VilaMimosa

On a street called Ceará, in a corner of Praça da Bandeira, the air of a bucolic little village transforms with the fall of night. That's where you'll find Vila Mimosa, the city's most famous red-light district. Not everyone knows, however, that the Vila Mimosa of the past belonged to another landscape: the Cidade Nova area, just a few kilometers away.

Known as the Zona do Mangue, the area was located along Avenida Presidente Vargas, in the spot where the Teleporto and the two administrative centers of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall stand today — which, not by chance, are cheekily nicknamed by cariocas as Piranhão and Cafetão. Its origin has several versions. Some attribute the emergence of this precursor to Vila Mimosa to the arrival of Eastern European women who landed in Brazil fleeing the war. And others trace the beginning of the carioca Mangue back to colonial times.

Image description: This is a photograph of a river canal in the middle of a city. On the left side, there are trees with dense green foliage. In the center, the canal is calm, reflecting the clear sky. On the right, more trees form a tree-lined path. In the background, tall modern buildings are visible, including one with golden domes. A stone bridge crosses the canal in the center of the image, allowing pedestrian traffic.

The Portuguese are said to have imported French and Polish women to the stronghold in the Estácio neighborhood, seeking to satisfy the desires of the Court. Another version holds that, in the mid-19th century, masters played the role of pimps and forced enslaved Black women into prostitution, in small hotels and rooming houses, to supplement their income.

Image description: This is a black and white photograph showing a destroyed interior space. On the left, a woman is looking through the window, while on the right, a dog is sitting on the floor covered in debris. In the background, through the open door, we see a street with people walking.

Be that as it may, the presence of sex workers in the neighborhood of Estácio changed a lot over the decades, both geographically and culturally. The Polish women mixed with Brazilian women and faced persecution and repression from the State. And they moved countless times through the area, until being transferred to Praça da Bandeira, in the mid-1990s, to make way for the new buildings of Cidade Nova. The lifestyle in the Zona do Mangue, however, remains alive in narratives such as that of writer Antonio Fraga (1916-1993), a regular visitor.