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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
For a long time, favelas were a source of fear for tourists visiting Rio de Janeiro. Now that they are more appealing, some have become popular tourist destinations even though they are still regarded as an "off the beaten track" activity. Favela Tours analyzes the factors behind the emergence of tourism in the favelas, places of otherness and authenticity for visitors who come mainly from Western Europe and North America. Based on ethnography of those involved in these practices (guides, residents and tourists), this book describes how the local and global forces are converging to make favelas part of the western tourism system: a mechanism for fabricating and assimilating otherness.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
1 The Invention of the Tourist Favela
1.1. The favela in the imaginary
1.2. The favelas of tourism
1.3. The rise of the favela tour, contextual elements
1.4. History of the favela tours
2 Visiting the Favela
2.1. A typical excursion with Favela Tour
2.2. Constants and variations of the favela tour model .
3 Advantages of Tourist Mediation: The Guides of Rocinha
3.1. The guides, a variety of profiles and issues
3.2. The privilege of mediation
4 Distinguished Practices, Practices of Distinction
4.1. Criticism and distinction
4.2. Distinction, the driving force behind tourism in the favelas?
5 The Authenticity of the Favela
5.1. The favela and the “real Brazil”
5.2. Praise of the non-touristic
5.3. The authenticity of poverty
5.4. Tourism, slum and poverty
6 From Exoticism to Authenticity
6.1. Exoticism
6.2. Authenticity, a scientific exoticism?
7 The Favela in the Market of Otherness
7.1. Authenticism and the crisis of otherness
7.2. Miniature worlds
7.3. Otherness and tourism, between celebration and domestication .
8 Gazes
8.1. Describing the gazes
8.2. The interactional norms of the gaze
8.3. The space of the gaze
9 Reality and the Tourism Frame
9.1. Narrative frame and experience
9.2. The tourism experience frame
9.3. Avoidance and exclusion
Conclusion
References
Index
Other titles from ISTE in Science, Society and New Technologies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. Typology of tourist practices in the favelas
List of Figures
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Favelas in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro
Figure 1.2. Petrobras advertising.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. The artisanal market, at the top of Rocinha.
Figure 2.2. Tourist photographing Rocinha from a terrace.
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion
References
Index
Other titles from ISTE in Science, Society and New Technologies
End User License Agreement
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Tourism and Mobility Systems Set
coordinated by
Philippe Violier
Volume 6
Favela Tours
Building Otherness in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro
Thomas Apchain
First published 2023 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUKwww.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USAwww.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2023The rights of Thomas Apchain to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943508
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-767-5
Introduction
Since the 1990s, tourists, mostly European or North American, have visited the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. In small groups, they follow guides through what were once places that tourists carefully avoided. They learn about their history and try to understand how their inhabitants live there. Favela tours really exploded in the 2010s, before taking a lesser place at the end of the decade. It was during their peak that this research, conducted between 2012 and 2018, was carried out, based on repeated ethnographic observations of the tours and interviews conducted with their protagonists: tourists, guides and inhabitants. The aim of this book is to present this investigation in order to lead a reflection on the development of tourism in the favelas, representative of the contemporary modes of construction and consumption of otherness.
Indeed, while the favelas have become a place for tourist mobility, it is first of all because it constitutes an otherness now valued by those who travel in Rio de Janeiro. Although tourism is now common, it continues to be thought of as a novelty by those who practice it, or at least as an excursion “off the beaten track”. In this respect, tourism in the favelas is not an isolated phenomenon. On the one hand, it is linked to the emergence of tourism in other places that have the particularity of having been initially thought of as non-touristy, either because of a lack of interest or more often because of the difficulty of getting there and/or the danger. Here, the case of favelas is close to other tourism practices that some researchers (Frenzel and Koens 2012) have gathered under the label of slum tourism, to refer to the emergence of tourism in poor neighborhoods of major metropolises around the globe. Although “slumming” has older origins, the phenomenon seems, in these proportions, characteristic of the 2000s and 2010s. On the other hand, the growth of tourism in the favelas is part of a tendency that can be found in other practices, including alternative practices in typical tourist sites, and to which correspond strategies used by both tourists and their hosts. For tourists, the promise of a visit “off the beaten track” is linked to strategies of distinction and the acquisition of a symbolic prestige. For the hosts, the valorization of the non-touristic element allows them to distinguish objects, places or practices in order to insert themselves – not without paradox – into the tourist economy.
In other words, the ethnography of favela tours allows us to observe the emergence of a contemporary form of tourism, while including it in the cultural mechanisms that have long structured the practices of leisure mobility oriented towards the discovery of the Other. Indeed, it is a specific form of tourism, a tourism of the Other, that will be discussed here. While the analyses developed in this book will sometimes go further than the case of the favela tours, they will be limited to this form that, by the intercultural situations that it brings about, corresponds best to the epistemological specificities of anthropology. Tourism is a shape-shifting phenomenon that affects all areas of social life, which is why it is considered by some to be a “total social fact” (Cousin and Réau 2009), and in any case it raises several questions for all social sciences. For anthropology, it is a matter of studying its cultural dimensions and analyzing it as a practice that is above all part of an “economy of otherness” (Cousin and Apchain 2016; Cousin 2018). Anthropology is therefore faced with the need to make a choice. Either it places itself on the tourists’ side, observes their ways of doing and thinking, questions their representations, listens to their stories. Or, it places itself on the other side, that of the hosts, and observes how tourism fits into the local culture. In short, it either deals with excursions or incursions. Finally, we should mention that anthropology has been able to place itself at the level of intermediaries, in particular guides (Doquet 2009), protagonists between two worlds. In any case, it seems complicated for anthropology to study all the protagonists at once, mainly because it is based on a method – that of ethnography and participant observation – which implies that it tries to see through the eyes of a specific cultural group.
