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Geoforum 40 (2009) 580–588
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
The favela and its touristic transits
Bianca Freire-Medeiros
CPDOC/FGV, Getulio Vargas Foundation , Praia de Botafogo, 190-1411, 22250-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 8 December 2007
Received in revised form 15 September
2008
Keywords:
Tourism
Favela
Rio de Janeiro
Poverty
Globalization
Consumption
a b s t r a c t
The article discusses the development of the favela into a tourist attraction. Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, is the
paradigmatic ‘‘tourist favela”, with tours taking place regularly since the early 1990s and with three thousand tourists visiting the site each month. The development of the favela into a tourist destination is seen
as part of the so-called reality tours phenomenon and of the global circulation of the favela as a trademark. The methodology included different strategies: long interviews with qualified informants, field
observation, and participant observation in different tours. The article concludes with some thoughts
on tourism activities in impoverished areas.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In 1996, Michael Jackson came to Brazil to shoot his music video
They Don’t Care About Us, directed by Spike Lee. The Pelourinho in
Salvador, and the Santa Marta hill in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Sul, were
chosen as the settings for the video, which aimed to expose the
indifference of public power and elites toward poverty.
While the Santa Marta population mostly celebrated – the
megastar had a festive, samba-driven reception and was promised
a Michael Jackson museum to commemorate his visit –, government authorities reacted with indignation. Ronaldo Cezar Coelho,
then-Secretary of Commerce and Industry, argued the video would
denigrate the city’s image; Pelé claimed it would ruin Brazil’s
chances of hosting the 2004 Olympics. The political temperature
rose when the key Rio papers published that the price of the locations had been negotiated with Dona Marta drug king. The district
attorney demanded the shoot be halted, arguing serious damage to
the tourism industry.
From that episode on, much has changed. Favelas have not only
been acknowledged as a tourist destination by Rio’s tourism office,
but local government itself began to actively promote tourism in
another favela, Morro da Providência (Freire-Medeiros, 2006). This
certainly does not mean the negative image of the favelas and their
inhabitants has vanished – quite the contrary, actually – but new
politics of visibility are definitely at play, for good or bad. And it
is these new visibility politics, which allow the elaboration and sale
of the Rio favela as a tourist destination, that we shall deal with in
this article.
E-mail address: freiremedeiros@fgv.br
0016-7185/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.10.007
The reflections discussed here derive from an on-going research
project, started in February 2005, which examines the conversion
of poverty into a tourist commodity at a global scale.1 My main
empirical reference in Rio de Janeiro is Rocinha where a regular tourist market has been developed for over a decade now with an average of 3000 tourists visiting the site each month. Although the
impressions of tourists and favela dwellers on tourism activities
are also part of my research project, this article focuses on the
dynamics of production of the touristic favela.2 During the Summer
of 2005, I and a team of young researchers conducted in-depth interviews with qualified informants, i.e. the owners of the seven agencies which organize trips to Rocinha and two representatives of
one of the Neighborhood Associations. Starting off with a semi-structured questionnaire, I aimed to trace the process by which the agencies had entered the favela, the kind of service they offered, the
relationship with ordinary dwellers and with the drug dealers who
live in Rocinha, the level of commitment to social projects and their
strategies for differentiation in an increasingly competitive market.
Each agency’s website was analyzed in terms of their discursive
and visual aspects. Field observations have been carried out with
some regularity for over three years now, including participation
in different tours a well as long hours spent in a spot where souvenirs are sold by favelados to tourists.
1
The research project is titled ‘‘Touring Poverty in Buenos Aires, Johannesburg and
Rio de Janeiro” and is financed by the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies
(FURS) and by The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development
(CNPq/Brazil).
2
For an analysis of the relationship between tourists and dwellers in Rocinha, see
Freire-Medeiros et al. (2008).
B. Freire-Medeiros / Geoforum 40 (2009) 580–588
In Section 2, I place the favelas within the geography and history of Rio de Janeiro. In Section 3, I suggest that the emergence
of the favela as a tourist destination should be seen as part of the
so-called reality tours phenomenon and of the global circulation
of the favela as a trademark, a sign associated with ambivalent signifiers which place it as the extreme Other, capable of both seduction (for its authenticity and solidarity) and threat (for its violence
and non-rationality). Section 4 will provide an in-depth view of
how Rocinha has been positioned as a tourist attraction. I conclude
by sharing a few broader reflections on my own position in the
field and on tourism in poverty-stricken areas.
