Visiting the Favela

2 May

Rio de Janeiro is not only famous for its beaches, but also for the Favelas. For those who don’t know what a favela is, it could be translated as a slum, a shantytown, a ghetto or a township –or a poor working class neighborhood, depending on who you ask.

The favelas have a wild reputation: they are run by drug lords, they are the seething pot of crime, they have their own laws and not even the police dares to enter the favelas.  Then again a lot of the people doing lower income jobs, such as maids, doormen and grocery store workers, live in the favela and they are just normal people living a normal life and trying to make a living.

There are favelas all over Brazil, not only in Rio, and there are many different kinds, “better” and “worse”. Some favelas are fairly well organized and reasonably safe at least to the locals. Others have the laws of the jungle with gunfights and drug addicts on every corner.

Since favelas form an integral part of Brazil’s landscape in any bigger city, I was interested in knowing what lies behind the word. Favelas are places where a Brazilian, who doesn’t live there, would never go to (with the exception of charity workers). An average middle class Brazilian shuns the shantytowns and sees them only as places of crime and danger. And of course that is part of the truth: when your car gets hijacked on the motorway in the middle of the night or when your purse gets stolen in the bus or at the beach, of course it’s the favela guys who do it. Yet there are also “normal” people living in the favelas and there are enough of “crazy” foreigners, who want to go there to see what’s it like. If not for anything else, then for the thrill of it or to see the crazy structures people build there without any permits and from any material they can get and call them houses, and in the case of Rio de Janeiro, the narrow alleyways that connect the different areas. Since there is a demand, there are also providers, thus you can get on a “ghetto tour” and enter a favela as a tourist.

Now, there’s a passionate argument going on in the internet and among the traveler community about whether or not it’s a good idea to bring people to ogle at poverty. Those for it say, it will give the pampered Westerners a chance to see a different reality from up close, maybe gives them more perspective on things and brings money to the community. That it’s a form of charity. Those against it say, it’s just voyerism, it’s like going to a zoo, why can’t you just let the poor people be poor in peace?

I say it’s just interesting to see, how and in what all ways people around the world live. Tourism IS voyerism: we travel around the world to stare at how people live, the rich, the poor, the middle classed. We stare at their houses, cities and artwork. We want to try what they eat, we want to visit the places where they worship all sorts of gods and entities, we want to see their sceneries whether that be the Himalayas or Ipanema. So if you ban the “poverty tourism” as immoral, you could as well ban all tourism (I know there are also groups in favor of that, they say that tourism spoils cultures).

Up until now I’ve seen all sorts of living conditions and also lived in many kinds, so I’m not looking for a shocking experience, I just want to see the other side of Rio, the reality of most of its people. Because it is not Ipanema.

Through the internet I find a guy called Zezinho, who seems to have a good reputation on good, informative tours, so I contact him and we sign up for a day trip to Rocinha, the safest, biggest and most famous of Rio’s favelas.

Zezinho does his tour with style: instead of taking us to the favela with an airconditioned minibus like we had thought, he does it the local way. He meets us at a bus stop and we hop on a regular combi (=minibus that is used for public transportation) going to Rocinha. He’s so confident that we will like his tour that he doesn’t even take the payment in advance. And we do like the tour, we love it!

Zezinho is very informative and tells us a lot about the life in favela: about employment, schooling, health care, transportation, communication lines, how the buildings are constructed, the wild-looking electricity system. We walk through the favela alleyways that are exactly like we’ve seen in the pictures and movies. He shows us different areas and we learn that the favela can also look very colorful and beautiful.  In the end he brings us to eat lunch to the greatest dinery we have visited in Rio so far!

Zezinho is half-American and thus speaks excellent English, which makes him a perfect tour guide for most of the people wanting to visit a favela: after all they usually are North American, European or Australian. He paints Rocinha as a misunderstood working class neighborhood that yes, has its problems, such as the drug dealers hanging out in certain corners and yes, there is the druglord controlling everything, but then again they also keep law and order. Zezinho tells us that the current group controlling Rocinha is so strong that there haven’t been rivalleries for years and thus no gunfights. He does say that you have to respect the Guys, meaning the dealers, but if you just stay out of their way and out of their business, they don’t bother you.

We find out that since the Rio de Janeiro police force made a thorough clean up in the favelas some years ago, Rocinha has been safe enough that even some more adventurous foreigners have moved in and started to live there. According to Zezinho’s words, because of the cheap rents, but I’m sure some of it is just the coolness of being able to say “I lived in a favela for a year” or something.

Despite of Zezinho describing Rocinha as a safe enough neighborhood to be considered more of a working class neighborhood than a shantytown I can’t help noticing, how alertly he is scanning his surroundings all the time. His guests’ safety is his top priority and while making us feel safe he vigils that nothing troublesome is heading our way.

We do get out of Rocinha unharmed, pleased with the tour and happy for having seen a favela from the inside. Zezinho escorts us to another local minibus and we descend back to the ritzy neighborhoods of Ipanema and Copacabana.

A week after our visit there is a police raid in Rocinha, a lot of gunmen jumping up and down the alleyways and buildings. From Zezinho’s Facebook wall we read that 11 drug dealers got arrested. Even if Rocinha is one of the safest favelas, it’s still a favela and you have to respect the fact that some sort of outbreak of violence is possible.

I would still highly recommend of going there and seeing it for yourself. It’s not because the scenery is so special: the neighborhood looks like a lot of the “normal” towns in Asia (though I have to admit that the views to the beaches and the Atlantic are awesome!). I would recommend going there because the majority of Brazilians live in favelas or favela-like conditions and to see that is in a way just as important as seeing the Sugarloaf mountain, the Iguazu Falls, the Amazon or the beaches of Fortaleza.

For more information on the tours, see: http://www.favelatour.org
For more information on Rocinha, see: http://lifeinrocinha.blogspot.com

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