In its young history (Leite and Graburn 2010), the anthropology of tourism seems to have mostly taken on the task of studying tourism from the perspective of host populations. In doing so, it ensures anthropology’s continuity, not only because of tradition and anthropologists’ appetite for the distant, but also because it has made the study of exogenous groups to the researcher an essential point of its method, that of decentering. More often, however, tourism has come to find the anthropologist in its “field”, and the latter has tried therefore to interpret the ways in which the locals, whether or not they became hosts, interpreted the phenomenon, interacted with the tourists, understood their motivations or simply learned to live with tourism. From this host-centered perspective, the study of cultural change emerged as a dominant issue, at first, in a negative and deterministic way, and then, with a growing awareness of all the negotiations, games and syncretisms caused by tourism.
However, there are still many lessons to be learned from an anthropology of tourists, and this is the approach that this book advocates. Making the ethnography of tourists is a difficult task for many reasons (partly because of their permanent mobility) and may seem to depart from the principles of discipline, which advocates a decentering that a geographical and cultural distance is supposed to ensure. However, the tourist poses this problem regardless of the chosen approach and imposes a need for reflexivity that was often lacking at the time of its arrival at the ethnologists’ doors. More on the side of an anthropology of the West than of an anthropology of the distant, although the field itself is geographically distant, this research is therefore concerned with tourists, their representations, the symbolic motivations by which they behave and interpret their practice, and the place that the favela occupies in their relationship to otherness. It is therefore intended to reflect on the cultural dimensions of the practice of tourism and not on those of its reception or impact, although, as far as these questions are concerned, understanding tourists also makes it possible to understand how tourism makes local upsurges.
The method chosen follows this orientation and attempts to adapt to the particular type of respondent that the tourist embodies. The analyses that this book seeks to develop are based primarily on the content of the excursions, the discourse that is expressed and received within the tours, the routine of their development, the events that may occasionally occur, the explanations of the guides to the tourists and the accounts that those who participated give about the visit. It is the desire to collect these accounts that constitutes the first invitation to go beyond the traditional framework of the “field” in anthropology, often thought of as a unity of place. Indeed, in order to understand the experience of tourists, it is sometimes necessary to situate its analysis in a wider framework than that of the practice itself, in this case the favela tour. To understand the value and uses of the tourist experience, it is necessary to be able to talk to tourists and/or see how they recount it after their trip, back in their own society. Here, the interviews were not systematically conducted during and after the trip, but I tried to remain attentive to this type of data. On several occasions, I will therefore refer to interviews that took place outside of Brazil (mainly in France and a few in the United States), with people who had visited a favela in the past. These interviews are essential for a tourist-centered approach, as a fundamental part of what drives travelers to visit a favela is played out after the visit, even more so when the story is told after returning home in a way that often greatly modifies the experience.
Some of the observations described in this book also come from moments outside of the tours, as a result of the relationships formed with the tourists encountered during the favela tours and sometimes extended after their trip. In some cases, I will include descriptions from stays in youth hostels, which allowed me to experience the daily life of travelers for several weeks. Finally, while this investigation is centered on the tourist, it nevertheless grants an important place to the main interlocutor, the guide. Indeed, the guide is a key character, insofar as he controls the essence of the representation of the favela for tourist purposes. As I will show, the guides’ success depends largely on their ability to surprise, while presenting the favela in terms that correspond to Western criteria of valuing otherness. As the guides are situated between the world of the tourists and the favela, the analysis of their path, activity and discourse is indispensable. Other characters who gravitate around the excursions will be mentioned, but will not be the subject of an in-depth analysis.
This investigation took place from 2012 to 2018, over a period that corresponds to the rise of the favela tours. The latter have existed for 30 years in similar forms, although the phenomenon as a whole has had a more marginal existence in quantitative terms. The rise of the favela tour, between 2008 and 2016, was not only due to the slow maturation of tourist practices that appeared in the early 1990s. It was above all the consequence of the emergence of Western representations valuing the favela and of a context marked by local initiatives that took advantage of (but more generally dealt with) the evolution of its image and with the appearance of tourism on a greater scale.
1The Invention of the Tourist Favela
“For me, I’ve always wanted to see this. It is the first thing that I’ve done.” Léo1, a 26-year-old Frenchman, had hardly arrived in Rio before he found himself exploring a favela. He was alone in a group of a dozen tourists, all French, enjoying a caipirinha in Vila Canoas, which was the highlight of the visit organized by Favela Tour, the eponymous pioneer of the tours organized in the favelas. Léo and I were talking. He had on a T-shirt with the colors of Brazil marking “Rio de Janeiro”:
Léo: They lost my suitcase at the airport.
Me: Oh boy, and have you just got here?
Léo: Yes, yesterday.
Me: And did you come here on the first day?
Léo: Well yes, I really wanted to do this, and then as, the weather was bad today, I came here (Conversation with Léo, French tourist visiting Rocinha, July 2012).
