![]() ![]() Now some of the city’s poorest people live on its most desirable real estate. The construction workers had to make do with building their houses on the only available space that was left – the steep hillsides. Back when Rio was just a stretch of buildings along what is now Ipanema, Leblon, and Copacabana beaches, the wealthy bought up all of the oceanfront lands. Pedro explained that it is all down to the city’s history. It seems strange that Rio de Janeiro’s most deprived neighbourhoods have some of the best views in the city. His part-time hobby of photographing favela life has earned him exhibitions in both London and Paris. As a cultural representative for Santa Marta, Thiago has given interviews in worldwide publications and appeared on TV in numerous countries. He had now recruited local student Pedro Monteiro to act as his surrogate when he was busy with other engagements, of which there were many. He set up Favela Santa Marta Tour as a way to showcase the favelas to outsiders, to demystify them and show that they are not just violent slums but vibrant communities. Thiago Firmino, a local dancehall DJ, was born and raised in Santa Marta. Since then, dozens of favelas have been pacified with Santa Marta, once the city’s most violent slum controlled by the Commando Vermelho (Red Command) drug gang, being held up as the model for how pacification can be a drive for social change. The hope was to break the cycle of police raiding favelas, having shootouts with traffickers, and then withdrawing. They are a part of every single neighbourhood and to ignore them is to ignore one huge facet of life in Rio de Janeiro.Īfter many hours of research, trawling through scores of motorcycle and jeep tours, I came across Favela Santa Marta Tour. Santa Marta was the first favela to be ‘pacified’ back in 2008, a programme to expel drug gangs and install UPPs – or Pacifying Police Units – in the city’s most violent neighbourhoods. A quarter of the cities population still lives in these neighbourhoods and chances are that many of the people you will interact with within the city – bartenders, clerks, hotel staff, bus drivers – will live in one of the city’s 800 favelas. The truth is, they are filled with regular, hard-working residents. They have a reputation worldwide as hotbeds of violence and unrest. In all honesty, I didn’t really have an answer for them.įavelas are as much a part of Rio de Janeiro as Cristo Redentor and Copacabana beach. They couldn’t understand what anyone had to gain from visiting or why it would be of any interest to me. It wasn’t a question asked with any malice but more out of sheer curiosity. This was the question asked of me by my Carioca friends as they drove me to Praia da Barra da Tijuca, hoping to show me a little more of Rio outside the usual tourist spots of Copacabana, Ipanema and Botafogo. This was the dilemma I faced – should I take a tour of a Favela while in Rio de Janeiro or not? In the worst cases, companies will drive paying customers through Favelas in armoured cars as if the neighbourhoods are an urban extension of Knowsley Safari Park. There is often no interaction or conversation with the community that lives there, no attempt to understand local life. Tour guides will walk tourists through slums and villages so that they can gawp at local people and their way of life as if they are exhibitions in a human zoo. “Poverty Tourism’ is a controversial topic in the travel industry and a concept I have never felt fully comfortable with. ![]()
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