While paying for sex has been legal in Brazil since at least as early as 2000, pimping and owning brothels are illegal in the country. One estimate puts the number of prostitutes in Brazil at one million in a country of nearly 203 million.
There are said to be around 2,000 prostitutes working in Belo Horizonte (one of the World Cup’s 12 host cities) alone. Belo Horizonte gained notoriety in 2013 when Cida Vieira, chairwoman of Aprosmig, a local prostitutes’ union, said that the city’s prostitutes would accept credit card payments to make transactions more convenient for World Cup attendees. The city gained still more publicity when Laura Maria Do Espirito Santo, a founding member of Aprosmig, came up with the idea of arranging English lessons for prostitutes so they could better cater to English-speaking soccer fans attending the competition. “The language gets you ahead,” remarked Santo. “We are learning the basics. They say there’ll be 200,000 tourists in Belo Horizonte so it makes a lot of sense.”