Léo’s example is not a common one. While, in 2012, travelers came to some favelas in large numbers every day, it was rarely the first day of their stay. Most of them came after visiting the city’s attractions – Corcovado and its Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, Maracanã – and sometime after enjoying the beaches of Copacabana or Ipanema. In short, if they did a favela tour, it was most often towards the end of their trip or, indeed, when it rained. Tourists who, like Leo, make visiting a favela a priority exist, but are rare. Later, as we left the favela, I asked Léo again about his visit. He said:
For me, this is Brazil. I like Brazilian music a lot and, I don’t know why, personally, it refers more to that [the favela], and the movies too. In fact, I have the impression that all I know about Brazil is the favela. Even if I didn’t see everything, it was still good (Léo, French tourist visiting Rocinha, June 2012).
What Léo points out is the existence of a set of images, representations and ideas of what the favela is – a set of things that are not systematically shared in such an elaborate and positive way, but which constitute an essential piece in explaining the tourists’ attraction to the favelas. Without being the exclusive factor of attraction, what is sometimes called the imaginary2 must be questioned. Its place as the driving force behind the attraction to destinations is obvious and, for some, it is its impact that characterizes tourism as a matter of recognition (Urry 1990), aiming at “noticing how much the originals resemble their copies” (Augé 1997, p. 23). Indeed, it is certain that this imaginary has a fundamental place as a medium for practices, even though it is not shared by all in the same terms and even though, in the end, tourists like Léo only rarely “see” the favelas as they already “know” them.
1.1. The favela in the imaginary
The term “favela”, as we shall see, refers to a polysemous category, defined above all by a set of oppositions, the most general of which is the division between favela (or morro) and asfalto. These oppositions articulate at the local scale a fragmentation of the urban space and a stigmatization of the favelas. While belonging to the category of favela can certainly be activated in a positive way in the assertion of their cultural specificities by its inhabitants, it is most often the source of a tenacious devaluation that pays little heed to the extraordinary diversity of spaces qualified by the term “favela”. However, it appears that the representations associated with the favela vary according to whether we are situated on a local/national or global scale, and in particular if we adopt the Western point of view. I will speak of the Western imaginary and not of the global imaginary, because this book is about tourist practices belonging almost exclusively to Western travelers (European and North American). It would seem that, far from being shared throughout the world, the representations, imaginaries, discourses and practices discussed here are attributable to the West, even though all of this were to spread worldwide. In many ways, Western representations of the favela have more advantageous elements, and it seems that the stigma fades with distance. The stigma is stronger among neighbors, and only the “exoticism” that a distant view builds seems to be able to create the conditions for a real interest in discovering the favelas.
However, local and Western representations of the favela are not radically opposed. The Western imaginary of the favelas is made up of extremely diverse, sometimes contradictory elements, and also mixes negative perceptions and idealizations. This contradictory aspect, in any case ambivalent, undoubtedly comes from the way in which it has been constructed by the concomitant discourses, on the one hand, of the Brazilian authorities trying to enhance the reputation of the country or the city and, on the other hand, of all kinds of artists who have progressively made the favela an exotic place. Because it is mobilized at different levels in the construction of tourist practices for which it is a decisive foundation, this imaginary must be commented on here. Throughout the 20th century and up to the present day, numerous artistic or playful works have used the favela as a setting, less often as a subject. By evoking here some of these international productions, we can then understand a part of the Western imaginary on the favela, and thus the formation of a common foundation of expectations, touristic a priori. These images of the favela that are diffused worldwide have, in fact, strongly contributed to shape, not without contradictions, several aspects of the Western imaginary of the favela.
Having become an international brand (Freire-Medeiros 2007), the exotic favela is nonetheless a marginal space, and it is this dimension that is at the heart of many other uses of favelas in film. Narratively, the favela is a codified space located outside of state control; it is the place where the protagonists can escape their pursuers. Already in 1964, the character belonging to Jean-Paul Belmondo hid there with Françoise Dorléac in L’Homme de Rio, making the link between the oniric aesthetics of Orfeu Negro (1959) and the dynamics of action based on criminal evocation, imitated in the sequel to City of God (2002). In fact, it was especially towards the end of the 2000s that American productions made the favela a setting, showing a surprising frequency of narrative uses. Among them, The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Fast and Furious 5 (2011) were very successful worldwide, totaling respectively 263 million and 626 million dollars in revenue3. In these films, the narrative and cinematic use of the favela is almost similar. In each case, the favela is the setting for the beginning of the movie: it is easily understood that the protagonists are hiding there and that their hideout is about to be discovered.
The favelas are thus presented as lawless areas, where wanted people can hide. The American heroes, who are eventually found, enjoy the anonymity and seem to appreciate the freedom that this place on the fringe of society offers them. Then – and this is an equally important reason for this choice of setting – once the hideout is revealed, both films stage a huge chase through the favela. These manhunt sequences are extremely alike. In both films, the chase is filmed simultaneously in general views from a helicopter and in closer shots that follow the characters, first through the maze of the favela, and then on the rooftops.
The staging of the favela in the cinema also relies on a vision of the favela that is more exotic, mixing bright colors and rhythmic beats. At the origin of this important aspect of the global diffusion of an idealized vision of the favela, Bianca Freire-Medeiros points to the impact of a film: City of God (2002). This Franco–Hispanic–Brazilian film describes the evolution of the eponymous favela (located in the western zone of Rio de Janeiro) in the 1970s and the radicalization of the violence linked to drug trafficking. Through stylized images accompanied by a soundtrack that combines samba, funk and rock, this internationally successful film, which combines extreme violence and great aesthetic concern, has contributed to associating the favela with an image that Freire-Medeiros describes as “glamorous”, “cool” and “sexy”. City of God had a decisive importance on the evolution of the international imaginary towards the favela by conferring to the latter, and while favoring its association with violence, a powerful exoticism, an atmosphere made of warm colors accompanied by bewitching music. Therefore, its impact on the development of tourism was immense, which some critics had already foreseen when the film was released, accusing City of God of “promoting hellish tourism”4 (Bentes 2003). Freire-Medeiros confirms the importance of the film in the process of attracting tourists to the favela. She notes the frequency with which the film is cited by tourists during excursions to the favelas. This is a fact that I have also observed for myself. Many tourists, in fact, asked the guide, during the tour, if the film was shot in Rocinha. But one of the direct and equally important consequences of the commercial success of this film, which has been resolutely oriented towards global distribution since the beginning of its conception, is undoubtedly the fact that it has opened up the possibility of using the favela as an alternative symbol that is particularly commercial.
