In my portion of the panel, I will present research on Brazil’s sex-worker movement, which coalesced in the late 1970s and consolidated during the following decade. I will consider the first anti-police violence protests led by prostitutes in 1979 and ’80 in São Paulo alongside gay activists and feminists, just as pro-democracy mobilizations accelerated after the passage of the Amnesty Law. My presentation will also examine the origins of the prostitutes’ movement in the liberation-theology influenced Pastoral da Mulher Marginalizada, a Catholic ministry aiming to politicize and rehabilitate sex workers. I will conclude my talk by discussing prostitute-activists’ departure from the Pastoral and creation of an autonomous national organization of sex workers, inaugurated with the First National Meeting of Prostitutes in 1987. I will focus in particular on the intellectual legacies of activists such as Lourdes Barreto and Gabriela Leite, as well the broader context of political and social change during Brazilian re-democratization.