This chapter examines the process that led to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956. In a first section, it considers how the establishment of the barrio rojo coincided with an increasingly widely held negative view of regulation, which reflected the growing influence of abolitionism in the medical community and the public sphere, but it was also fed by the perception that the barrio rojo was a place of criminality and epidemiological threat. The chapter then examines the history of abolitionism in Peru, focusing on the establishment of the Comité Abolicionista Peruano and the activities that its members, a mix of medical doctors, lawyers, and feminists, promoted. In a third section, the chapter examines the campaigns led by publications such as ¡Ya! and Ultima Hora, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to close down the red-light district. These campaigns, as a final section, drew on abolitionist arguments and contributed to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956.

This chapter examines the role played by doctors in the regulation of prostitution and in containing the spread of venereal disease. At a time when, around the world, concern about, as well as research into, venereal disease were on the rise, doctors in Peru were drawn to its study. As they began to diagnose venereal disease more accurately, and came to recognize how it affected the Peruvian population, doctors grew increasingly anxious about the institutional capacities to properly treat venereal disease and what a high incidence of venereal disease signified for the nation. The creation in the 1910s of the Asistencia Pública, the institution charged with the medical inspection of prostitutes, and, in the 1920s, of the sifilicomio (syphilis clinic) did little to reduce the spread of venereal disease.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book. It presents the main arguments of the book and well as the historical context and discusses the scholarship with which it is in dialogue. It also briefly introduces each chapter.

This chapter examines the debates over the regulation of prostitution that took place in the nineteenth century. These debates inserted Peru into a transnational debate over how best to “govern” prostitution. Drawing on medical and legal journals, and other sources, the chapter studies the arguments that Peruvian doctors and lawyers put forward in favor of regulation as a paradigm for governing prostitution and the opposition that their proposals encountered from those who drew on abolitionist critiques of regulation and argued that regulation was both immoral and ineffective.

This chapter examines how doctors became increasingly critical of the approach to contain venereal disease supported by the authorities and instead favored the promotion of sex education and compulsory treatment. These views, the chapter shows, started to take shape particularly among military doctors. The strategies developed to combat venereal disease in the Army and the Navy proved influential in how the Asistencia Pública approached venereal disease in the 1930s, leading to a significant expansion in treatment facilities in the capital and the establishment a national anti-venereal strategy. This expansion coincided with growing concerns among Peru’s medical community over venereal disease among the indigenous population. It also coincided with growing attention to prostitution from criminologists and sociologists who reframed debates over prostitution in the context of a broader discussion over sexuality and changing sexual mores.