Thus, simultaneously with or following the success of Fernando Meirelles’ film, the favela has appeared, in various parts of the world, at the heart of various commercial strategies that both testify to this “glamorization” of the favela and feed this imaginary. The example mentioned by Freire-Medeiros of the proliferation of restaurants and bars that use the term “favela” is quite significant of this phenomenon. For example, there are club-restaurants called “Favela chic” in Paris, Miami and London. The slogan of the London establishment is particularly telling as to the reasons behind the choice of such a theme, and could also be applied to the film City of God: “It’s all about exotic flavors, bright colors, and a touch of unusual, in short, a feast for the senses” (ibid.). The term is present in the names of several other restaurants located around the world, including New York, Glasgow, Tokyo and Sydney. In another notable example, the Brazilian owners of the famous Havaianas sandal brand have largely based their marketing strategy on the glamorization of Carioca poverty, and claim that their sandals, now worn worldwide, were originally “typical of Brazilian street children” (Leu 2004).
These artistic productions located in the favelas of the city of Rio de Janeiro have strongly contributed to their inclusion in the Western imaginary of Brazil, while at the same time producing an extremely diverse, even contradictory, discourse on their nature. On the one hand, we have a set of images that play on the marginalization and violence associated with the favelas, to which we can also add the use of the favelas as backdrops for war video games in which we can replay the confrontations between drug traffickers and soldiers. On the other hand, we have a glamorization of the favela, its colors and its sounds, which tends to associate it with the “authentic” Brazil, melting pot of popular music (samba and bossa nova). With this, the distinctive success of the film City of God operates a syncretism, maintaining extreme violence and a narrative of the harshness of the favelas, while pursuing an association with Brazilian culture as it is best sold abroad, especially its music. In this, the samba rock of City of God operates a modernization of the images, initiated in Marcel Camus’ Orfeu Negro, which, in 1959, already made an association between bossa nova and a poverty experienced with enthusiasm. These polar opposite images of the violent favela and the glamorous favela, often mixed in popular imaginary, provide an inexhaustible source for the touristification of favelas. Whether they are negative or positive, attractive or repulsive, the main impact consists of the close association they have produced between Brazil, its former capital and its favelas.
The creation of a Western imaginary about the favela through cinema is important for at least two reasons. First, because a large part of the motivation for tourism is to recognize, that is, to come into direct contact with elements that constitute an imaginary that precedes the trip and that often establishes both the list of things that we hope to find, to see with our own eyes, and a repertoire of images and ideas from which to judge the conformity of what we are shown. In The Tourist Gaze (1990), John Urry shows this link between the global circulation of images and the circulation of travelers who seek out these images, while creating new ones. The phenomenon is not recent, painting and literature (Bertho-Lavenir 1999) having played this role in the early history of tourism. On the subject of painting, Urry argues that the ways in which the visual interest of sites visited depend on a resemblance to the aesthetics of a painting, and that tourism (in this case, sightseeing) proceeds in its emergence from the “distinction between nature and art dissolved into a circularity” through which “the landscape became a reduplication of the picture that preceded it” (Urry and Larsen 2011, p. 100). Recent examples of tourism development related to cinema, to the places where the films are supposed to take place (the development of international tourism in Montmartre following the success of Amélie) or simply to their filming locations (New Zealand for The Lord of the Rings, or the city of Dubrovnik following Game of Thrones) have proven the potential of cinema to generate desires to visit. Moreover, cinema conditions various associations between places and values. So much so that to visit the places of cinema is not only to find images, but to seek values, emotions and feelings. In this, by what it confers to tourism, cinema accumulates the power of literature and painting. As far as the favela is concerned, this medium has been a central place for the construction of an international brand, which first allowed an indirect experience on the basis of which many desires to visit were developed. Léo, our young tourist who, having just arrived in Rio de Janeiro, rushed to take part in a favela tour, saw City of God a few years earlier and remembered it being a shock. He situated there the birth of his attraction, finally satisfied, for Brazil and the favela:
When I saw City of God, it was like a shock for me. Since then, I have listened to a lot of Brazilian music and I have wanted to go too. I also saw the series based on the film, and it’s true that when I think of Brazil, I think of the favela (Léo, French tourist visiting Rocinha, June 2012).
Not all the tourists who participate in a favela tour are like Léo, and many of them have not seen any of the films mentioned. The fact that they go to a favela in spite of everything should relativize the importance of this imaginary. It is not the case. Indeed, if the images are not equally shared, they are no less determining, in that they condition the value of a place, or here of a type of place, which is in a way doubled. On the one hand, the favela now exists as an image and, above all, positive values are associated with it. On the other hand, the favela exists as a real place, somewhere in the world, without us knowing if we will ever see it or if it really corresponds to the image we have formed. It is from this double existence, whatever we may say about the correspondences or in coherences between the imaginary and reality, that tourism is born, both as a cultural practice that involves passing from representation to reality and as an industry working to facilitate the visit of places anticipated by the imagination. In other words, it is first as a set of images that have taken a positive place in Western representations of the world that the favela has ceased to be invisible or to be an obscure place on which fears are projected, but not images, and from which we should not approach.
