LONG HAUL: The owner of Top Model loans women money to move to Bragança from Brazil
(2 of 5)
At this early hour, just before midnight, the women could be mistaken for college girls — tight black clothing, skirts hiked up, eyes bright. Later they will take their clothes off for money and leave with men for more money. But now, they are singing along to Brazilian pop under red lights, and they are laughing and seem happy. Anita, 25, is one of the veterans; she arrived a whole two months ago. In July, she tells me, she kissed her crying mother goodbye and boarded a plane out of Brazil to Paris (where there is said to be less scrutiny of Brazilian "tourists"). She knew full well she would be working as a prostitute. In Paris, she was met by her new boss, Top Model owner Manuel Podence, who had paid for her flight and would drive her to Bragança to work at his club. And to her great relief, she says, he was very kind. (Other Top Model employees agree.) That first night, Podence showed her and a few other new arrivals the shining monuments of Paris, lit up as in the movies. "It was splendid," she says now, sitting on a sofa at Top Model, Jennifer Lopez's Jenny From the Block blaring in the background.
Anita has a sweet smile and brown doe eyes underlined with pencil. She is wearing a blue miniskirt and beige sandals with straps that crisscross up to her knees. Like many of the other Top Model girls, she is not glamorous, but she is pretty and approachable. Her long brown hair has been carefully highlighted and brushed. She is warm and affectionate, touching your hand to make a point, eager to please. All the qualities of a successful prostitute.
After the Eiffel Tower, Anita drove with Podence to Bragança. "I thought it looked so big," she says now, smiling at her own naiveté. To the rest of Portugal, Bragança has always been known as a little backward. The town's importance peaked in the 15th century, when it was a fiefdom of the powerful dukes of Bragança, who left the place but went on to rule Portugal from 1640 to 1910. Through it all, the fortress and surrounding mountains protected Bragança from invaders, preserving its traditions and separateness. Today, there is no industry to speak of, the primary occupation is farming, and the invaders work in the town's booming "nightlife" industry.
Anita heard about Podence and the Top Model club through a friend of hers who had already left Brazil for Bragança. Anita decided to follow her "because of poverty," she says. Back home in Rio de Janiero, she worked at a shopping mall and took classes in "tourism." She earned ?100 a month. Now she earns that in a slow night. When Anita arrived, she owed Podence ?2,700 for her airfare, Paris hotel and transportation to Portugal (she says the airfare itself cost ?800). For many immigrant prostitutes, this debt is a yoke that binds for years. But Anita says she paid it off in 20 days. At Top Model, men pay j30 to have a drink with her, ?20 of which she gets to keep. For ?70, she will perform a table dance. After her shift ends at 5 a.m., she leaves with anyone willing to pay a minimum of ?250 to spend what's left of the night with her in a hotel.
Not all women who come from Brazil are so willing or well-informed, of course. "A lot of girls were not told they would be prostitutes when they agreed to come," says Silvia Costa, a doctor at the local medical center, which regularly treats prostitutes. It is an old trick. Lorena Ramos came 10 years ago, well before the boom. She had answered a newspaper ad to be a waitress, she says. Her new boss picked her up from the airport and took her back to an apartment divided up by mattresses. Ramos eventually ran away and turned the man in to the authorities. She now works in a veterinarian's office in Bragança and reads tarot cards for people in her free time. The surge of Brazilian women on the streets "makes me very sad," she says. "They go around in big groups. There are a lot of complaints from society ladies. They feel uncomfortable."
The U.N. describes trafficking as recruiting or transferring human beings into exploitative situations through force or other forms of coercion or deception — or through "the abuse of a position of vulnerability." Anita doesn't consider herself exploited. Some advocates would argue, however, that her economic desperation, her lack of options, made the job offer inherently coercive. Many other cases occupy an even grayer zone. Like Anita, Vanilsa Aparecida Santana da Silva came to Portugal "for a better life," knowing she would be a prostitute. Seven months ago, when da Silva arrived in Moimenta da Beira, a town 170 km southwest of Bragança, her brothel owner took her passport and return ticket. And half an hour after her arrival, her first client was waiting for her — the father of the brothel's owner, a house tradition for new prostitutes. Da Silva was told she could not spend more than 20 minutes with each client, or risk losing her share of the money. Before she came, the owner had promised da Silva that if she gave him the names and numbers of five friends back in Brazil, he would lower her ?3,000 debt by ?1,000. He reneged on his side of the deal after she gave the names, she claims.
"I'm not against prostitution. I am against being lied to," da Silva says. After one week, da Silva, who used to lead a union for rodeo riders back in Brazil, launched a sit-in. For three days, she refused to leave her room and loudly demanded her passport. Finally, the owner threw her into the street — and her passport, too. She is now living in Chaves, 60 km west of Bragança, trying to find a way to bring her two children over from Brazil and become legal. "The girls who become prostitutes do it because they have their necks in a noose," she says. "If the owners of factories and businesses would pay for our way here, we would do other jobs."
At Bragança's health clinic, the prostitutes do not come in with stereotypical concerns — fears of aids, for example. Most of the women insist their customers use condoms, says Costa. But, she says, they complain of other, chronic kinds of pain. "They have psychological problems, especially anxiety. They worry they won't be able to become mothers one day because of diseases," she says. They talk of headaches, insomnia and "imaginary" maladies. "They aren't at peace with themselves," she says. The prostitutes are always in motion. They float from one disco to another. They leave Portugal when their three-month "tourist" stay is up, then re-enter later from Spain. It is a nomadic life, punctuated by violence, police interrogations and, sometimes, deportation orders. But while it lasts, many of the women are able to send fistfuls of cash to their children and parents in Brazil. As da Silva says, "Prostitution is not easy money. It is fast money."
But Anita, for one, says she has found what she came for. She sends money home to her mother, who she says knows her daughter is an artista da noite, as the Brazilians say. Recently, she was able to move out of the apartment Podence keeps for his new dancers and into her own place. "I have my tax number, my bank account. I am normal." Anita has only one month left as a "tourist" in Portugal. But she says she does not know if she wants to go back to Brazil. She has friends here now. "I came here of my own free will," she says. In the background, one of her fellow dancers is wrapped around the pole, completely nude save for a white bridal veil.