Touring Poverty by Bianca Freire-Medeiros

Author:Bianca Freire-Medeiros [Freire-Medeiros, Bianca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415596541
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.5 Safari-style jeeps are a common trope of the touristic Rocinha. Photo © Bianca Felippe Mussel.

On the other hand, it is interesting to note that when riding on jeeps throughout the favela, tourists become much more exposed to the resident’s critical gaze. There are no windows to be rolled up, as in the case of the van, neither can they attempt to mingle as when touring the favela on foot. For those tourists who opt for the walking tours, they are usually warned about the possibility of getting lost, being nudged by cars and motorbikes that speed throughout the favela, and of falling into the sewage grates just next to the curb (which are sometimes open).

Supporting social projects within the favela constitutes the third source of serious divergence amongst tourism operators. Since 2000, Favela Tours has been responsible for a social project called Para Ti at Vila Canoas where kids have computer and tuition classes. Be a Local contributes to a day care center at Roupa Suja, a precarious area in Rocinha. Favela Adventures claims that “with a portion of our profits, the vision is to build a ‘home’ or community center” where “the talented people” from Rocinha will be able to interact with tourists. Exotic Tour sponsors a workshop—Oficina de Turismo da Rocinha—which trains local children and youth to be guides. There they learn foreign languages, and attend local geography and history classes. In October 2010, there were 42 young men and women enrolled at the workshop. According to Rejane Reis, Exotic Tours has so far “educated a total of 12 residents, who now own their tourism guide professional license. Unfortunately, due to the violence within Rocinha, most have moved out and we have lost contact with them.”

For the other tourism operators, all these initiatives are plainly opportunistic, a marketing strategy and nothing else. They argue that their presence in the favela seems unrelated to any kind of financial obligation towards the area. The owner of one of the agencies with whom I spoke summarized:

I’m not in charge of any social action. I’m not a social agent of the favela. That’s not my job. My job is to show what the favela really is, in order to erase that eventual, negative image tourists might have and to promote the city as well. It’s a job I look at from a patriotic and economic viewpoint, because it improves the image of Brazil outside the country, and it is an attraction for people to come more often.

If tourism promoters have different opinions concerning the level of commitment to social projects that should be expected from them as businessmen, they all agree that the presence of tourists in the community “definitely boosts the resident’s self-esteem.” In this sense, they are in conformity with other NGOs which have as their main target “the production and reproduction of the social imagination of favela residents, with its well-known effects on the constitution of self-image, of which the clearest example is perhaps the practice of alluding to the favela as a needy community” (Machado da Silva and Leite 2004).

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