2. Placing the favelas
As geographers and urban sociologists have long observed,
topography is a key-element contributing to the heterogeneity of
residential segregation. Rio de Janeiro offers a particularly interesting case, with favelas populating the hills and mountains right next
to the high income areas. It has been so since the early 1900s.
In 1897, soldiers returning from the Canudos War (a military
campaign in the Northeastern Region of Brazil) received permission to settle temporarily on the Santo Antonio and Providência
hills (‘‘morros”), in Rio’s downtown area. Morro da Providência
supposedly received the name of Morro da Favela in reference to
a bush abundant in semi-arid areas. It is worth noticing that Morro
da Providência has also been promoted – not as successfully as
Rocinha, though – as a ‘‘touristic favela” since August 2005 when
the Mayor’s Office turned it into an Open Air Museum (FreireMedeiros, 2006, 2007, 2008; Freire-Medeiros et al., 2008).
By 1920, 26 favelas were identified in Rio de Janeiro (Abreu,
1987). Part of this increase was due to a major phase of renovation
in Rio’s city center, involving the demolition of low-income rented
tenement slum buildings – the so-called cortiços. With the poor
population searching for alternatives to the lack of affordable housing, favelas spread to other hills, even reaching the suburbs of the
city.
The 1930 Revolution, which brought populist Getulio Vargas to
power, opened up a new phase as far as favelas were concerned.
The 1937 Building Code was the first official document to openly
address the existence of the favelas and also their elimination (Valladares, 2000). But what alternatives were given to those who lived
on the hills? In the beginning of the 1940s, the government created
parques proletários – working-class housing areas designed with
the aim of imposing discipline on former favela residents, turning
them into ‘‘adjusted” citizens (Medeiros, 2002). Ignoring the intentions and actions of the state, the favelas did not stop growing.
As the Estado Novo government (1937–1946) came to an end,
official discourse began to treat the favela as a fundamental problem in Rio de Janeiro. Two factors explain the high visibility and
political status of favelas during this period. The first was their rapid growth – by the 1950s, 7% of Rio de Janeiro’s total population
were favela residents (Abreu, 1987). The second factor was the fear
that favela residents would succumb to the communist
‘‘temptation”.
Government policies from the end of the Estado Novo until the
beginning of the 1960s oscillated between intense repression and
moments of greater tolerance which, not coincidentally, corresponded to election periods (Burgos, 2004). The political importance of favelas during this time is reflected in the number of
studies (including government studies) dedicated to finding ‘‘solutions” to the problem, in media coverage, in legislative projects,
and in parliamentary commissions.3
3
For an in-depth analysis of academic and non-academic studies concerned with
favelas, see Valladares (2005).
581
Although Rio was no longer the capital city of Brazil, it still
received substantial attention and funds by virtue of its continuing
economic and symbolic importance. It also received migrants from
the interior of the state of Rio de Janeiro, from neighboring states
and the Northeast of Brazil attracted by job opportunities. Most
of these new migrants settled in the suburbs, but nevertheless
the favela population of the South and North Zones increased by
98% (Abreu, 1987). The 1960 Census recorded 147 favelas with a
total population of 335,063 residents (Cavallieri, 1986).
After the 1964 military coup, conflicts intensified. Eighty favelas
were removed from the South Zone of the city, occupied by the
middle and high classes, to housing complexes subsided by the
public power. These complexes were considerably far from job
opportunities and lacked basic infrastructure (including access to
public transportation), leading many families, who were evicted
from their favelas and sent to a housing complex, to leave the
housing complex after a while and start again in a new favela (Valladares, 1978). Between 1968 and 1973, not only the number of
small new favelas increased 74%, but also the number of favela residents grew 36.5% (Abreu, 1987; Cavallieri, 1986). Thus, the presence of the favela residents prevailed near the high-income
neighborhoods like Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon.
