My term paper for my Race, Gender, & Coloniality in Latin America & the Caribbean class:
Of all the topics I’ve studied as a women’s and gender studies scholar, very few have stirred such strong reactions as did the subject of sex work in the Caribbean and Latin America. Eyes saddened, mouths curved downward, hearts dropped as the words written across my friends’ faces so clearly stated, Oh, how tragic. Although my intention is never to shame those for their incorrect but understandable conflation of sex trafficking with sex work, after four months of research I wish to show, with your consent, dear reader, that as Black anthropologist Erica Lorraine Williams’ writes, “Rather than seeing exploitation as an inherent part of sex work, (sex workers) saw (exploitation) as a result of the conditions of illegality, criminalization, and stigma of sex work.”1 Thus, my argument will highlight sex work, consensual paid sexual labor performed by, in this case, Black women in modern-day Brazil, as opposed to sex trafficking, illegal and nonconsensual forced sexual violence. I will attempt to argue that despite a lasting and devastating legacy of sexual violence against Afro-descendant women in Latin American and the Caribbean, Black women’s push for recognition of and respect towards their sexual and reproductive labor has, since the start of colonization, challenged racialized sexism against their bodies through their consensual relationships with white men and unionization in Republic Cuba and continued reclamation of ownership of their bodies in twenty-first century Brazil.
Black female sex workers in Latin America and the Caribbean are decolonizing colonial narratives surrounding their bodies and status through reclaiming their autonomy and ownership over their sexual and reproductive labor. Before continuing, it’s vital to understand the historical moment and exploitation of Black women’s sexual and reproductive labor in the Americas, beginning with the epoch of colonization itself. Professors Edward Telles and Tranna Paschel note in their research:
Unlike the United States, where family immigration to the American colonies predominated, Spanish and Portuguese immigration during the colonial period involved mostly men who procreated (often forcibly) with indigenous, black, and mulato women.2
In contrast to the United States and Canada, colonized by the British who outlawed miscegenation since its conquest’s conception, the Spanish and the Portuguese, initially, did not see issue with producing mixed-raced offspring, sexually assaulting Black and indigenous women already in the Americas as opposed to having a White, European bride come to the allegedly untamed New World. As Alyssia Garcia noted in her dissertation on Cuban sex work, “White women… were depicted as ‘natural’ and innocent,”3 and simply would not have been thought of as capable of embarking on the military exploits of their men; as a result, the male colonizers chose the women already in Spanish and Portugese America – indigenous women fighting a genocide againist their people and culture and Black women kidnapped from their continent and forced into chattel enslavement – whom were denied their bodily autonomy in order to aid building these new nations. Thus, we see the sexual exploitation and denial of Black women owning their sexual and reproductive labor baked into these national narratives and coloniality.
Although this greatly benefitted the white colonizer’s in helping to establish their empires with Spanish and Portuguese blood at the expense of Black and indigenous women’s sexual and reproductive rights, the mestizaje or miscigenção, literally “racial mixing” in English, derailed the colonizers’ concept of la sangre limpia, that is the pure blood of the nation. Since “Blacks were already deemed impure”4 and “the indigenous population was marked by an inherent inferiority,” considering both races deviant due to their denial of the Christian faith,5 both Portuguese and “Spanish America (were) gripped by an almost innate need to process, categorize, and label human differences in an effort to manage its vast empire,”6 something the two failed to consider as they continued their rampage and rape against Black and indigenous women, declaring that they had complete access to Black and indigenous women’s sexual and reproductive labor at all times and could spin the story in whatever way they saw suitable.
In response to this mestizaje and miscigenação, the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers realized they needed to shift the responsibility for these mixed-raced children off of themselves and their lusts by placing the blame onto the Black and indigenous women they had assaulted and traumatized, and the only way to do so was to sexualize them. One of the most infamous of these attempts to rewrite their nation’s crimes was U.S. trained anthropologist and Brazilian politician Gilberto Freyre’s The Master and the Slaves, where in his aim to create a utopian racial harmony declared how Black women, ”these tropical creatures, not yet wholly mature, so delicate, so delightful a fragrance of femininity as our own European rosebuds do not possess”7 were so alluring that white men actually preferred to procreate with them as opposed to white women. While Freyre himself did not coin the term racial democracy, his work inspired the concept that argued Brazil, and to an extent Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole, did not have the racial tensions found in the United States due to the former’s history of mixed raced lineages as opposed to the strict, Puritan miscegenation laws found in North America. Freyre’s statement does, however, reinforce the notion that these Black women were hypersexualized beings compared to polite and proper white women of European descent, therefore creating a distinction between white women who were to be seen as ladies and consequently untouchable and Black women who were to be seen as sexually available (to white men) at all times. This sexual availability assumed onto Black women and their bodies argued their sexual and reproductive labor was not labor to be compensated or credited with monetary value but rather a right that white men inherently obtained, “the lustful mulata/negra fantasy free(ing) white men from the guilt of rape or sexual oppression, transforming them (white men) into victims of Afro-Cuban (and Afro-Brazilian) women.”8 Therefore, this fear of Black women’s sexuality demonized their sexual autonomy as dangerous to broader society and vilified their sexual and reproductive labor, relying on their sexualization and status as temptresses who needed to be state regulated in order to continue their national narrative rooted in colonization.
