USS MULLINNIX DD-944

Curacao 1972

Does anyone have some REAL (Sailor) pictures?

WILLEMSTAD, Curacao - Night descends on La Mirage, lending a military quality to the well-guarded compound by dimming the pink and yellow hues of its barracks-like dwellings - Curacao's only legal brothel. Through open doorways, revealingly dressed women beckon.

At a gate in the fence, customers pay a small cover fee, submit to a frisking and enter what for many is there first visit to legal prostitution. Upon entering, sailors survey the compound's central plaza and its dominant feature, a gray cement bar where drinks are dispensed at a leisurely pace.

The compound was started by the government a half-century ago for the foreigners who worked in Curacao's oil refineries. Curacao is part of the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal. Prostitution is also legal on a few other Caribbean islands with a connection to the Netherlands, such as Aruba and St. Maarten. Those places offer a few "houses of pleasure" with bars and some rooms, but nothing on the scale of La Mirage.

People on this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic island of 160,000 people seem to take La Mirage in stride, perhaps because it is discreetly tucked away near the airport at a distance from the quaint Punda district with its colorful Dutch buildings and ornate governor's mansion.

The working girls come from Venezuela, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Ecuador. Leaning against the bar, one of the girls prods her first prospect. He buys her a gin and tonic, but the real deal proves elusive. A little more talk, a peck on the cheek, a wish of good luck, and she walks away…

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