The present article is a brief account of the representational politics surrounding the insertion of the Brazilian prostitutes’ movement into anti-trafficking policy-making, following the 2013 death of Gabriela Leite, one of the founders and principal leaders of the movement. Leite’s death left an organizational hole in the attempts by one of Brazil’s oldest sex worker NGOs, Davida, to secure a place for sex workers at the policy-making table in the rewriting of the country´s anti-trafficking laws. Here, we relate how sex workers, academics, journalists, and activists came together to attempt to patch that hole, successfully fighting for sex worker representation in the governmental organs overseeing the struggle against human trafficking in Rio and, more broadly, Brazil. The re-organization of this project following the death of Gabriela highlights how multifaceted alliances between differently positioned actors can leverage the visibility and power of sex workers in culture and politics, creating opportunities to implement policies that favor prostitute rights.

Oswaldo de Andrade's poem O Santeiro do Mangue (1991 [1950]) and Ruth Landes' ethnography City of Women (2006 [1947]) both highlight how African-Brazilian religions have maintained connections to sexual practices considered to be "perverse" by Christian moralities. The present article describes the presence of the orixás in today's brothels in Rio de Janeiro. We emphasize the use of Candomblé and Umbanda as counter-hegemonic forms of spirituality which protect women involved in the sale of sex and are used as symbolic languages criticizing a moral order that highlights female passivity. Through the language of the saints, that which cannot be said becomes public in Carioca brothels, highlighting agencies in a space nominally dominated by men.