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Before an enthralled audience of mostly middle-aged men, the curvy barmaids sashay with their coffee orders along a platform several inches high. Outrageous heels add even more height, guaranteeing the customers a nearly eye-level view of the women's buttocks; each plump, glistening pair divided by a leathery bikini back verging on thong dimensions.

Dozens of other, similarly brazen, daytime coffee bars pepper the otherwise-drab business district of Chile's capital. Known locally as cafes con piernas -- cafes with legs -- they run a wide spectrum of raciness. In some, the women are dressed only a tad more risque than, say, early Madonna. In others, sheer lingerie allows customers to check their imaginations at the door.

What many find most fascinating about this business is its recent and booming success in a society that's widely considered Latin America's most culturally conservative. Divorce is still illegal here, and many private schools have a policy of expelling students whose parents are separated. Abortion is prohibited even when the woman's life is in danger. Censorship boards overseeing film distribution and television programming wield inordinate power. Theaters -- even adult ones -- were barred from showing Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ."

The cafe owners cite "convenience" as key to the industry's popularity. "Before, a man who wanted to see a beautiful girl had to shut himself up in a nightclub, and arrive home late," says Miguel Angel Morales, standing in front of his notorious Baron Rojo (Red Baron) cafe. "Here, he drinks his coffee, and five, 10 minutes later, he leaves and goes home or to work. There's nothing more to it than that."

Critics contend there is more to these cafes than men merely ogling at women over a cup of cappuccino. Allegations of prostitution led the mayor of Providencia, the wealthiest district bordering Santiago's business center, to shut down three of them.

Lorena Maureira, a chatty 20-year-old waitress at the Cafe Cartís, doesn't doubt that some rival cafes con piernas are a front for the world's oldest profession. Still, she insists that the closest thing to sex most offer are just fantasies, or a kind of proxy girlfriend. Her many regulars are "guys who are like friends [and] come in to joke around," says Maureira, who, under the soft red light of her workplace, could pass for Penelope Cruz, if the slim Spanish actress were to chunk up a bit.

Whether or not the cafes actually peddle their waitresses, they still cater to men who long to play sex roles reminiscent of the now-faded whorehouse, says Raquel Olea, a prominent Chilean feminist and literary critic. Once a staple of nighttime entertainment for Chilean men living in or near small towns and cities, brothels were already dying out in the '60s, observers note. Finally, the coffin was sealed by the curfews imposed after dictator Augusto Pinochet came to power in the country's bloody 1973 coup.

Olea muses that a barmaid friendly with a regular might confide her problems to him, and sigh about having to bare so much to make ends meet or to feed her fatherless children. "I'm sure many of the waitresses tell their customers how they yearn to do something else," she says.

Next page | "Protecting weak women in a place of desire"