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White Slavery, Public Health, and the Socialist Position on Legalized Prostitution in Argentina, 1913-1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Donna J. Guy
Donna J. Guy*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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In January 1875, the Buenos Aires municipal council legalized female sexual commerce within authorized bordellos. A decade of rapid urbanization and population growth, characterized by a high proportion of unmarried males, had created problems of social control and public health that had to be addressed by city authorities. Assisted in their task by doctors specializing in public health who were aware of European legislation on the issue, councilmen enacted a law purportedly intended to improve public health. Instead, the desire to create revenues from exorbitant license fees meant that municipally regulated prostitution served principally to keep prostitutes off the streets and enlarge city coffers. It was not until 1888 that the Dispensario de Salubridad (or Prostitutes' Registry) was established along with the Sifilicomio (the venereal disease hospital) to periodically examine and treat women in licensed houses of prostitution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 60 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

The research for this paper was funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Summer Fellowship and a University of Arizona Sabbatical Grant. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the International Congress of Americanists in Bogotá Colombia, in June 1985. The author wishes to thank Ursula Lamb, Sandra McGee Deutsch, Kevin Gosner, and Asunción Lavrin for comments on earlier drafts and to acknowledge the helpful critiques by anonymous LARR reviewers.

References

Notes

1. Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Actas del Consejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 5 Jan. 1875, 317–23; 10 Sept. 1888, 263–67.

2. Ordenanza de Servicio Doméstico, Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Actas, 7 May 1875, 236–46; 2 Dec. 1887, 552–56; the 1903 waitress ordinance quoted in Ernest A. Crider, “Modernization and Human Welfare: The Asistencia Pública and Buenos Aires, 1883–1910,” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1976, 147–48; the 1910 waitress ordinance, Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Actas, 1 Apr. 1910, 163–65; 12 Apr. 1912, 174.

3. Ibid., 5 Jan. 1875, 317–23.

4. Edward J. Bristow has examined the ideology of the moral reform campaigns in Great Britain. Edward J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977), 73–93. In his study of Jewish white slavery, Bristow points out that Jewish immigrants arriving in Buenos Aires were more likely than other immigrant women to fall into the hands of pimps and madames. Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), chap. 4, 111–45.

5. Fédération Abolitioniste Internationale, Dixième Congrès International tenu à Genève, le 7–11 Septembre 1908 (Geneva: Secretariat Générale de la Fédération, 1909), 264–65.

6. Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Memoria (Buenos Aires: 1877, n.p.); statistics included in the reply of Jacinte Fernández, Judge of the Political Division, Buenos Aires Police, to League of Nations Inquiry, 27 Aug. 1924, National Vigilance Association Archives, Fawcett Library, London Polytechnic (hereafter referred to as NVA), Box 111; La Vanguardia, 26 May 1919, p. 3; Ernesto Pareja, La prostitución en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1936); League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children, pt. 2 (Geneva, 1927), p. 19. The statistics on adult female nationality in Buenos Aires came from the 1895 national and 1936 municipal census. See República Argentina, Comisión del Censo, Segundo Censo de la República Argentina, Mayo 10 de 1895 (Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1898), 2:22; República Argentina, Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Cuarto Censo General de 1936 (Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft, 1938), 1:227.

7. La Nación, 20 Mar. 1875.

8. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 113.

9. Report of Major Wagener, in Troisième Congrès International, Compte Rendu du Troisième Congrès International (Paris: S.A. de Publications Périodiques, 1907), 399–411; Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women, Special Report on the Traffic in Girls and Women (London: printed privately, 1910), 67.

10. Richard Walter, The Socialist Party of Argentina, 1890-1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 18–19.

11. See Sectores populares y vida urbana (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 1984).

12. Reglamento Interno de la Dispensario de Salubridad, Articles 13 and 23, reprinted in Dr. Emilio Coni, Código de higiene y medicina legal de la República Argentina, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Librería de Juan Etchepareborda, 1891), 1:28–29.

