Erotics, love and violence: European women's travels in the northeast of Brazil

Abstract

In this article I analyze the cross-border sexual and affective relationships women from diverse European countries form with local men in two coastal touristic villages of the state of Ceará, in the northeast of Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic research I consider how, in the frame of ambiguous sexual, economic, and affective exchanges, violence intertwines with erotics and with notions of love. I take the women's narratives as the central reference. My main argument is that the delight provoked by the transformation of their erotic subjectivities and the idea of rehearsing new forms of heterosexual relatedness, which involve what they consider unusual forms of love, feed the ambiguities pervading their relationships with local men, making these women unaware of the economic aspects involved in their relationships and of occasional hostility and subalternization to which they are subjected. Only in the frame of the acute increase in the tensions provoked by the change in these women's status from tourists to foreign residents, they label their partner's economic demands as exploitative and their actions as violence.

Erotismo, amor y violencia: viajes de mujeres europeas en el noreste de Brasil

En este artículo analizo las relaciones sexuales y afectivas transfronterizas de mujeres de diversos países europeos con hombres locales en dos villas turísticas costeras del estado de Ceara, en el noreste de Brasil. Basándome en trabajo etnográfico, considero cómo, en el marco de intercambios sexuales, económicos y afectivos ambiguos, la violencia se entrelaza con el erotismo y con nociones de amor. Tomo las narrativas de las mujeres como la referencia central. Mi argumento central es que el disfrute provocado por la transformación de sus subjetividades eróticas y la idea de ensayar nuevas formas de relacionamiento heterosexual, las cuales suponen que consideren formas inusuales de amor, alimenta las ambigüedades que dominan sus relaciones con los hombres locales, haciendo a estas mujeres inconscientes de los aspectos económicos involucrados en sus relaciones y de la ocasional hostilidad y subalternización a la que son sujetas. Solo en el marco de un aumento súbito de las tensiones provocadas por el cambio en el estatus de estas mujeres de turistas a residentes extranjeras, ellas categorizan las demandas económicas de sus parejas como explotación y a sus acciones como violencia.

情慾、爱与暴力：欧洲女性至巴西东北部旅游

我在本文中，分析来自欧洲各国的女性，与巴西东北部赛阿拉州的两座沿海观光村落的在地男性所形成的跨国界性爱及情感关係。我运用民族志研究，考量在性爱、经济与情感的模煳交换框架中，暴力如何与情慾和爱的概念相互交缠。我视女性的叙事为主要的参照。我的主要主张如下：这些女性情慾主体的改变所引发的愉悦，以及排练她们认定为非常态关係的异性恋关係性的新形式之想法，加深了充斥在她们与在地男性关係中的模煳性，使这些女性未能察觉这些关係中涉及的经济面向，以及其所屈从的偶尔敌意与从属化。只有当这些女性的身份从观光客转为外籍居留人士、并从而引发剧烈增加的冲突框架中，这些女性才会将其伴侣的经济需求贴上剥削的标籤、而其伴侣的行动才会被视作暴力。

Keywords:

• female sex travels
• cross-border violence
• love
• transactional sex

Palabras claves:

• viajes sexuales de mujeres
• violencia transfronteriza
• amor
• sexo transaccional

关键词::

• 女性性爱旅游
• 跨国界暴力
• 爱
• 性交易

Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and generous comments. Thanks also to Fernando Leão and Ana Fonseca, who accompanied me during the field work, to Susan Frohlick, who provided valuable insights and to Jenny Lloyd for the proof reading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The northeast still is one of the poorest regions of Brazil, where inequalities persist, in spite of public policies directed toward reducing poverty (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada 2012).

^2. I write the term sex tourism in italics, pointing to the fact that during the years in which the research was conducted it became an emic term, frequently considered as synonymous with heterosexual prostitution directed toward foreign male visitors.

^3. Emic term that usually refers people born in the land.

^4. Gringo/gringa is a word locally used to refer to foreigners, frequently but not exclusively from countries of the Global North. It can be used in descriptive, but also in pejorative terms.

^5. Nicknames for Jericoacoara and Canoa Quebrada.

^6. Canoa, in the state's northeastern coast, with little more than 4000 stable residents in 2005, has received visitors since the end of the 1960s. On the west coast, with almost half the population, Jeri was ‘discovered’ 10 years later.

^7. In these cases, not even the birth of children has the potential to create kinship in the sense of producing relatedness with their partner's relatives.

Additional information

Funding

Many thanks to FAPESP, the State of São Paulo Research Funding Agency.

Notes on contributors

Adriana Piscitelli

Adriana Piscitelli is a feminist social anthropologist, Senior Researcher at the University of Campinas Centre for Gender Studies (Brazil). During the last 13 years she has been engaged in studies focusing the transnational sex and marriage markets.