BRAZIL | SOCIAL | PHOTOGRAPHY: December 2008

2008/12/19

the cycle

Many mothers and grandparents of young people who were sexually exploited share a history in common: rear children and grandchildren who never knew their own father.
At BR-163, several cities were born of goldmines and activities that attracted outsiders, temporary workers with no local ties. It is a cycle that repeats itself.

Young girls become pregnant from men that never return. The children are reared without a family structure, and are often abandoned with grandparents or sold to networks operating in other states or countries.

Many of the children sexually exploited in the region are sons and daughters of this vicious cycle.

Check out my website, the BR-163 Highway's gallerie, for more images and information.

2008/12/18

young victim

At BR-163, the young girl was hesitant to report how, as to the age of 15, after being sexually exploited by a year, she managed to escape by the back window from a brothel, with 8 months pregnant, rescued by her own mother.

Gender and race are themselves aspects structuring the logic of the market for sex.
Projects already implemented show that the vast majority of victims of sexual exploitation, tourism and trafficking are the female, black, mulatto and mestizo.

A former authoritarian and sexist culture still existing in the Brazilian society creates inequality in the relationship between gender and promotes an image of women as mere sexual object, subject to be purchased or used. The crystallization of this strengthen the concept of a female body offered as a supply, something natural - for both adults as for children and adolescents.