How much do you know about Lapland? Be honest, you just thought about Santa Claus, didn’t you? Maybe throw in a reindeer or two, some sparkling Christmas decorations, and a sleighride through the snow if you’re lucky. Now what about the favelas of Rio de Janeiro? This one is harder. There is a chance you do not know anything at all. If you do know anything, you might be thinking of dangerous streets, gang crime, precarious homes. Both images have been crafted and shaped for you by many actors, including media and travel companies. They do not reflect the full truth of either location or the lives of the people who live there (Santa excluded). Between us as researchers, we have expertise on both the favela and Christmas tourism markets. We have built relationships with the people, the places and the markets, and have come to see the conflicts between indigenous people and those from outside looking to market their communities to bring in tourists. In Rio, you can look at how far away the favelas are from the hotels of visitors, creating a distance – and disconnect? – between them. Most of the area is invisible in representations of Rio’s landscape, and these framings add to the image of the favela as a problem needing to be solved or eliminated from Rio. When a new metro line passed by Rocinha ahead of the 2016 Olympics, the nearest station was named São Conrado, denying the Rocinha favela visibility and excluding the community once more. Favela residents are seen as ‘other’ from the rest of the city, separated from surrounding wealth and institutions. In Lapland, Christmas tourist infrastructure manufactures a world unlike that inhabited by the communities who have lived there for many generations. Indigenous communities in both locales have not stood idly by and let this happen. In our work, we have seen them change how the place is framed, and how they are portrayed. They have resisted the way their homes were marketed and have moved to roles that are part of the marketisation of their areas. RIO’S ‘SUBNORMAL’ WORLD Several Rio favelas have become tourist destinations, attracting thousands of visitors each year. Tours started in the 1990s, with businesses from Rio ‘proper’ taking visitors to see the distinctive architecture. But this also helps to ‘other’ them. Tours by non-indigenous guides would see jeeps pass through. Guides told tales of poverty, violence and drugs gangs. Tourists observed the place and the people through cameras, with their preconceptions reinforced of a dangerous and exotic place. They could pass through; they should not engage. Money went out of the favelas with the tour companies. There were no stops to spend money in local businesses, the jeeps ‘safeguarded’ tourists from speaking to the people – the economic separation of the area continued. In essence, outsiders were appropriating the areas and creating a market with no local involvement. There came a steadily growing dissatisfaction among locals towards outsiders shaping their home. They railed against the lack of interaction between tourists and residents, and wanted their stories told by themselves. They wanted to show the ‘real’ favela. A TRUE REFLECTION Tours run by outsiders began to be called ‘safaris’, which showed no respect for the community and reinforced historic boundaries between the favela and the city. To reframe Rocinha from ‘safarisation’, community members focused on creating new practices and representations of their homes. People shifted to become entrepreneurs, offering ‘reality tours’ far removed from the safaris. They campaigned for inclusion in brochures such as the city’s Guia Oficial and proposed guidelines for ‘community-based responsible tours’. The tour operators live in the favelas, they walk people through their neighbourhoods, talk about their history, encourage speaking with community members, eating in restaurants, buying from traders. Social media is a powerful ally of these new tour guides. They can use it to create and share representations of Rocinha as an inclusive, authentic part 28 |
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