We Fight with God’s Weapons: Sex Work and Pragmatic Penance in Neoliberal Costa Rica

Abstract

's evangelical organization for assisting sex workers, renouncing prostitution is required in order to receive resources and support. 1 Today the group is talking about why leaving sex work is so hard. Ronda, pregnant with her second child and struggling with her partner, says "prostitution is what I automatically turn to when times are tough." Esperanza Foundation's director explains that there are magical ties to prostitution, but that all magic is black (that is, bad). She calls the desire to return to sex work a "demonic tie" and then discusses Satan's strategies for getting women to abandon Esperanza Foundation's support group. These include gossip, envy, mean comments, violence, material and economic interests, and spiritual struggles. She tells the story of a participant who was murdered by her partner last year, explaining "we all have the opportunity as individuals to choose between good and bad, including choosing to stay in violent situations that harm us or not. Yorleny made the wrong choice, and was killed." The group leader starts to pray, asking for protection and guidance for everyone in the room, and we all jump when she starts clapping loudly to scare off the devil. She goes around to each individual, offering specific (and loud) prayers for each woman present. A lot of the women cry, and then when she gets to Marieta she starts yelling and Marieta hits the floor. She lies on the ground with her eyes closed but twitching so the director covers her with her sweater while the praying continues. After about five minutes, Marieta wakes up and is helped into a chair. The director finishes by saying that leaving behind the evil and illness of prostitution is a holy war but one that each woman here can win if she puts her faith in the Lord.-Taken from the author's fieldnotes,

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“…I was rather captivated by their strong sense of awareness. Their performance of victimhood, or what Megan Rivers-Moore (2018) describes "pragmatic penance" in her research with sex workers in Costa Rica, is a strategy within "the broader context that frames the ways in which they are helped" (855). In other words, performing a label that is inevitably ascribed to IDP women is a form of situated agency outside the Western model of active and independentresistance.…”