The Dramatic Losses of Brazil: City‐Staging, Spectacular Security, and the Problem of Sex Tourism during the 2014 World Cup in Natal

In Brazil, the advent of several mega‐sporting events—most notably the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio Olympics—has led to various state practices of city‐staging. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Natal during the 2014 World Cup, I examine the ways in which the problem of sex tourism became particularly prominent for Natal’s image, including how the World Cup exacerbated already existing state crackdowns on sex tourism and practices of city‐staging and spectacular security. I also examine how—beside the predictable alliances of conservative and church groups with the state—progressive feminists and leftist activists aligned themselves with the state in their opposition to sex tourism and reinforced, perhaps inadvertently, practices of spectacular security and city‐staging. These practices materialized in ways that provided further legitimacy to the invisibilization of sex workers from tourist sites, who were seen as at odds with the image of a world‐class, safe, family‐friendly city. While the nation mourned the spectacular defeat of the Brazilian soccer team, sex workers, too, lost dramatically during the World Cup, through new forms of sexual governance that targeted sex tourism.