With Sex and Danger, Donna Guy makes a significant contribution to the study of how marginal women (and men) have helped define social, economic, and political acceptability. Important for the social and gender history of Argentina and Latin America, this book substantially expands what is still a relatively new field for this region. The author’s goal—to show the “relationship of female sexual commerce to family, class, and nation” (p. 1)—is realized in a very readable analysis of mid-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Argentina from the perspective of the underworld of prostitutes, bordellos, and international white slavery rings. This underworld, in fascinating ways, exacerbated upper- and middle-class fears about the lower class—which included increasing numbers of European immigrants.
Guy first looks at prostitution as a facet of Buenos Aires’ growth, in the second half of the nineteenth century, as an urban port and population center with a disproportionate number of males. Legal prostitution began in 1875, and the city soon became known as a sin capital and center of the white slave trade. Women, especially foreigners, ended up in bordellos sometimes through trickery, but more often from economic necessity. As registrants in houses of prostitution, women were subjected to municipal controls for medical and moral reasons, and sometimes were incarcerated if they resisted “assistance.” Guy stresses that what worried many physicians, police, municipal officials, and social reformers about prostitution was more a matter of the “relation between commercial sex, women’s work, and other elements of changing urban and family life” than the number or nationality of the women involved (p. 44).
Controls on prostitution were tightened during the first three decades of the twentieth century, culminating in the closing of bordellos in 1936; but these new regulations did not put an end to problems such as the collusion between pimps and Argentine politicians and police. Police, moreover, through their vigilance over women, effectively made prostitution an illegal activity, even though it had not been declared as such. Women’s independence and sexuality was the focus not only of officials and reformers but also of the writers of tangos, plays, and novels, several of which are analyzed in this book.
Bringing the discussion full circle, Guy ends with an examination of Juan Perón’s failed attempt to reopen bordellos in 1954. He and others reasoned that the 1936 closing had encouraged homosexuality and that a reopening would promote heterosexuality, reinforcing marriage and the family. Thus, licensed bordellos, originally seen as a source of city revenue and a public health measure to protect families from venereal disease, once again were accorded a positive role, reinforcing family and fatherland.