Regardless, or rather in spite of, their inability to comprehend the consequences of their own actions, the Portuguese and Spanish colonizers attempted to pass laws preventing miscegenation; however, words on a page did little to change cultural desires and expectations, and white men in Spanish Cuba continued to have common law marriages with Black women.9 Here I wish to highlight the switch from sexual exploitation of Black women’s bodies under colonization to sex work in which Black women chose to utilize their sexual and reproductive labor as a device for not just survival but upward mobility. Self-identified Latina anthropologist Alyssa Garcia pens that in defiance of anti-miscegenacion laws, Black women did have sexual relations with white men, though “they tended to be consensual rather than legal…and produced interracial offspring.”10 Unlike the violation of Black women’s bodies that produced legal and legitimate heirs for their abusers, we see in these common law marriages that Black women are making the choice to be in these relationships with white men in exchange for some financial and societal stability, albeit far from the security white women received as wives during this time. Marriage was only to be between racial equals in Latin America and the Caribbean, and although white women were not equal to their husbands in regards to gender rights, they were provided with various legal protections Black women were denied, such as the ability to stay home in the safety of one’s house and not have to work for income.11 Hence, we see some Black women actively choose common law marriages in this era as a way to have some of the financial support white wives were offered though informality, causing these women to take ownership of their sexual and reproductive labor to secure a semblance of security for them and their families.
Following the abolishment of enslavement, Black women began receiving payment for their sexual and reproductive labor as domestic workers, which in modern minds conjures images of a housewife, a cook, or a nanny to care for the employer’s children; while all of those depictions do represent some aspect of what domestic workers performed during this era, historian Anasa Hicks admits that “the intimate nature of domestic service contributes to ambiguity about what domestic service is, who performs it, and what relationship those performing it have to the people for whom they work.”12 In other words, because domestic service takes place in the private sphere of the employer’s home, oftentimes the difference between professional labor and personal labor is blurred, deconstructing boundaries and building expectations regarding what domestic workers are expected to do and what they are obliged to do by their employers. Oftentimes, this latter point translates into an incredible amount of emotional, mental, and maternal labor, Hicks describing one definition of domestic service:
The work necessary to the reproduction of human life – not only having and raising children but also feeding people, caring for the sick, the elderly, … building community and… relationships, and attending to people’s psyche and spiritual wellbeing.13
As a result, we see Black women performing a multitude of labors in a single occupation that more often than not compensated them far less than their white counterparts; women and girls of color were paid thirty-three percent of what white women and girls were paid in post-colonial Cuba, and newspaper advertisements for domestic workers specifically asked for women of certain races over others in order to ensure the payment correlated with the color of the worker’s skin.14 Consequently, Black women’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual labor clearly was devalued and degraded due to both their race and their gender, and tragically their sexual and reproductive labor did not escape this exploitation.
Hicks details how domestic work’s “physical intimacy allowed for physical and rhetorical violence against domestics… the work of domestic service sexualized, endangered, and turned mercenary the bodies of its laborers.”15 Working inside white, upper-class family homes led Black women to be exposed to the predatory nature of the family’s patriarchs, placing these workers in impossible situations of either complying with their employer’s wishes, in other words sexual harassment, assault, and rape, or forgoing their paycheck and having no income to support themselves and their families, which may also lead to other types of systemic and societal violence. Once again, the exploitation of Black women’s sexual and reproductive labor becomes a central aspect of colonial and national narratives in Cuba and Brazil, the two last countries in the Americans to abolish enslavement.16
Simultaneously, we also see Black women, once more, taking back autonomy over their sexual and reproductive labor and demanding recognition of their rights, both to their employees and to their government. In response to these cruel conditions, Black domestic workers sought to unionize several times in Republic Cuba, arguing that the self-proclaimed love their employer’s lorded over them “was often tinged with possession” and “possession translated into consistent resistance to acknowledgement of domestic labor.”17 Essentially, because of the private nature of domestic workers’ occupations, and the fact that formerly enslaved Black women were performing labor that was rooted in the institution of enslavement,18 domestic labor, including the sexual and reproductive labor many of these women were forced to provide, was not seen as a legitimate skill or trade worthy of payment in a capitalistic economy but rather a personal service women, especially Black women, were expected to offer willingly and joyfully. By arguing for identification of their reproductive and sexual labor as labor like any other, deserving of monetary compensation and legal recognition, Black female domestic workers in Republic Cuba continued the legacy of challenging the colonial narratives surrounding them, asserting that their reproductive and sexual labor was theirs for their benefit and their profit.
