First courtesans in 19th century Buenos Aires

In 1870 and the following years, the importation of European women for the brothels of Buenos Aires intensified.

At that time certain areas of the city of Buenos Aires, which today are absolutely central, were remote and dangerous suburbs. Because the corner of Temple (Víamonte) and Suipacha used to become, on rainy days, an impassable fluvial barrier, since the passage of the carts caused a difference in level of more than half a metre between the street and the pavement, and also because the old riverbed of the Tercero del Medio, one of the most important streams in the city, used to run through there, In 1867, the neighbours sent a note to the Municipality asking for the installation of a swing bridge, similar to the one installed in Esmeralda crossing Cordoba. The cost was 6,000 pesos and the urgency was so great that they agreed to collaborate with 4,000 pesos.

Once installed, and given that there were more than a dozen houses of prostitution within a hundred metres of it, the bridge became popularly known as "Puente de los suspiros" (Bridge of Sighs).
The city of Buenos Aires was an important centre of this ancient trade, known in the main countries of Europe, from where its traders came, to stay in the city or to be distributed in its territory or in neighbouring countries. It was a fact that no government ignored or could regulate effectively.

The buying and selling of European women for exploitation in the brothels of Buenos Aires, the clandestine trafficking and the arrival of these young women who, whether or not they were aware of their future, were seduced with the certain promise of living in one of the most prosperous cities of those days, was for many an inexhaustible source of economic income.

By the mid-1870s, Buenos Aires was a bustling city of some 200,000 inhabitants and until then, prostitution had been considered a minor problem.
Authority exercised its power in a discretionary manner, and any woman suspected of licentiousness could be imprisoned or sent to the frontier to serve the needs of the troops.
Increasing immigration, and the large number of unmarried foreigners arriving in the city, made it imperative to find a means of social control that would also contain the development of venereal diseases.

For this reason, the ordinance regulating prostitution was issued on 5 January 1875.
The casinos and confectioneries where prostitution was practiced, which until then had operated under the authorisation of the municipal president, had to be registered or they would be closed down.
Registration included an annual licence fee of 10,000 pesos m/c per establishment and 100 pesos m/c per prostitute. Many opted to go underground.

New houses of toleration were to be within two blocks of temples, theatres or schools (art. 5).
Be run exclusively by women (art. 3).

These regents had to keep a book in which the personal details of the women working in the house were recorded (Article 13).
On Wednesdays and Saturdays, a doctor would inspect all prostitutes, record the results in the book and report them to the municipality. If the prostitute fell ill with syphilis, she was to be treated in the house at the expense of the prostitute, and only in advanced cases was she referred to the hospital (Articles 15, 17 and 18).

This differentiation between the stages of development of the disease and the scope of treatment meant that many women continued to work even though they were ill. Women who had been diagnosed with venereal ulcers the previous month were discharged as cured with reckless haste.

Others, such as Jeanne Harr or Ida Bartac, were unable to offer their services because they were listed as venereal patients in the books and in the medical reports.
This did not prevent the former from continuing to prostitute herself until she became pregnant five months after her illness was diagnosed, and the latter from doing the same, but after eighteen consecutive months of being listed as having a syphilitic disease.

The regulation, which suffered from many flaws and in most cases was not respected, still mandated that prostitutes had to be over 18 years of age, unless they could prove that they had engaged in prostitution before that age (art. 9). This article was in contrast to the Civil Code, which gave the age of majority as 22.

Inconsistency went as far as allowing them to engage in commercial sex, but denying them the possibility of marriage without parental consent.
The white slave traders (they were so called because of the colour of their skin) and the licensed houses were the biggest beneficiaries, as almost all of the pupils who entered were minors. They were not allowed to show themselves at the street door, in windows or on balconies. They had to be at the house two hours after sunset, and had to carry a photograph with their details and those of the toleration house where they worked (art. 10). These women were the ones who bore the brunt of the repression of their liberties.

The regulation, which facilitated and proposed their registration in the prostitution registers, prevented them from leaving the brothel and the trade just as easily. According to article 12: "Prostitutes who cease to belong to a house of prostitution shall remain under police surveillance as long as they do not change their lifestyle...".

If they had fled from their confinement, it would have been very difficult for them to engage in another trade, since in addition to the persecution by the police, "all those who knowingly admit into their private or business house as a tenant, guest, servant or worker any woman practising prostitution shall pay a fine of 1,000 $ m/o. Those who allow a prostitute to continue in their house three days after being warned by the authority shall be considered as knowing (art. 24).

This fact, added to the high patents and medical controls, meant that Argentinean, Spanish and Italian women, who until then had worked in the city's brothels, preferred to continue their work clandestinely in bars, cigar shops and inns, and that foreign women from non-Latin countries, prostitutes or not in their native land, but more naive, unaware of the laws and the language, were taken to the houses of tolerance.

By 1876 there were 35 licensed brothels, employing 200 women. Most of these were located in the San Nicolás neighbourhood, and some were set up in great luxury, with a bar, meeting rooms and musicians to liven up the dances.

Around the same time, a campaign of denunciations began, criticising the municipality for allowing these houses to open in the streets of the city centre, as well as pointing out the traffickers and the way they operated in Europe.

The previous year (1875) another petition had been published, with a very similar wording, signed by the owner of the house at 509 Corrientes Street. In it he made known his bad luck "for being the neighbour of a house of prostitution that altered the life of the neighbourhood, and reported that, because of the continuous scandals that occurred there, he was forced to leave his property to save his family from such a disastrous influence".
It is precisely in this house at Corrientes 506 (now 1283) where, months later, one of the most famous brothels was set up, either because of the luxury and quality of its women or because of the brutal treatment they were given.

