Elisa (? - 1980) travesti boss

During the 1970s travesti sex workers in Brazil became more accepted by some members of the public if not by the police, and along with that there were two other developments:

1) the injection of silicone rather than the more dangerous oil or paraffin to feminise the body. Such pumping (bombadas) was first done in New York by competent doctors such as Dr David Wesser, but a few years later was being done by non-doctors (such as Jimmy Treetop in New York).

2) A few Brazilian travestis had managed to get to Paris, and returned rich enough to buy not one but two or more apartments. The first was almost always for their mother: a casa da minha mãe. Then greater numbers went. At the peak of the migration there were – for a short while – special charter flights for travestis. It was estimated that of 700 prostitutes in France, 500 were from Brazil – and they had taken over the main prostitution venues in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. They were treated somewhat better than in Brazil – they were addressed as Madame or Mademoiselle, but they were still living on the margin, subject to violence and having to pay both the police and for a place to stand. The French prostitutes’ union protested their presence, accusing them of unfair competition in that as illegal immigrants they did not pay taxes.

Elisa had been able to afford to be pumped in New York. She learned how to do it, and after buying silicone in New York, she set up in business in Paris. She also controlled the prostitution ‘stands’ and was known as the Pigalli Queen. If a Brazilian sex worker did not accept her terms, she was able to get the worker deported. 

Competition came from Claudia, who was also a bombadeira, who sourced her silicon in Paris and had cheaper prices. Elisa put a lot of pressure on Claudia, to get her to leave France. Threats and violence mounted until Claudia killed Elisa.

After the murder, many rivalries, envy, scandals, and threats surfaced among the immigrant travesti sex workers themselves. At the same time, the pressure from the French authorities grew: between 1980 and 1984, expulsions were multiplied because of irregularities in their visas. Migration of Brazilian travestis to Italy and other European countries commenced.

• Joao S Trevisan translated by Martin Foreman. Perverts in Paradise. Gay Men’s Press, 1986: 165.
• Don Kulíck. Travesti : Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Univeristy of Chicago Press. 1998: 178, 217.
• Julieta Vartabedian. Brazilian Travesti Migrations: Gender, Sexualities and Embodiment Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 : 89, 197.

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No surname is given by either Vartabedian or Kulíck. Vartabedian has no entry in her index for any Elisa. Kulíck has an index entry for a different Elisa, but not this one.

Vartabedian writes: “During the beginning of the 1970s, the first ‘pumped up’ (bombadas) travestis did it in the United States, in New York, with the practitioner Wesser.” Apparently she did not know that Wesser was a doctor, even though I wrote of him two years before her book came out.

Was there a murder trial? What happened to Claudia afterwards?

The practice of pumping silicone spread across Brazil and south America during the 1980s. In 1983 there was a sort of epidemic in São Paulo where many travestis were dying painfully after industrial silicon was sold as filtered silicone. (Trevisan p165).

Here is a clipping from the Sunday Mirror 13 July 1980 about travesti sex workers in the Bois de Boulogne which says nothing about Elisa or even that most of them were Brazilian.

Health warning:   estrogen is far better than silicone for feminisation.