13. See Dr. Francisco de Veyga, “La inversión sexual adquerida,” Archivos de Psiquiatría, Criminología y Ciencias Afines 4, no. 3 (Apr. 1903): 193–99; Dr. Eusebio Gómez, La mala vida en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Juan Roldán, 1908), 181–89; Dr. Looyer, Los grandes misterios de la mala vida en Buenos Aires comparada con la de los grandes capitales europeos (Buenos Aires: Talleres de Rafael Palumbo, 1911), 160. Homosexual activity by men was criminal only if the partner was a minor. According to psychologist Hugo Vezzetti, socialism and public health are directly linked by their mutual quest for social change. He posits further that the history of sexuality in Argentina, particularly as it relates to prostitution, is critical for understanding how gender affected the symbolic representation of women and the family. See Hugo Vezzetti, La locura en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Folio Ediciones, 1983), 184–203.

14. These estimates can be found in Dr. Juan Lazarte, Sociología de la prostitución (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier, 1945), 132–33, 159; and in Dr. José J. Puente, El Día Médico 5, no. 4 (1932):97.

15. República Argentina, Censo general de población, edificación, comercio e industrias de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, Capital Federal de la República Argentina, levantado en los días 16 al 24 de octubre de 1909 (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1910), 2:115, 138; and Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Memorias de Asistencia Pública, 1906, p. 24.

16. Dr. J. Manuel Irizar, “Reglamento de la prostitución,” Anales del Departamento Nacional de Higiene 4, no. 15 (Dec. 1902):782.

17. Dr. Enrique Prins, “Sobre la prostitución en Buenos Aires,” Archivos de Psiquiatría, Criminología y Ciencias Afines 1, no. 12 (Dec. 1903):722–30.

18. Asociación Nacional Argentina contra la Trata de Blancas, Memorias (1902-3), 1–10.

19. See A Romance of Philanthropy, edited by William A. Coote (London: National Vigilance Association, 1916), 181–82. For the effort in 1907, see República Argentina, Cámara de Diputados, Diario de Sesiones, 20 Sept. 1907, 1240–41.

20. República Argentina, Cámara de Diputados, Diario de Sesiones, 8 Aug. 1913, 838–39.

21. Ibid., 838–42.

22. Ibid., 17 Sept. 1913, 321–22.

23. Ibid., speech of Arturo Bas, 321–22.

24. Ibid., 329–31.

25. The Vigilance Record, no. 11 (Nov. 1913):91.

26. La Vanguardia, 19 Sept. 1913, p. 1.

27. Ibid., 20 Sept. 1913, p. 1; 21 Sept. 1913, p. 1.

28. Carolina Muzilli, El trabajo femenino (Buenos Aires: L. J. Rosso, 1916); and Dr. Alfredo Fernández Verano, “Lucha anti-venérea en la Argentina: acción desarrollada por la Liga Argentina de Profilaxis Social,” Semana Médica 31 (1924):513–16.

29. Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (New York: Avon, 1979), 19, 29–30; and Teresa Billington-Grieg, “The Truth about White Slavery,” English Review, June 1913, 438–39. Discussion of Catholic doctrine can be found in Nancy Sternbach, “The Death of a Beautiful Woman: The Femme Fatale in the Spanish-American Modernista Novel,” Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1984, 178.

30. League of Nations, Report of the Sixth International Congress for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (Graz, Austria: League of Nations, 1924), 108–11.

31. Solomon Lipp, Three Argentine Thinkers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969), 14.

32. José Ingenieros, La Législation du travail dans le République Argentine: essai critique sur le projet du Ministre González, translated by Charles Berthez (Paris: Eduard Comely, 1906), 162; Nicolás Repetto, Mi paso por la política: de Roca a Yrigoyen (Buenos Aires: Santiago Rueda, 1956), 66–67; Walter, Socialist Party of Argentina, 36; Leopoldo Zea, The Latin American Mind, translated by James H. Abbott and Lowell Dunham (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 227–28; and Ricarte Soler, El positivismo argentino (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós, 1968), 225.

33. Sergio Bagú, Vida de José Ingenieros (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1963), 33; and Vicente Cutolo, Nuevo diccionario biográfico argentino (Buenos Aires: Elche, 1968), 6:49.

