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Brazilian prostitutes prepare for World Cup
CNN reports
that prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte have been lining up
this week for free English classes.
Footballers
and soccer fans aren’t the only ones gearing up for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in
Brazil. All across the country, business people, including local prostitutes,
are preparing themselves for what’s sure to be a huge influx of
English-speaking tourists come June 2014.
CNN reports
that prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte have been lining up
this week for free English classes, offered by the regional Association of
Prostitution. The classes, which will be held in March of this year, are
expected to attract at least 300 women from the prostitution business, which is
legal in Brazil.
In a
conversation with CNN, the president of Belo Horizonte’s Association of
Prostitution, Cida Vieira, said that many private-sector businesses across
Brazil are preparing their workers for the Cup, and seeing as prostitution is a
legitimate business in Brazil, she said she believes her association should do
the same.
Vieira also
said that English would be an important asset for prostitutes in negotiating
prices and, of course, during other industry-specific transactions.
No International Business Time
Brazilian Prostitutes Learn Foreign Languages
Ahead Of World Cup
In
preparation for a massive influx of tourists arriving for next year’s World Cup
and the 2016 Summer Olympics, prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Belo
Horizonte are flocking to take free courses to learn English and other foreign
languages.
Cida
Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes in the city, told the
Associated Press that so far 20 prostitutes in the city have signed up for the
courses, with another 300 planning to join them in the classroom.
The
association, a kind of “union” for sex workers claiming 4,000 members, is
organizing the classes itself and trying to recruit teacher volunteers.
“I don’t
think we will have problems persuading English teachers to provide services for
free,” she said. “We already have several volunteer psychologists and doctors
helping us.”
The city’s
Mineirao Stadium, which has capacity of 62,000 fans, will be the host of six
matches in the World Cup.
AP reported
that the classes will commence in March and last up to eight months.
“It will be
important for the girls who will be able to use English to let their clients
know what they are charging and learn about what turns them on,” Vieira said.
“And for
the same reasons we are also thinking of offering free French and Italian classes.”
Reuters
noted that some classes will even teach Brazil’s dominant tongue, Portuguese,
because many prostitutes in the city are immigrants.
Prostitution
is legal in Brazil, although pimping and running a brothel are not.
A
27-year-old prostitute in Belo Horizonte named Pollyana Temponi told the Folha
de Sao Paulo newspaper: "All jobs require English nowadays.”
Another
unnamed hooker, aged 54, told the paper: "I'm taking the course because
the only thing I know is how to say 'I love you'. It's English, right? It's
hard to say it. But who knows, maybe. I might fall in love.”
Twelve of
Brazilian cities will hold events for the Cup, meaning that many other people,
including policemen, waiters, bellboys, taxi drivers, will also have to learn
the rudiments of some foreign language. Vieira insists prostitutes are no
different.
"Across
Brazil, lots of businesses in the private sector are getting prepared and
making their workers more qualified for the Cup. Well, this is a profession,
too," she told CNN.
"English
will be very important to communicate with clients during the Cup. They'll have
to learn how to work out financial deals and also use a specialized vocabulary
with sensual words and fetishes."
The
Brazilian tourist board is expecting about 10 million visitors in 2014, about
the twice the number of foreign arrivals in 2010. About 500,000 of those are
expected solely for the World Cup tournament.
“In a
country like Brazil where prostitution is a legal form of employment, this may
not come as a surprise,” said Kamy Akhaven, president and managing editor of
ProCon.org, ABC News reported.
“I imagine
a large influx of people working in the sex industry to come to the cities in
the coming year. … There will be an influx of prostitutes matching the demand
that World Cup fans would bring to the cities. That trend occurred again in
South Africa [during the 2010 World Cup] where they were there again to meet
the demands of mostly men -- to watch arguably the world’s greatest sporting
event.”
Lurking
beneath the generally boisterous festivities surrounding preparation for the
World Cup and Olympics lies a darker reality in Brazil – the widespread
phenomenon of child prostitution.
Last March,
Brazil’s Higher Court of Justice ruled that adults having sex with children was
not necessarily a crime. Since 2009, the age of consent in the country has been
14.
While the
ruling sparked outrage, the Economist reported that child prostitution (which
is technically illegal in Brazil) is very common. A report published in 2006 by
the University of Brasília, the federal government and Unicef revealed that
child sex workers exist in almost 1,000 municipalities and roadside locations.
Coastal cities like Fortaleza, Recife and Rio de Janeiro are hotspots, and
ports and border towns are particularly rife with child prostitutes.
According
to the Brazilian Multidisciplinary Association for the Protection of Children
and Adolescents, in the northeastern city of Fortaleza alone thousands of
children, scarred by poverty, are engaged in the sex industry, catered
primarily to tourists from Europe, North America and elsewhere.
“The
community [in Fortaleza] is composed of approximately 35,000 inhabitants
earning less than the Brazilian minimum wage of $223 a month,” a local activist
named Joyce said, according to Compassion International.
“The homes
are less than 20 square meters in size where families of up to 10 people --
between adults and children -- live together. Without any conditions of
privacy, there is often the occurrence of domestic violence or sexual abuse
against the small ones. Frustrated and without any encouragement, all the
children want is to be far from home. So they quit studying and become an easy
target for the drug dealers. … In order to maintain their addiction, they
simply go to the streets.”
Exodus Cry,
a Kansas City-based organization trying an end to human trafficking, estimates
that Brazil has up to 500,000 child prostitutes.
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