“Brazil has its eye on you”: sexual panic and securitization in Rio de Janeiro during the FIFA World Cup, 2014

• In Event: Securitization and the Effective Criminalization of Sex Work in Brazil

Abstract

For several years prior to the 2014 World Cup, the global media claimed that hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents were being groomed to satisfy the lusts of the foreign men who'd be flocking to Brazil to watch their favorite sport. As the Cup approached, these predictions reached a fever pitch. When the Cup was finally over, however, no examples of child sexual exploitation (CSE) linked to the games had been reported in Rio, according to the city and state police, child welfare specialists, state prosecutor's office, human rights and social welfare system representatives, children's rights NGOs and the entirety of the city and state's well-developed sexual abuse denunciation apparatus. In fact, 2014 would pass by without a single case of CSE being brought in front of the Prosecutor's Office of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The present article draws upon ethnographic research undertaken in two separate fields during the 2012-2014 period, as well as the analysis of media stories, to explain how and why carioca authorities have not been able to discover and repress the crimes they claim exist on a massive scale. We also seek to show what effects the moral panic over CSE has had in transforming security in Rio de Janeiro.

Authors

• Ana Paula da Silva, Universidade Federal Fluminense - Pádua

• Thaddeus G Blanchette, Universitário Augusto Motta/UNISUAM