1.2. The favelas of tourism
For this research, I conducted multiple interviews with tourists who had visited a favela. These conversations either took place during the visit, or shortly after a tour I had taken with them, or much later, sometimes years after. In each case, I noticed a striking phenomenon. Most of them forget the name of the favela they have visited, and all of them refer to the term “favela”, in the singular, to describe the place of their visit. However, the guides mentioned the names of the favelas they visited, some of them with insistence, especially when they lived there. The favela inhabitants, on the other hand, seemed to refer to their favelado status only on specific occasions and when they opposed, or are opposed to, other Cariocas. In most cases, it is towards the favela where they lived that they naturally express their belonging. That the term “favela” becomes, in the post-visit narratives, the only toponym by which tourists refer to the place of their visit proceeds from a denial of the heterogeneity of the spaces included in the term.
There are about 1,000 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. They differ in size, origin, geographical location and more. Some are very small; others are so large and populated that they feed the idea of “cities within cities”. In spite of this diversity, the term “favela” has been maintained, and the use of the singular is frequent both for those who refer to it from the outside and for those who live there. What the use of the singular for the favela covers is never stable; the category is constantly evolving and retains a polysemy that is not only inevitable, but constitutive of the very way it evolves over time. Several processes, several competing and even opposing definitions, co-produce a category with blurred outlines, but which paradoxically applies without too much difficulty to a set of urban spaces with varied characteristics. Tourism is one of these processes, and it is mainly located at the level of the category, of the favela in the singular, and a visit to one favela thus seems to be valid for all the others.
1.2.1. The favela, a relative urban category
What can be noted from the outset about favelas is that the term is not translated (Wachsberger 2008), both in local and global contexts. Indeed, more general terms or their equivalents, such as slum in English or bidonville in French, only appear in particular situations and are used either by those who intend to stigmatize favelas (in eradication discourses, for example) or by those who plan to help them (such as NGOs and tour operators when they need to emphasize the poverty of the place). Outside these specific contexts, the term “favela” always prevails. The favela is thus a particular reality, a specific urban phenomenon in Brazil. But where does the specificity of the situation motivating the permanent use of a term lie? While favelas seem to be largely confused with the slums found throughout the world, the question still arises.
Indeed, if we try to define what a slum is in the broadest possible way, certain universal characteristics seem to emerge: slums are places characterized by overcrowding, lack of access to clean water, poor sanitation and insecurity of the inhabitants regarding the preservation of the enjoyment of their homes. Therefore, many favelas would have the main criteria to be considered as slums. So, what are favelas? The 1950 census identified five main criteria: a settlement of at least 50 people, rustic shack-like dwellings, lack of title deeds, lack of access to public services and lack of paved streets. According to the Pereira Passos Institute (IPP), a favela is “a predominantly residential area occupied by a low-income population and characterized by precarious infrastructure and public services, narrow streets and irregular alignment, lots of irregular shapes and sizes, and an unregistered construction that does not conform to legal patterns”. But these definitions reveal at least two major problems when we try to apply them to reality.
First of all, there is a real diversity within what is actually referred to as a favela. Indeed, while we find favelas that have all the characteristics of a slum and correspond to the criteria I have just mentioned, others differ in many respects compared to the official version. Many favelas, like all of the ones from my research, are entirely built in hardened concrete (this applies to the streets as well as the houses) and have access to most public services, contradicting in every aspect the definition used in the 1950 census. Thus, the term “favela” encompasses a wide variety of spaces and housing qualities. While material living conditions cannot constitute an absolute common point between the different spaces that are called favelas, the illegality of their occupation – an argument often used to define them – is no more useful, since many favelas have acquired legal property titles. Moreover, as Rafael Soares Goncalves’ research (2010) shows, in some places these titles have existed since the beginning of settlement on the hills, with the owners renting out parts of them to poor people looking for housing in the city. Thus, not all favelas were built by squatters on municipal land.
Moreover, while favelas are all extremely different from each other, the conceptual boundary between the favela and the rest of the city also seems fragile. Through a study conducted on 1991 census data, Licia Valladares and Edmond Préteceille (2000) showed that the separation of urban space on material criteria could not be valid. Comparing what was considered by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) as a favela with the rest of the metropolis, in terms of “level of urban equipment”, “occupation status” and “level of education and income of the head of the household”, they showed that the results for favelas were often similar to those of other urban spaces located throughout the city – with the exception of areas occupied by the upper classes.
The favela is therefore not a slum; or rather, some favelas are slums, but not all of them can be classified as such. As we have seen, the term “favela” covers a multitude of different situations. Thus, it can be said that there is “neither homogeneity nor specificity of favelas, nor unity between them, nor even within them for the largest ones” (Préteceille and Valladares 2000). Here, they refer to the differences in living standards in the largest favelas (Rocinha, Vidigal, Complexo do Alemão, etc.). In these favelas, material conditions, land use status and access to public services are not the same for everyone: there is a center–periphery relationship within them. In Rocinha, some homes are made of metal sheets and are built on the edge of the rainforest, on top of the hill where they are particularly vulnerable to possible landslides, while the bottom of the favela has buildings, shops, banks and street names.
