Slum Tourism: Rich Vs. Poor or Learning Experience?

Filed in archive Travel News on March 14, 2008

With all the museums and beaches visited, what else is there to do during your trip to Rio? You could try a jujitsu lesson, but you don't want to be in any pain for the long flight back home. You could climb on the Rio Jesus, but you've already done it twice. You could go down to the beach and try to mingle with all the beautiful people, but you just don't seem to fit in there.

About 16 years ago, an enterprising travel agent began offering tours of the favelas, slums, that climb the hillsides over the city. The idea seemed crazy at first. Rio's favelas were, and are, notorious for their gang activity and squalor. However, with connections in the slum's community, guides are able to offer tours regularly today. There are few, if any, incidents reported. Slum tourism is now found in other cities as well: Mumbai, Johannesburg, Jakarta...

But what is the point of slum tourism? Is it simply another adventure sport that offers navel gazers an experience that they can go home and reference when they need to remind their friends how tough they are? Or is it educational to see the conditions under which a majority of the world lives?

The money generated by this type of tourism mostly goes to guides and agencies. Some tours include stops at local shops or art galleries, but little income reaches the slums as a whole. I guess, then, that the pros and cons must be weighed on an individual level. What did each visitor take away from their trip into the slums?

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