Rio de Janeiro, Drug Lord Style
6/19/2007 at 12:27 PM
Tags: Rio de Janeiro Travel, Favela, Monica Guy (all tags)
If you've seen the cult film City of God (Cidade de Deus), or talked to any middle class Brazilians, then the infamous favelas, or shanty towns, of Rio de Janeiro won't be top on your list of places to go. Considering, however, that an estimated 20 per cent of Rio de Janeiro's population live in the 750 or so favelas distributed not only around the outskirts but within the city centre, and considering that many of the maids cleaning your hotel room or the bellboys carrying your luggage will have come from a favela that morning, you'll be missing out on a huge part of Rio's cultural mix if you ignore them completely.
But wait, don't go rushing off camera in hand into the nearest shanty town, thinking you'll be safe but secretly hoping to catch a back-alley gunfight between underfed drug-dealing seven-year olds living in makeshift wooden huts with corrugated iron roofs. You'll be disappointed in both respects. The best way to see a favela is to take a tour. This isn't the soft option - it will illuminate how the communities work, and help you to appreciate the positive side of the poor but often hardworking inhabitants so often denigrated in the press.
Marcelo Armstrong was the pioneer of these tours in 1992, and his company Favela Tour now offers twice daily trips for small groups to the central favelas of Rocinha and Vila Canoas. Tours in English, and in other languages on arrangement, last three hours, and are run by knowledgeable and informative guides who are clearly at home with the communities you will be visiting. You and your camera will be perfectly safe, and you'll have the opportunity to buy some fine paintings, jewellery and crafts produced by some of the more talented favela dwellers. Many of these have been involved in social welfare projects supported by the tour, such as the Para Ti organisation that provides extra schooling and support for children living in the favela of Vila Canoas.
The favela experience will give you a taste of Rio's well-known status as `city of contrasts'. Driving through Gavea, Rio's wealthiest residential area, you can admire the fine houses and landscaped gardens (fiercely protected by electric fences and security cameras) before hitting straight into Rocinha (pronounced Hoseeya), the largest favela in Brazil, and possibly in the world. The people of Rocinha, many of whom help to build and maintain the houses of their wealthy next door neighbours, generally work for the minimum wage of R$350 a month. The residents of Gavea send their children to the local private school for R$4000 a month.
Moreover, the tour guides will help you see just how the favela, rather than simply being a violent shanty town for the poor and criminal underclass, is a semi-independent state within the city. In the rest of Rio, the politicians and police are in charge, or at least purport to be. In the favela, strict hierarchies of drug lords and drug dealers are in charge, and they are often far less tolerant of criminals within the community. You'll pass the small bank in Rocinha, for example, which two military policemen once attempted to rob. They were caught, punished and thrown out on the orders of the drug lords. It's not just the houses that are topsy-turvy.
Related Stories:
· Rio de Janeiro Travel [Jaunted]
· Hotels in Rio de Janeiro [HotelChatter]
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