Despite all these reasons to abandon it, the fact remains that the category of favela does exist on both a local and a global scale. Indeed, although many problems arise when we try to define what a favela is from an objective point of view, its classification seems uncomplicated outside of this scientific context. But the definition of favelas, and a fortiori of the favela, can only be relative. It is developed from an original opposition between morro (hill) and asfalto (asphalt). In addition to an important topographical dimension, the contents of this opposition vary. In the past, in the early days of the favelas, it referred to a dichotomy between the countryside and the city, with most of the favelas being rural spaces that were out of step with the urban lifestyle that was developing in Rio de Janeiro. Today, what is included in the categories of morro and asfalto depends on our position and therefore cannot be summarized objectively. Since the 1980s, the areas where drug trafficking takes place in the favelas has become an important definitional element, associating the morro with criminality, which is already present due to the illegal occupation of the land, reinforced by the incessant war between the police and the traffickers. The inhabitants of the morro and the asfalto perceive and experience the border that separates them from each other.
1.2.2. Tourist favelas: Rocinha, Santa Marta and Vidigal
The concept of favela tours is a salient and widely commented phenomenon, and does not concern all favelas. Only a handful of favelas have experienced the organization of group tours, most of them in the South Zone of the city: the richest and most touristy part. During my research, I participated in tours in 15 different favelas: Rocinha, Vidigal, Vila Canoas, Santa Marta, Morro da Babilônia, Chapéu-Mangueira, Pavão-Pavãozinho, Cantagalo, Tavares Bastos, Pereira da Silva, Morro dos Prazeres, Tabajaras, Morro dos Cabritos, Cidade de Deus and Morro da Providência. Thirteen of these are located in or near the South Zone (Morro dos Prazeres and Morro da Providência are located in the Centro), with the exception of Cidade de Deus, which is remote but not widely visited. The fact that there were attempts to develop tourism in these favelas during the golden age of favela tours does not mean that all of them have experienced constant tourism. In fact, three of them stand out, and should be presented in more detail.
Figure 1.1.Favelas in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro
(see: https://pt.map-of-rio-de-janeiro.com/favelas-mapas/favelas-zona-sul-do-rio-de-janeiro-mapa-em-pdf).
The first one, Rocinha, is considered to be the largest favela in the city and in the country. It is difficult, however, to evaluate with certainty the number of inhabitants of Rocinha, and estimates vary between 62,000 (official data) and 220,000 inhabitants (guides sometimes estimate up to 300,000). Some elements, such as the density of its commercial activity, the presence of national banks and the existence of a middle class in some parts of it, make it an exception among the spaces commonly considered as favelas, of which it is a part despite its official status. Rocinha has a key role in the development of tourist excursions in the favelas. Several hypotheses can be put forward to explain why the Rocinha favela played a pioneering role and remains the most visited favela in Rio de Janeiro. However, what seems to best explain the success of visits to Rocinha is precisely the presence of large tourist agencies (Favela Tour, Jeep Tour, Be a Local) specialized or unspecialized in favela tourism. Indeed, Rocinha remains, by far, the most visited favela by this type of organization. It is also worth looking into the reasons for this preference shown by non-local agencies.
Rocinha has a certain interest for the tourist promoters who can take advantage of its status as the “biggest slum in South America”. Far from being anecdotal, this status is an important commercial argument which I have been able to verify on several occasions with tourists. My numerous trips back and forth between France and Rio de Janeiro have given me the opportunity, at random meetings in Paris, to discuss with some of the former visitors of Rocinha. It is certain that the size of the favela gives a certain weight to these visiting accounts. This is how Victor, a 34-year-old Frenchman, presented his experience:
It is the largest favela in the world. It’s amazing, there are houses everywhere. When I travel, I try to go everywhere. If you listen to everyone, they will tell you not to go there, but oh well! I found it crazy to see this huge slum, you can’t even imagine (Victor, 34, Paris).
It is interesting to note that when the dimensions of the favela are mentioned, it is quite common to use the term “slum”, which can be avoided in other circumstances. This is undoubtedly because the comparative perspective implied by the size of the favela requires the categorization of the space to be broadened. In any case, Rocinha is also the most visited favela, and it is here that local and non-local tourism agencies compete most fiercely. In Rocinha, the organization of favela tours by locals is relatively recent, and it was mostly the agencies run by individuals who do not live there that first developed this tourism. In addition to the argument of the size of the favela, the tour operators first relied on a practical specificity. A road, estrada da Gávea, crosses the favela from the bottom to the top, thus allowing vehicles to cross, which is what the tourists did at first, as we shall see when we talk about the history of the favela tours.
The second favela of particular significance is Vidigal, the second largest in the South Zone of Rio. It is located on the opposite side of the hill from Rocinha, on the Morro Dois Irmãos, in the extension of the neighborhoods of Ipanema and Leblon. Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, it is visible from the beaches. The relationship between international visitors and Vidigal is quite different from that of Rocinha. Here, tourism is not limited to the favela tours and exists in many different forms. Indeed, Vidigal is a space of less excursionist tourism, which could be described as more experiential, and is distinguished by the development of tourist accommodation: mainly youth hostels located at the top of the favela, thus creating a cosmopolitan space.