In the later 1970s, Brazil began to experience a degree of political openness after 15 years of military dictatorship. As discussed
by several authors, this created an environment within which
new social rights began to be discussed if not always achieved
(Pasternak, 2003; Burgos, 2004). Although at this stage there was
never anything approaching a comprehensive policy for favela
improvement, the removal policy lost momentum. By the end of
the decade, favelas began to be partially urbanized, gaining access
to electricity and piped water for instance, at a scale thereto unknown (Preteceille and Valladares, 2000).
The 1980s opened with a new form of relationship between the
government and favelas in Rio de Janeiro State: arbitrary actions by
the police against favela residents began to be repressed, several
programs aimed at providing basic infrastructure to the favelas
were created, and removal proposals were replaced with the ‘‘One
Family One Plot” program, which legalized lots in several favelas.
From 1992 onwards, with the Master Plan of Rio de Janeiro, preservation and upgrading of favelas became the official policy with
the Favela-Bairro (Squatter Settlement-Neighborhood). This highly
acclaimed program not only includes sanitation systems and other
basic infrastructure, but emphasizes the importance of integrating
the favelas both spatially (through street connections with the surrounding neighborhoods) and socially (constructing buildings for
the operation of social projects). With the financial support of the
Inter-American Development Bank, it was launched in 1994 by
the Housing Department of the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro. At first, it aimed at medium-sized favelas (which make up
nearly one-third of all favelas in Rio),4 but has been also taken to
both large and small favelas (Riley et al., 2001). Some critics pertinently point out that the program failed to face the issue of illegal
drug trafficking within the favelas (Pasternak, 2003; Valladares, 2005).
By the turn of the millennium, favelas had become socially and
economically more heterogeneous, to the extent that they now no
longer constitute a generic settlement form (Valladares, 2005). If,
on one hand, some have been targeted by formal plans aiming
for their physical incorporation into the city, on the other their
populations still suffer from a heavy social stigma and from police
brutality. As a growing literature attests, there has been an acceler-
4
In a 1980 survey of favelas, 156 of the 376 squatter settlements recorded in the
municipality had under 500 residents, but a further 62 had between 1000 and 2000
dwellers, and 39 had over 5000 residents. Just one per cent of the favelas were
attached to the public sewerage network, rubbish collection was adequate in only
17%, only 6% had a full water system, and 92% had no drainage (Cavallieri, 1986).
582
B. Freire-Medeiros / Geoforum 40 (2009) 580–588
ated development of a powerful drug and crime culture in Rio de
Janeiro that has fed the imaginary of violence associated with the
favelas and the favelados (favela residents), allowing arbitrary
measures within the favelas to be seen as legitimate (Machado
da Silva, 1994; Soares, 1996; Zaluar, 2000; Leite, 2000; Burgos,
2004; Zaluar and Alvito, 2004).
Avoided by local elites, nevertheless favelas are turned into
much valued attractions for international tourists, becoming sites
of sophisticated commercial activities. In the following section, I
attempt to shed light on how this peculiar tourist attraction came
to be.
3. Reality tours and the favela as trademark
Nowadays the most diverse travel experiences are organized
under the label ‘‘alternative tourism” (Holloway, 1995; Taylor,
2000; Richards, 2007). Here I focus on a specific segment of alternative tourism for which the term reality tour has been coined, the
distinctive identity of which is based on the supposedly authentic,
interactive and extreme character of the type of encounter it promotes. The possibility of vicariously living the emotions of the
Other – an entity as potentially diverse as the South American Indians, the victims of Nazi holocaust and Rio de Janeiro’s favelados – is
a firm promise made by the promoters (Charlesworth and Addis,
2002; Till, 2003). For analysis purposes, I have divided reality tours
into two main types: ‘‘social tours” and ‘‘dark tours”. It is important
to note, nevertheless, that the boundaries between the two kind of
tours are often far from evident on the empirical ground.