Black women’s attempts at reclaiming their sexual and reproductive labor in both the historical context and the contemporary moment mirrors the danger rewriting colonial narratives has for them and their lives. Black domestic workers’ fight to collectively bargain in Cuba failed, “receiv(ing) no recognition from the federal government”19 as its association with African women under enslavement translated their labor as unworthy of payment. Towards the end of Cuba’s Republic era and Black women’s attempt to collectively bargain as domestic workers, Fidel Castro rose to power and “the government chose to eradicate the domestic service entirely rather than legislate and regulate it.”20 Although one could argue that Castro’s abolishment of domestic servitude was a symbol of the alleged classless society he was creating under communism, this was not the end of domestic work as these women were not provided with steady incomes or monetary supplements to put food on their tables for themselves and their families. Many Black Cuban women continued to work as domestic servants informally following the government’s decision, yet since their labor was now not only diminished but defined as illegal:
The Cuban government ensured that much of its population of color and especially women of color would be subject to abuse and neglect by the very same people who claimed that the archetypal domestic service relationship was one of love and closeness.21
In essence, if a Black woman was abused, be it physically, emotionally, or sexually by her employer, she had no legal support to turn to, for if she turned towards the police, she would be the one arrested and prosecuted for having an illegal occupation, not the individual who exploited her. Outlawing domestic work did nothing to remove the need or rather the desire upper-class white families in Cuba had for a domestic worker; it simply made Black women’s sexual and reproductive labor more easily exploitable by the white patriarchy in power.
In this same vein, I’d like to return our attention to Williams’ Sex Tourism in Bahia claim that it is the illegality, criminality, and stigma surrounding sex workers that makes their job dangerous as opposed to the work being inherently such. She details how members of Bahia’s sex workers union, Aprosba, “viewed the sources of oppression in their lives as mistreatment, discrimination, stigma, and police violence rather than the act of selling sexual services.”22 While sex work is legal in Brazil, it is still largely shamed by the greater Brazilian society, and the governmental officials assigned to these barrios are not immune to these prejudices of sex workers, particularly Black female sex workers, as freely available women. Black sex workers have reported abuse and rape not mainly from their local or even gringo clients but rather from police officers who these women go to when a crime has been committed against them or there is a communal concern in their line of work. Two of Aprosba’s leaders, Fabiana and Zulema, when hosting workshops on safe sexual practices for sex workers, learned that many of the sex workers did not know the proper way to put on their own condoms, for the Brazilian Ministry of Health did not readily provide female condoms in the safe way it provided male condoms.23 Although one could argue that this is putting the responsibility of safe sex on the male in a heteronormative sex work exchange, which would be a refreshing change that counters Freyre’s insistance that white men are always the victims of Black women’s sexuality, here I feel this is less a statement of female empowerment and more an oversight of the protection of the sex workers. Male clients may not always choose to wear a condom or may become rash when asked to use one; female sex workers have far more power over protecting their own bodies through the choices they can make as opposed to hoping their male clients will use and know how to use contraceptives properly. Thus, through the collective organizing and recognition Black female sex workers are advocating for in Bahia, these women are continuing the long tradition of Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean fighting for the recognition and respect their sexual and reproductive labor is due, debunking the colonial narrative that white men are entitled to their bodies free of charge.
Based on the ways these women have used the opportunities presented to them to use their sexual and reproductive labor as societal power, Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean have and are continuing to decolonize the racialized and gendered narratives surrounding them and their bodies, arguing for autonomy in a society that was built off the backs of their exploitation. While the prominence of sex work has skyrocketed on the global spectrum due to recent globalization and sex tourism, women advocating for recognition and respect towards their sexual and by extension reproductive labor is nothing new. For Black women living in colonized Latin America and the Caribbean, it is not a luxury but rather an essential element to rewrite the colonial narratives, racism, and sexism that threaten their bodies on the daily, from systemic barriers preventing them from entering various spaces due to their perceived promiscuity to the mass violence that still inflicts Black women across the continent. Accordingly, it is vital that both legislation and society destigmatize sex work and see the value in Black women’s labor so that these women will have the privilege of living the life they wish with the protections they deserve.
