Visiting Rocinha: A favela in Rio

I hadn’t planned to go on a favela tour in Rio, but I found myself with a free afternoon on my second day, so I decided to do it.  I was a bit conflicted: the idea of taking a tour to visit an impoverished area didn’t entirely sit well with me. Yet, I wanted to go.  I’ve visited so many impoverished areas, I wouldn’t even know now to count them, but I had never taken a tour to visit any. On one day, city tour in Kigali, we did walk through a very poor neighbourhood and it felt a little weird because we didn’t interact with any of the people, so it felt a little like we were intruding. I took a tour from an individual who was from the favela that he was taking us on a tour of and that also provided money into the local economy.

We were picked up in a van there were about ten of us. And we drove to Rocinha, the favela right on the edge of Leblon, the richest part of Rio. Rocinha is not as dangerous to some of the other favelas which is why it’s commonly used for tours. It is, however, a poor area and there are guns and there are drugs (I suppose there are guns and drugs everywhere, but they’re a bit more visible here) but when we drove into Rocinha and parked and started our walk, it felt not at all dangerous and like the sort of place I would have felt very comfortable walking on my own.

Rocinha streets

I think the idea of a “slum” or a “favela” conjures images in our minds of abject poverty, people shooting guns into the street, giant piles of garbage – just human suffering and lawlessness. And maybe sometimes that’s true, but I’ve never seen anything that bad (even in the worst situation, there seems to be some order), however, I have seen things that are far worse than what I saw in Rocinha. Rocinha is a community; it’s a poor community, but a community nonetheless. As many as 300,000 people live there. It has an infrastructure, roads, banks, buses, and most homes have plumbing and electricity. (Other favelas are not necessarily as developed.)

Rocinha is controlled by a gang called Amigos dos Amigos, which sounds bad, but many residents find it stable and trust the gang more than the police.

The streets were paved and lined with businesses and apartment buildings people just were going about their lives. That said, there were people carrying guns, but nobody was behaving violently. (And, really, lots of places have lots of guns.) That said, there is violence there and sometimes it flares up with deadly results.

While I would have been comfortable walking on the main streets of the favela by myself, I wouldn’t have gotten the information that I got from the tour guide. He explained to us about how the unofficial government of Rocinha works, how they get their electricity, what people do for a living, what the incomes are like – and it was interesting to receive it from someone who grew up there in the neighborhood that he was talking about. He also gave us useful tips like don’t take pictures of the people with the machine guns. (Noted.)

We visited a capoeira studio where the students put on a show, which was excellent. The drumming was infectious and the performance was wonderful. They tried to teach us some capoeira moves. I participated initially and then quickly bowed out as I realized that I looked like an idiot and was bound to break something.

We carried on our way off the main streets and into the narrow, hidden alleys. This is a part that I would never have seen on my own because I don’t even know if I would have realized that there were tiny alleys there, and even if I did, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable walking down them without someone local. Not because it’s dangerous, but just because it would seem sort of weird and rude.

Behind the facades of the main buildings are these tiny alleyways with stairs that go down and reveal other buildings behind the main buildings. They allow in some sunshine and some fresh air to the people who have the more modest housing. Some of the areas were nice; people had painted them or hung art pieces and everything was quite clean, however the further down you go, the dirtier and the darker and dingier it got. Still, it felt like a community, even in the bowels of the favela where it was kind of dark and unwelcoming, there were still little shops, bar, and restaurants.

One of the interesting things that we learned about on our trip was how people get the mail in Rocinha. There are no addresses; just sort of a tangle of buildings once you get off the main street, so the mail is delivered to blocks on the main street in a little wooden box set on the side of the street. When it arrives, someone who has a WhatsApp group for the neighbourhood on that block lets them know their mail is there and people come and collect it from the box.

Back on the main street, we visited a woman who had an apartment with a window on the side of a tall building. There was nothing below her window and no way to stand there, but about 8 feet across from the window was a walkway, so she devised a way to sell items from her apartment. She displays items in her window and constructed a small ramp that runs from the window to the walkway. On the ramp is a box with a string. The purchaser approaches the window to tell her what they want. She puts it in the box and slides it down the ramp to the purchaser, and the purchaser puts the money in the box, and she pulls it back up the ramp with a rope. Simple.  At that point we really needed some water, so it was very convenient.

There were some areas of Rocinha in which we weren’t allowed to take pictures, presumably because people would have objected, maybe strenuously. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the ‘no photo’ areas from the ‘photo ok’ areas; it’s not like one seemed more dangerous than the other, but we respected the wishes of our guide. In one of the ‘no photo’ areas we stopped in at a local bar and had caipirinhas and smoked and chatted with people. It wasn’t part of the ordinary tour; some of us just wanted to spend a little more time there interacting. It was fun.

Overall, I’m glad that I did the favela tour. It was interesting to see it.  It was not nearly as bad as I had imagined, and I say that without diminishing the fact that the people there are living in poverty and that there are problems, but just noting that it’s not the post-apocalyptic war zone that some people have painted it as. I think if I hadn’t taken the tour I wouldn’t have learned as much about Rocinha and I certainly wouldn’t have experienced it. I think if I were to go back, I would go I would go on my own; I would eat the restaurants, buy some things at the shops, and experience a little bit more of it now that I have a comfort level.

Certainly, all “slum tours” (as they are often called, negatively) are not created equal. I think some are plainly exploitative. Some are run by companies from outside of the country and aren’t giving back enough. And I think that any time that you are driven through, as opposed to walking through, a poor area on a tour and not interacting with the locals, that does feel wrong, like you’re visiting a human zoo. I would avoid that. Of course, sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to experience until you go on the tour. In this case, I was pleasantly surprised.  I realize that there is still an argument that even the tour I took is unethical and I am open to that, but I feel ok about it. 

It was the most interesting thing that I did in Rio.

I finished the day, having a cigar and reflecting on what I had seen.

The next day I would leave Rio and fly north to Salvador.