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Chapter Two Racial Hierarchies of Desire and the Specter of Sex Tourism I met Becky, a twenty-nine-year-old schoolteacher from Portland, Oregon, at the bus stop in Barra when I saw a caçador (hunter) flirting with her. A blond, blue-eyed American woman, she looked visibly annoyed and uninterested. When the Praça da Sé bus came, she sat next to me, so we started a conversation . On her third trip to Bahia, Becky was renting a two-bedroom apartment in Barra with eight other people for a weeklong capoeira event. Before she left Portland, some of Becky’s friends joked that she “would come back with a husband.” “People thought I would have a harem,” she said. However, she insisted that she came to Bahia solely to play capoeira, unlike her housemate, Annie, whom Becky described as a very friendly and outgoing woman who was constantly inviting Brazilians back to their apartment. “Being on vacation gave [Annie] license” to date freely and sleep with Brazilian men. In a sense, the liminality of the tourism experience enabled and empowered Annie to participate in practices in which she ordinarily would not engage at home. Becky said that all of the women in the capoeira group have had experiences with aggressive Bahian men attempting to “pick them up.” She has earned a reputation as “the Bitch” because she does not want to be bothered. Becky noted that in the Barra, “people know where we live and know our movements.” In fact, a Bahian man followed one of her housemates to the apartment from the beach, and Becky’s friend started crying because he would not leave. As a foreign white woman, Becky felt constantly harassed in the streets of Salvador by men who assumed she was seeking companionship . She occasionally frequented the Terça da Benção (Tuesday Night Parties) in Pelourinho but was overwhelmed by her constant negotiations with local men: “There’s a lot of groping, and an overabundance of soliciting. I can’t do this—it’s so intense. . . . [I]t’s like if you dance with them, you’re Racial Hierarchies of Desire and the Specter of Sex Tourism 45 saying much more.” Becky reflected on the complicated sexual politics of the transnational space of capoeira in Salvador: “I’ve met people who are nice about helping with capoeira. I don’t know what they want—if they’re being nice because they’re nice or because they see the dollar sign and passport.” Becky’s awareness of her economic and national privilege makes her question Brazilians’ hospitality. The skepticism about ulterior motives that often underlies interracial liaisons and relationships—particularly cross-national ones—has also been described in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Cabezas 2009; Fernandez 2010). Furthermore, Becky’s praise of Brazilian women as “gorgeous” and her recognition of the centrality of the butt in Brazilian aesthetics made her question why Brazilian men would want to hit on her: “It’s usually the darker men who hit on me. I’m like, ‘How could you choose this over Brazilian women?’ I tell these guys, ‘No, you’re in love with me because you think I have a shitload of money.’” Becky’s reference to Brazil’s “butt culture” reflects the fact that the country’s popular cultural aesthetic valorizes bundas or bum-bums (backsides) rather than breasts, as is the case in the United States and other countries, although this aesthetic preference may also be differentiated along racial/ethnic lines in the United States. The popularity of “Brazil Butt Lift” infomercials on mainstream U.S. television channels is one indication of the renown that this Brazilian aesthetic has achieved. Elisete, a middle-aged Afro-Brazilian tourism professional, had markedly different experiences from those that confronted Becky: “My own color draws attention in Pelourinho. I go to Pelourinho with no makeup, with jeans, tennis shoes, and clothes that cover my body. . . . Just by being a black woman, you become a tourist attraction. [The tourist] approaches you, thinking you’re a sex worker—even the domestic tourist who comes on a business trip.” Elisete’s experiences reveal how black Brazilian women must engage in creative strategies and bodily practices to be treated with respect as they navigate through the touristic spaces of their native city. In this sense, they experience racism and sexism not only based on their identities and bodies but also as “spatial acts” (McKittrick 2006, xviii). Notions of the hypersexuality of blackness...

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