- Erica Lorraine Williams, Sex Tourism in Bahia, (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 148.
↩︎ - Although commonly used in historical documents, the word “mulato” in Spanish literally translates as “mule.” This categorization was and is a way of dehumanizing children of indigenous and Black parents even further in the Americas’ caste system through language. Thus, I will refer to these descendants as Black and indigenous and will only use the word “mulato” from direct quotes. Edward Telles and Tianna Paschel, “Who Is Black, White, or Mixed Race? How Skin Color, Status, and Nation Shape Racial Classification in Latin America,” American Journal of Sociology, Volume 120, Number 3, (November 2014): pp. 864-907, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/679252.
↩︎ - Alyssa Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba,” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008), 57.
↩︎ - Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba,” 45.
↩︎ - Ben Vinson III, “Wayward Mixture: The Problem of Race in the Colonies,” in Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017). See Bartolomé De Las Casas “In Defense of the Indians” translated by Stafford Poole (Northern University Press, 1992), pp. 25-36, 41-53 for more on the religious component of colonization and racial formation. In his rationale regarding why the Spanish colonizers should not commit genocide against the indigenous peoples living in the Americas, De Las Casas argued that unlike the American “Indians – harmless peoples who are far gentler than others,” whom could be converted through tactical as opposed to aggressive treatment, “the Turks” and “the Moors,” were “people(s) (who) d(id) not recognize Christ” and were “given to every sort of sexual immorality.” Although De Las Casas examined these groups from a theological perspective, his theology mapped quite extensively onto racial and ethnic categories, leading the religious differences to eventually become bypassed by racial differences that created a casta or caste structure amongst the Spanish American colonies.
↩︎ - Vinson III, “Wayward Mixture: The Problem of Race in the Colonies,” in Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico, 1.
↩︎ - Gilberto Freyre, The masters and the slaves: Casa-Grande & Senzala: A study in the development of Brazilian civilization, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 364.
↩︎ - Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba,” 54.
↩︎ - Instead of common law marriages, Garcia refers to the women in these relationships as “concubines,” a word that while legally and historically is correct, is not something I am comfortable referring to these women as. The connotation of a concubine is a woman who has been sex-trafficked, which does not accurately portray these women’s consensual choice. Thus, to distinguish these women as autonomous agents as opposed to victims of sexual oppression, I will simply refer to these relationships as “common law marriages.” Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba,”
↩︎ - Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba” 45.
↩︎ - Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba” 44.
↩︎ - Anasa Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024).
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 12.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 22.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 23-24.
↩︎ - Garcia, “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba” 45 and “Forced Labour in Brazil: 120 Years after the Abolition of Slavery, the Fight Goes On.” International Labour Organization, January 29, 2024. https://www.ilo.org/resource/article/forced-labour-brazil-120-years-after-abolition-slavery-fight-goes#:~:text=On%20May%2013th%201888%2C%20Brazil,Hemisphere%20to%20formally%20abolish%20slavery.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 5.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 21.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 6.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 6.
↩︎ - Hicks, Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution, 6.
↩︎ - Williams, Sex Tourism in Bahia, 118.
↩︎ - Williams, Sex Tourism in Bahia, 118.
↩︎
Works Cited
De Las Casas, Bartolomé . “In Defense of the Indians.” Translated by Stafford Poole. Northern University Press. 1992. 25-36, 41-53.
“Forced Labour in Brazil: 120 Years after the Abolition of Slavery, the Fight Goes On.” International Labour Organization. January 29, 2024.
Freyre, Gilberto. The masters and the slaves: Casa-Grande & Senzala: A study in the development of Brazilian civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1986.
Garcia, Alyssa. “(Re)covering Women: The State, Morality, and Cultural Discourses of Sex-Work in Cuba.” PhD diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2008.
Hicks, Anasa. Hierarchies at Home: Domestic Service in Cuba from Abolition to Revolution. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2024.
Telles, Edward and Paschel, Tianna.“Who Is Black, White, or Mixed Race? How Skin Color, Status, and Nation Shape Racial Clssification in Latin America.” American Journal of Sociology. Volume 120. Number 3. November 2014. pp. 864-907. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/679252.
Vinson III, Ben. “Wayward Mixture: The Problem of Race in the Colonies.” In Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2017.
Williams, Erica Lorraine. Sex Tourism in Bahia. Urbana, Illinois. University of Illinois Press. 2013.
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