Slum Tourism

Since it's snowing today in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918 and our bodies are still in shock from the transition back from sunny Rio De Janeiro, we thought it made sense to spend a little time indoors doing a blog post or two.

Rio is a breathtaking city. It´s hard to imagine how sky scrapers and bland buildings could compliment mountains and forest meeting white sand beach, but somehow that happens in Rio. We saw some incredible views hang gliding over the city, danced samba (OK we tried), drank coconut milk straight out of coconuts on the beach, and saw our fair share of beautiful women.

When I first heard about favella tours from another traveller we met, I was pretty confused. For a fairly steep fee, guides would take tourists into several favellas, famous slums that developed on the hills of Rio where the poor, without access to land, developed makeshift homes. Today, the favellas are famous for crime and drug lords, and function almost as cities within cities.

Just when you thought you had heard of everything...slum tourism

Since the advertisement for the tour said "not creepy or voyeuristic," I knew it couldn't be creepy or voyeuristic, and I was as much fascinated to see how exactly slum tourism operated as I was to see the favellas. I justified the relatively high cost since the profits went to fund an after school program in one of the favellas.

One of the strangest aspects of the favellas is that many of them neighbor the wealthiest communities in Rio. The last house before the entrance to the Rocinha favella is the home of multi-millionare movie director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries).

Rocinha is a city within a city - poulation 20,000. We drove by a police car at the entrance and the guide explained that the police stayed just outside the favellas always, and, if they entered, violence usually followed between the drug lords who ran the favella and the police. He also explained that only two types of violence occured in the favella, between drug lords and police and between different drug lords. Other violence was not permitted, not by the police who never moved beyond the entrance provided they continued to receive their monthly commission, but by the drug lords who knew that crime in the favella (other than their own) was bad for business.

We were allowed to walk around briefly on the streets at a kind of mini crafts market, and were then taken to the terrace of an abandoned building which afforded a wide view of nearly the entire favella. From their we were told the details of the drug operation and chain of command of organized crime in the favella, how it impacted normal residents everyday lives, and the complex relations between the drug lords and the government (who have secretive agreements arranged through intermediaries).

After the abandoned building, we were allowed about five minutes to wander around the commercial center of the favella, but told not to take pictures, because drug deals were frequently going on in the markets and drug dealers, who always carried guns, did not appreciate photos. As stark as the contrast was from the rest of Rio (drug dealers working in the open, whole dead chickens and other animals hanging from carts, dirty bars and stands, and oddly shaped makeshift building), I couldn't help but feel that we had been taken to one of the more prosperous favellas in Rio. Conditions didn't seem as difficult or filthy as I had heard them described. I posed that question to the guide who sidestepped it several times before I stopped asking.

Next, we were ushered back into the van and taken to a second favella, shown the after school program that the tours support and allowed to meet a few of the children. Then we went for a longer walking tour of this favella (one which was much safer because it was one of the few in Rio where the drug lords didn't operate). The narrow and steep streets were fairly incredible to see. At one point I thought we were on a stair well inside a building and I looked to my left and saw a street sign.

It's bizarre to think that in the middle of a major city, these slums can continue to exist controlled by drug lords. Even more bizarre, my guide seemed to feel like it was almost OK, and pointed out some of the positives of the complex and secretive relationship between the government and the drug lords (stability and low crime rate among citizens of the favella).

A different experience... and a little creepy and voyeuristic unlike the promise of the advertisement, but maybe slum tourism is the next big thing for the jaded traveller...