Although the word is sometimes used for others, it is likely that Vidigal is the only favela in which we can really speak of a gentrification phenomenon. Hotel speculation is not the only cause of this, and in the last 10 years many foreigners have bought houses in the upper part of Vidigal. Some international celebrities have even bought houses in the area without living there or visiting regularly: the French actor Vincent Cassel, the ex-footballer David Beckham, the American rapper Kanye West, etc. As a result, many inhabitants have left the favela, either, for the owners, by giving in to the pressure to sell their house at a good price, or, for the tenants, being faced with the sudden increase in rents. Vidigal is entering the tourist map in a very different way compared to Rocinha: as a “bohemian favela” that tries to preserve its heritage according to the artists, stylists and foreigners who have recently settled there; and a “chic favela” according to those who criticize the phenomenon. Since 2012, a trendy bar, Bar da Laje, is located at the top and even brings in Cariocas and Brazilians on vacation (which is not the case in Rocinha or other favelas, except for a public that likes baile funks, big Friday night parties). The price of drinks is very high, in sharp contrast to the prices found in the rest of the community. On nights when a band plays on the terrace, visitors must pay an additional 50 reais. Vidigal thus stands out, while exposing itself to the critics who denounce its gentrification, by the possibility that a visitor can take their time, staying there for several days, and enjoying a chic and bohemian atmosphere. On its website, Bar da Laje expresses this specificity well:
[The] tourist potential [of Vidigal] goes far beyond the “favela tour” with workshops, charming bars, parties that are already among the most famous of the city5.
Finally, a third favela, Santa Marta, forms, with Rocinha and Vidigal, the group of the main tourist favelas. The favela of Santa Marta is located in the district of Botafogo. Smaller than Rocinha and Vidigal, it is inhabited by about 6,000 residents. On December 22, 2008, Santa Marta was chosen by the authorities to be the first “pacified” favela. Its tourist development makes the favela a special example for this study.
In fact, the state was not content in choosing Santa Marta as the primary target of the pacification program, as well as concentrating its efforts there – the only direct ones – in terms of tourism development. In 2010, the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism, together with the Secretariat of Tourism of the State of Rio de Janeiro, launched the Rio Top Tour program. This program aimed to develop a so-called “community tourism”, through the training of Santa Marta residents to welcome foreign tourists. It was a two-year program, at the end of which it was expected that the community would be able to manage tourism independently. The declarations of President Lula, present at the inauguration of the project, were revealing of the hopes attached to the impact of tourism towards the inclusion of the favelas in the city:
Our generation must make up for lost time so that in a few years our children will no longer call any place a favela and all will be neighborhoods. What has been done here is an example that I believe could be implemented throughout the national territory (Lula, inauguration speech for the Rio Top Tour project6, August 2010).
Originally, the project was planned to be located in Morro da Providência, the oldest favela in Rio de Janeiro, which overlooks the Central do Brasil train station. Nevertheless, the permanent difficulties encountered by the “pacification” and the fragility of the installation of the Pacifying Police Units (UPP), followed by budget cuts that multiplied in the State of Rio, left Santa Marta as the sole beneficiary of Rio Top Tour. Nevertheless, the project has had a significant impact on the slum.
Installed at the beginning of the project, a small hut still stands today in Corumbá square, where local guides wait for tourists. As a result, Santa Marta is still the only favela where a tourist looking for a guided tour does not have to book online and can instead find a guide spontaneously. On the other hand, the people in charge of the reception at the Rio Top Tour stand also offer to hand out maps, thus leaving tourists to walk alone if they wish. Without securing a monopoly on tourism, local guides have managed to gain a very large share of the tourist market. Through an arrangement between the local guides and the association of Santa Marta residents, tour operators who continue to operate (such as Be a Local or Jeep Tour) must now pay a tax. External independent guides, although they are more easily able to circumvent the tax, are also increasingly avoiding Santa Marta, angry that they sometimes have to report to the association.
Although smaller, and thus less invested in by the big tourist agencies of the city, the favela of Santa Marta is a tourist attraction which has developed certain successes. First of all, it is located in the district of Botafogo, which counts numerous hotels and youth hostels. The proximity with the tourists makes it a favela that some people visit all the more willingly because they do not have to cross the South Zone to see Rocinha and Vidigal. Then, it happens that the tourists, without knowing the details, get wind of the strong community trend of tourism in Santa Marta. Often hesitant in their choice of a favela tour and concerned about the conformity of the activity with their ethical principles, tourists can therefore be seduced by the perspective of tourism controlled by locals. Finally, the Santa Marta favela is known for having provided the setting for the clip of a song by Michael Jackson, They Don’t Care About Us, directed by Spike Lee in the 1990s. Following the visit from the American star, a statue was erected on one of the favela’s overhanging points. The tourist promotions of the favelas often manage to distinguish themselves by these heritage details, and it is certain that the statue, near which the tourists take their picture, gives Santa Marta an additional attraction.
1.3. The rise of the favela tour, contextual elements
It [tourism in Rocinha] won’t change anything. Now the favela is considered as cool, everyone loves the favela [sarcastic laugh]. But after the Olympics, it’s certain: tourism is over! You’ll see [lowering his voice]. And so will they [laughs].
Fernando pointed out to me two heavily armed and protected policemen, who passed by a few meters away from us. He had just been introduced to me by Sergio, one of Favela Tour tour guides, while the group wandered among the stalls of the small artisanal market that awaited them at the top of the favela. Fernando had nothing against tourism, and he often stopped to chat with Sergio when the tourists were at the market. But, like other inhabitants of the favela, he felt a certain irony at the sight of tourists, especially during these times. It was 2012 and tourism was in full swing in Rocinha. This was the golden age of favela tours, and while tourism had not disappeared from the favelas, it had never been as important as in this first half of the 2010s. Fernando, with whom I spoke several times afterwards, was in favor of the changes that Rocinha was undergoing at the time, but he only saw them as ephemeral changes, a parenthesis. It was this context, this momentary interruption of the normal course of things in the favela, that he had just exposed. Police officers, inhabitants and tourists were gathered in the same space neither by chance, nor by a strict relation of cause and effect. Tourism in the favelas had existed since the early 1990s; however, it reached its peak, in terms of volume at least, during this time.