Other petitions, which were published in harsher and more anti-Semitic terms, again sought to arouse society's reproach.

The intervention of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the pastor of the German Reformed Church and the consular authorities was also requested in order to put an end to this immoral trade. At the same time, petitions began to appear calling for the closure of cafés, casinos and other places where clandestine prostitution was practised.

In a short time, a war of denunciations was generated that made it clear that this was a duel of interests between opposing groups to which some honest citizens joined in, perhaps deceived in their good faith.

In a lengthy, information-packed petition, it documented how a trafficker (Jacobo Hónig) invested 600,000 pesos m/c to set up two new brothels, one at Corrientes 506 and the other at Temple 356 altos.

Other facilities were also reported at Libertad 309, Corrientes 509 and Temple 368, owned by Ana Goldemberg, Carlos Rock and Herman Gerber, respectively.
On the other hand, we know that "in June 1875 Adolph Honing (sic,) domiciled at Corrientes 506, brought from Europe 18 deceived young women whom he exploited for his labour, who after six months he sold one of them, called J. B., to a certain Isidoro Wolf, resident in Montevideo, for the sum of 17,000 $.

In December of the same year, Adolph Weismann deceived seven women, four Hungarian and three German, by telling them they were going to Milan and directed them to Marseille, from where he shipped them to Montevideo.
There they were awaited by Adolph Honing, who bought the four most beautiful ones. The remaining ones were bought in Buenos Aires by Herman Gerber. It is estimated that the sale of the women earned the broker 150.000$ m/c.

Gerber himself, domiciled at 368 Temple Street, had brought 12 women in June 1875. Two had been sold to another merchant in Rosario.
Another, called N.W., after five and a half months in Gerber's house, was sold to Isidoro Wolf for the sum of 14,000 pesos, and after two months he resold it for 18,000 pesos to Carlos Rock, domiciled at 509 Corrientes.

As a result of her treatment, N.W. fled the house, accompanied by another woman, by jumping off the roof. After this, the roof was surrounded by an iron fence.
Some of these escaped women went to the Austro-Hungarian consulate to file complaints, but the consulate expressed its inability to intervene.

Since civil marriage did not yet exist, in many cases a religious marriage was arranged between the exploited woman and her exploiter, who put her to work for himself or sold her to another ruffian.
This prevented the woman from being able to complain to the consular authorities of her country, since by marrying a foreigner she lost her nationality rights.
The conditions in which these women lived were indeed inhumane. They were bought and sold at the whim of their exploiters.

Upon arrival, they were made to sign a contract agreeing to pay for their travel, clothes, food, room and everything else they received.
The prices they had to pay were five to ten times the real value, and the debts they always owed to the house were used as another instrument of retention.
They were locked up all day, and if they went out for an afternoon outing once a month, it was under the supervision of the regent or a supervisor.

If any refused to accept these conditions, they were punished or sold to another brothel of lesser quality in the interior of the country.
Coming from peasant families - subjected to vassalage and sexual customs that in some cases included premarital sex and pregnancy as a sign of fertility - they may have accepted the sex trade as a stage in their already wretched earlier experience.

Underground prostitutes, working for a ruffian, suffered similar exploitation, with the aggravating factor that sanitary conditions were more deplorable and the clientele, less select, much larger.
In 1878, El Puente de los Suspiros (The Bridge of Sighs) appeared, a newspaper whose declared aim was to put an end to clandestine or authorised prostitution houses. It was not sparing in its criticism of municipal corruption, nor of the way in which the ruffians managed to evade police action.
However, in its first issue of 28 March 1878, several casino owners, closed down by the municipality as premises where clandestine prostitution was being practised, asked the police chief to revoke the order and deny the municipality the assistance of the public force.

Also, in a column that appeared the same day, the arrival of 12 new European women was mentioned. "Consigned to Pepa la Chata, Libertad 276 and Cármen la gallega de Temple, a dozen white slaves have arrived, driven by the Savoie, uglier than Dr. Agrelo himself, who has the face of a badly embalmed plover. Five of them have la Pepa, mounted in the air, that is to say, mounted on heels longer than the nails of certain municipal employees, and except for one who is not pretty at all, the poor things are hideous. Carmen has seven, and I won't tell you anything about the ugliness of those wretches, because that would be enough to make you run away".

These concepts seemed to be intended to scare away potential clients from such establishments rather than to fight prostitution. The four-page edition appeared twice a week. It criticised police action and the work of the municipality. But what was most widely reported were the adventures of a group of pimps who had arrived in the city a few years earlier.

The Municipality considered it an immoral product, written by other ruffians competing with the former. Attempts to censor it were delayed and the editors complained to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Province.

Published in Spanish, it was accompanied by a column in German urging women to abandon their ruffians and seek help from the editorial office. Soon after, two girls escaped from the House of Tolerance at 509 Corrientes (now 1283). Gabriela Kirch, 23, German, and Elena Bezembajer, of a similar age, were able to escape by jumping off the terrace with sheets. In the following edition they publish a letter in which they encourage other women to do the same (the facts are certified by the municipal doctor and by the commissary of section 5).

Other issues included drawings and the life and work of the 5 or 6 Jews who up to that time were involved in the white slave trade in the city.

Although the biographies were true and did not spare details, for the morals of the time, the dissemination of these stories implied a greater scandal than the very existence of the facts denounced.
Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that, within its powers, the Municipality could prohibit the sale or appearance of obscene writings or drawings, and within a few months it was banned, its entire campaign being thwarted. The last issue of the Bridge of Sighs was published on 17 June 1878.
It will take more than 50 years and thousands of crimes before the authorities investigate and punish this new form of slavery.

Source: Todo Es Historia Magazine N° 342 Year 1996 - Part of an article by: José Luis Scarsi