The rise of nationalist movements in many Latin American countries throughout the twentieth century linked public health with notions of moral hygiene in collective efforts to foster the right kind of citizen for the nation. Paulo Drinot examines the ‘sexual question’ in the context of nineteenth and twentieth-century Peru. What sexual issues hindered the flourishing of the population in Peru and what solutions did the state devise to address these issues? (7–8).
For the purposes of this review, I have used the vocabulary and terminology included in the reviewed work. Addressing the question from the perspective of different actors in each of the book’s chapters, the ‘sexual question’ serves as the unifying theme of this work. Drinot draws from myriad sources, which include correspondence, documents from the Ministry of the Interior, medical and legal journals, periodicals and group publications. Drinot’s work reflects exhaustive research given the lack of sources typically available to scholars researching prostitution, including registers and autobiographical accounts. Nevertheless, the author procured fascinating sources that illustrate the cultural perceptions of and attitudes toward prostitution in the context of early twentieth-century Peru.
Drinot’s first chapter contextualizes the historical religious and state debates surrounding prostitution and its regulation in the nineteenth century. In addition to the moral and public health perspectives, state authorities sought to curb the spread of venereal disease in the interest of modernity. The work’s second chapter examines the sexual question from the perspective of regulation aimed at protecting Peru’s male population. Appropriately checked, prostitution served a purpose in a modern society. From a moral perspective, prostitution ‘preserved the sexual and social order’ by allowing men an appropriate outlet for their unrestrained sexuality, curbing incidences of homosexuality or masturbation and policing the women who offered sexual services (61). Rather than effectively regulating sex work though, regulation contributed to a ‘new sexual economy’ of clandestine prostitution (104). Here, Drinot contradicts a top-down narrative of policing, arguing that prostitutes and clientele alike shaped practices and regulation of prostitution through resistance, accommodation and even adherence. The third chapter of this work examines anxieties of the state in its pursuit of modernity. While regulation, as a ‘project of improvement’ aimed to conceal prostitution by relegating the practice to the Barrio Rojo [red light district], spatial reordering failed to remove the practice from the public eye. Likewise, Peruvian officials realized the incompatibility of modernity with the patriarchal order they sought to preserve. The popularity of the ‘mujer muchacho’ or the ‘flapper girl’ particularly worried reformers intent on fostering the right kind citizen for Peru. Drinot’s fourth and fifth chapters examine the medical aspects of disease prevention and treatment and identify a discursive shift in approaches to and perspectives on prostitution. Largely in favour of regulation in the early twentieth century, doctors saw treatment as equally important in preventing the spread of venereal disease. After years in which regulation failed to place the same emphasis on treatment, Peru’s medical community largely conceded that the system of regulation did not work. Contrary to venereal disease treatment centres in Britain that grew out of feminist pushes for equal treatment of the sexes, Peruvian treatment centres emphasized medical authority and sought to protect men, viewing women as primary vectors for disease transmission. Medical consensus of the failures of regulation and the continued spread of venereal disease alike forced authorities to alter their approach and expand treatment to both men and women and to initiate sex education campaigns aimed at the general populace rather than at prostitutes alone. Public health officials incorporated venereal disease into similar campaigns against illnesses like tuberculosis or malaria. This expansion of sex education in military and civil spheres sought to deter the populace from engaging in sexual commerce rather than to inform and educate. Finally, the final chapter of this work outlines the process by which the Barrio Rojo shut down amidst growing pushes for abolition.
While Drinot’s work is comprehensive, discussion of intervention from independent institutions, for example, the Ford or the Rockefeller Foundations would have been useful in identifying broader geographical and imperialistic pressures for modernizing the Peruvian state. Likewise, examination of nation building and the construction of national identities would have bolstered the argument for citizen reform. Additionally, given the present struggle for sex worker rights and decriminalisation, a discussion of terminology and the history of language including terms such as ‘prostitution’ and ‘sex work’ would greatly benefit this study in order to properly situate the work within historical context.
The strengths of this work lie in Drinot’s emphasis of the agency and power of the regulated, rather than a generalized top-down approach of policing and control. This erudite work of scholarship ties the history of sexuality to the history of medicine and of public health in Peru and would benefit any examination of modern Latin America, feminist and gender studies, the history of sexuality and the history of medicine alike.
