Sex work in Venezuela is legal and regulated. The country's Ministry of Health and Social Development requires sex workers to carry identification cards and to have monthly health checkups. Prostitution is common, particularly in Caracas and in other domestic tourist destinations. Sex work in Venezuela is closely tied to its economic history and the history of oil production.
Venezuela received an influx of population after the first significant oil wells were drilled in the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, black women of a lower socioeconomic class who could not get jobs as domestics or selling sweets and candies as street vendors in urban areas turned to prostitution for money. Women and girls from surrounding Andean states , in particular Colombia , were also recruited to come to Venezuela and sometimes forced to work in the sex trade.
Prostitution became a big business and women from the Caribbean and even Europe notably Holland, France, and Belgium came to Venezuela looking for work. Guajiro Indian women outnumbered black or European sex workers in Maracaibo. Establishments frequented by oilmen like the famous Pavilion opened up as combination bar, brothels, and dance hall. They classified the activity, applied a city tax to the work, and required weekly medical examinations of the sex workers.
The city also began to require that workers carry health cards with them. In , an anti-venereal institute conducted a census of major towns in the state, and prostitutes were required to report where they worked to local offices.
Some upper-class sex workers had access to private doctors for regular exams. A market for local remedies to venereal diseased developed, but the rate of STIs continued to increase. By , the government estimated that 64 percent of hospital patients had syphilis , and 37 percent of patients had other venereal diseases such as chancroid chancre blando. A Ministry of Health report showed that the office needed over 3 million units of penicillin at any given time for the treatment of syphilis.