Indeed, the favela tours remained marginal for a long time, before gradually imposing themselves as a full-fledged attraction within the tourist offer in Rio de Janeiro. Since the end of the 2000s, favelas such as Rocinha, Santa Marta and Vidigal have been receiving a constant flow of tourists. Tourists are becoming a regular feature, and several groups are crossing paths in the alleys of the favelas. How can we explain the rise of the favela tours and their emergence from the marginal position in which they were born under the critical eye of the world? Of course, the symbolic motivations that I began to mention in relation to cinema have a lot to do with it, and a positive imaginary of the favela is more and more shared. Yet, the boom in favela tours between 2008 and 2016 cannot be explained by the maturation of practices and their symbolic foundations alone. The context that affects the city and the country more generally is an essential element to comment on. As far as the favela is concerned, it is marked by two elements. First, the organization in Rio de Janeiro of sporting and cultural mega-events that pushed the city and its favelas under the spotlights of the international media, and then caused an intensification of the tourist flow. Then, and in direct relation with this agenda, political choices were made that impacted the tourism favelas, in particular around a federal program called “pacification”. The launch of this program in 2008 marked the arrival of favela tours into a new era.
1.3.1. Mega-events and favela tours
The 2010s were marked in Rio de Janeiro by a succession of events of global dimensions, which intensified the international media coverage of the city and led millions of tourists to visit it. By the end of the 2000s, the city’s event agenda was set and was already occupying many public, municipal, federal and national policies: the World Military Games in 2011, the Earth Summit in 2012, World Youth Day in 2013, the Confederations Cup in 2013, and above all the Soccer World Cup in 2014 (with a final in Rio de Janeiro) and the Olympic Games in 2016.
We know the political importance of organizing such events, which, since they have a global dimension, are a theater for the demonstration of the host country’s powers. At the beginning of the 2010s, the “Lula miracle” took place and Brazil, in full economic growth, intended to seize these events to assert its new position as a great world power. Since their creation, the World Cup and the Olympic Games have been instruments of soft power used by host nations to demonstrate their strength. But these events also bring in a gigantic financial windfall, which the organizers intend to use for their economic development. Among the most important economic benefits expected are tourism and foreign investment. But no matter how much credit we may give to the idea of these spin-offs, the organization of mega-events always begins with a massive expenditure of public funds. It already costs between $50 million and $100 million to bid on a project, including consulting and event-organization costs. This is nothing compared to the cost of organizing. The 2016 Olympics cost more than $20 billion to organize, of which the city alone contributed $13 billion. In addition to the costs of the Olympics, there were the costs of organizing other events, the World Cup, of course, as well as the costs of all the sports events held in the city starting with the Pan American Games in 2007 (Zimbalist 2017). The public expenditure involved in organizing the events, in a country where many sectors, such as education, health and transport, are still seen as deficient, quickly raised the indignation of part of the population, and protests broke out in 2013 in the run-up to the World Cup and following the increase in the cost of public transport. But the organization of mega-events creates an urgency that governments use to push through costly policies (Gravari-Barbas and Jacquot 2007) because of the exceptional nature of the context (Vainer 2011).
The poorest neighborhoods, especially when they are close to the areas dedicated to hosting the competitions or their spectators, are obviously the first targets. Deemed incompatible with the reception of mega-events, which are intended to display the power of a nation or a city to the world, disadvantaged urban areas are often the subject of policies that range from outright eviction to more complex programs for making urban poverty invisible. Many researchers have worked on these policies in various locations around the world and in relation to various events: in the Philippines for an IMF/World Bank conference (Berner 1996); in China for the 2010 World Expo (Wang et al. 2012); for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa (Cornelissen et al. 2011); and for almost all Olympic Games, including Seoul 1988 (Davis 2007), Sydney (Blunden 2007) and Beijing (Shinn 2009), etc. The history of evictions related to the organization of mega-events also has antecedents within Rio de Janeiro’s case itself. Thus, in 1992, eviction initiatives were launched in anticipation of an agenda on the 500 years of the “discovery” of America and the reception of the Earth Summit. More recently, Rafael Soares Gonçalves has pointed out the links between the reclaiming of the favelas by the militias7 and the government, rather favorable to the expansion of the militia phenomenon, shortly before the organization of the Pan American Games in 2007 (Soares Gonçalves 2010).
Eviction policies were indeed carried out in Rio de Janeiro in the run-up to the mega-events, despite resistance from residents more or less relayed by the media (Williamson 2011). It is estimated that 70,000 people were displaced during this period (Broudehoux 2017). In addition, a policy of invisibilization in the favelas also took place. Like eviction, the concealment of favelas from the city’s official imagery was a recurring strategy that took various forms. The end of the 2000s saw the creation of several wall projects for a total estimated at R$40 million for its application to 19 favelas, mainly in the South Zone (Borius 2010). It is also interesting to note that the term “favela” does not appear once in the 420-page dossier submitted by Rio de Janeiro when it was preparing its bid to host the Olympic Games. In this file, it is only the “communities” that are mentioned. Equally revealing is the conflict that opposed, in 2011, the city of Rio de Janeiro and the company Google Maps. The latter had provoked anger among some municipal authorities, who criticized it for leaving too much space to the favelas and, above all8