34. José Ingenieros, El delito y la pena ante la filosofía biológica (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficas de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1910), 14.

35. Dr. José Ingenieros, Prologue to Eusebio Gómez, La mala vida en Buenos Aires, 7–11. Ingenieros did not mention specific crimes or illnesses but did equate the boundaries of mental illness and criminality with definitions imposed by the social system. For a study of Ingenieros's theories of mental illness and criminality, see Hugo Vezzetti, La locura en la Argentina, 173–84.

36. Ingenieros's views on the relationship between marriage and prostitution can be found in José Ingenieros, Obras completas, revised by Aníbal Ponce, vol. 23, Tratado del amor (Buenos Aires: Ediciones L. J. Rosso, 1940), pt. 3, 103–218.

37. Repetto, Mi paso por la política, 66–67; and Walter, Socialist Party of Argentina, 36.

38. República Argentina, Cámara de Diputados, Diario de Sesiones, 20 June 1917, 133–39.

39. Ibid., 139–49.

40. Angel M. Giménez, Contra la reglamentación de la prostitución: abolición de las ordenanzas municipales y profilaxis de las enfermedades venéreas. Proyectos y discursos pronunciados en el Consejo Deliberante de Buenos Aires en las sesiones del 7 de enero, 16, 19, 6 y 21 de mayo de 1919 (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Luz, n.d.), p. 3.

41. Ibid., 25–26, 68–69.

42. Although Giménez published his speech to the council, no complete records of the debate exist. The Actas of the council contain only the intendente's threats and the final ordinance. See Comisión Municipal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Actas, 6 June 1919, pp. 624–41.

43. League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children, 2 pts. (Geneva: League or Nations, 1927), 2:11, 13. One or the League of Nations observers, French journalist Albert Londres, further sensationalized the committee's findings in The Road to Buenos Aires (London: Constable, n.d.).

44. For studies of bordellos in the 1920s and 1930s in Buenos Aires and Rosario, see Ernesto Goldar, “El burdel,” La vida de nuestra pueblo, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982); Víctor Luis Bessero, Los tratantes de blancas en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1930); Julio L. Alsogaray, Trilogía de la trata de blancas: rufianes, policía, municipalidad, 2d. ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, n.d.); Francisco Ciccotti, La trata de las blanquísimas (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca PAM, 1932); Héctor Nicolás Zinni, El Rosario de satanas: historia triste de la mala vida (Rosario: Editorial Centauro, 1980); and Gerardo Bra, La organización negra: la increíble historia de la Zwi Migdal (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1982).

45. Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Decreto derogando la ordenanza sobre la reglamentación de la prostitución, 24 Dec. 1930, Archivo General de la Nación Argentina (hereafter referred to as AGN), Ministerio del Interior, 1931 expedientes, legajo 8, no. 6.362-M.

46. For the debates in the municipal council of Buenos Aires, see Actas, 15 Apr. 1932, 681–82; 3 Oct. 1933, 2184–86; 5 May 1933, 758–59; 18 Sept. 1934, 2137–38, 2150–52; 20 Nov. 1934, 2897–2901; 7 Dec. 1934, 3368; 18 Dec. 1934, 3712–14.

47. Decree of Provisional Government of Argentina, 27 Mar. 1931, AGN, Ministerio del Interior, 1931 expedientes, legajo 8, no. 6.362-M.

48. Donna J. Guy, “Lower-Class Families, Women, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” Journal of Family History 10, no. 3 (Fall 1985):328.

49. República Argentina, Cámara de Diputados, Diario de Sesiones, 15 Sept. 1933, 411–14.

50. Ibid., 12 June 1935, 333–34.

51. The Deputies' debates can be found in Diario de Sesiones, 26 Sept. 1935, 552–68, and 9 Dec. 1936, 939–49. The Senate debates are located in República Argentina, Cámara de Senadores, Diario de Sesiones, 18 Sept. 1936, 261–84; and 17 Dec. 1936, 303–11.