‘‘Social tours” sell participation and authenticity through trips
that aim to be a counterpoint to the destructive vocation of mass
tourism. Their privileged destinations are economically challenged
places, forming a sub-field of reality tourism eloquently labeled as
pro-poor tourism or pity tourism. Global Exchange, a non-governmental organization based in California, pioneered the commercialization of socially minded reality tours as early as the early
1990s. In July 2006, they announced on their website5:
‘‘Global Exchange invites you to: Venezuela – Labor, Land
Reform, and Agriculture (Price: $ 1250 from Caracas). In this
unique reality tour, participants will get hands on experience
and build people-to-people ties from Caracas to the coffee
campesinos in the Andes. Some of the activities are: to meet
representatives of the Land Reform Institute, visit workerowned factories and cooperatives, speak with labor leaders,
visit organic farming cooperatives. . .” (italics added).
Today we see a growing, strategic involvement of organizations
such as Food First, The Center for Global Education and Where There
Be Dragons, among others. These promoting agents start from the
premise that, if one cannot abolish tourism, one should transform
it into a fairer industry. Predictability, control, comfort, and efficiency, deemed positive values in conventional tourism, give way
to the values of awareness and self-realization.
But if many reality tours promoted by NGOs pretend to be more
than ‘‘a kind of voyeurism”, is it possible to say the same of so
many other experiences of contact which are equally commercialized as reality tours? I am especially concerned here with the segment within reality tourism called ‘‘dark tourism” – ‘‘the
presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” (Foley and Lennon, 1996, p. 198).
Strolls through Sniper’s Alley in Sarajevo and the radioactive fields
of Chernobyl are quite frequent. Souvenirs can be purchased at
Ground Zero in New York, picnics eaten on the battlefields of
northern France (Stone, 2006). In the EcoAlberto Park, in Hildago,
5
cf. http://www.globalexchange.org.
tourists pay U$ 18.00 for the ‘‘!Burla a la Migra!” tour, a simulation
of the illegal crossing made by thousands of Mexicans looking for a
better life in the US. For something between U$ 20.00 and U$ 35.00,
tourists may assess – and photograph – the damage cause by hurricane Katrina along route US-90.
As MacCannel (1992) and Stone (2006) among others have argued, travel to sites associated with suffering is not a new phenomenon and takes us as far back as to the first religious pilgrimages.
But what seems to be unique about the contemporary experience
is its diversity and popularity. Tourists are seeking, more and more,
experiences that are off the beaten track, interactive, unique,
adventurous and authentic. Often trading as remembrance, education and/or entertainment, these places have not only been attracting people eager to consume real and/or commodified death,
disaster and misery, but also raising complex ethical dilemmas as
far as the nature of gazing and the act of remembrance are concerned (Tarlow, 2005; Stone and Sharpley, 2008).
The complexity of reality tours – whether social or dark – is owed
primarily to its object of consumption not being something obvious and tangible. Two chief domains are articulated within reality
tours, money and emotions, the superposition of which Western
morality usually defines as incongruent (Zelizer, 2004). Not by
chance, the practice of this type of tourism is always accompanied
by heated debates, mainly in regards to the ethical pertinence of
turning other people’s misery and adverse conditions into a commodity. In general, detractors accuse practitioners of motivating
voyeuristic sentiments and attitudes toward poverty and suffering.
The favela which is sold to the tourists seems to have it all: it
allows the engagement with an altruistic sense of good citizenship
(tourists would be contributing to the economic development of a
poor area by paying for a visit to it) at the same time it motivates a
sense of adventure and tourism-related pursuits. But not only that:
as a complementary hypothesis, I suggest favela tours are equally
indebted to the phenomenon of circulation and consumption, at
a global level, of the favela as a trademark. Let us examine this
point more carefully.
Different authors have mentioned the fact that tourism is not
only a phenomenon of consumption, but simultaneously a phenomenon of production (Clifford, 1988; MacCannel, 1992; Hutnyk,
1996). The message used to promote the ‘‘touristic product” helps
to construct it as it is presented to and bought by the consumer
through a set of symbolic goods ‘‘fabricated” by producing agents
and media language. Urry (1990) suggests that the very choice of
a certain destination by the tourist/consumer is based on an ‘‘anticipation of the experience”, which consists of a dialogue with the
images of a given locale carried by several media products, images
which create an interp …
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