Santa marta brazil11/8/2023 ![]() He set up Favela Santa Marta Tour as a way to showcase the favelas to outsiders, to demystify them and show that they are not just violent slums but vibrant communities. Thiago Firmino, a local dancehall DJ, was born and raised in Santa Marta. Since then, dozens of favelas have been pacified with Santa Marta, once the city’s most violent slum controlled by the Commando Vermelho (Red Command) drug gang, being held up as the model for how pacification can be a drive for social change. The hope was to break the cycle of police raiding favelas, having shootouts with traffickers, and then withdrawing. They are a part of every single neighbourhood and to ignore them is to ignore one huge facet of life in Rio de Janeiro.Īfter many hours of research, trawling through scores of motorcycle and jeep tours, I came across Favela Santa Marta Tour. Santa Marta was the first favela to be ‘pacified’ back in 2008, a programme to expel drug gangs and install UPPs – or Pacifying Police Units – in the city’s most violent neighbourhoods. A quarter of the cities population still lives in these neighbourhoods and chances are that many of the people you will interact with within the city – bartenders, clerks, hotel staff, bus drivers – will live in one of the city’s 800 favelas. The truth is, they are filled with regular, hard-working residents. They have a reputation worldwide as hotbeds of violence and unrest. In all honesty, I didn’t really have an answer for them.įavelas are as much a part of Rio de Janeiro as Cristo Redentor and Copacabana beach. They couldn’t understand what anyone had to gain from visiting or why it would be of any interest to me. It wasn’t a question asked with any malice but more out of sheer curiosity. This was the question asked of me by my Carioca friends as they drove me to Praia da Barra da Tijuca, hoping to show me a little more of Rio outside the usual tourist spots of Copacabana, Ipanema and Botafogo. This was the dilemma I faced – should I take a tour of a Favela while in Rio de Janeiro or not? In the worst cases, companies will drive paying customers through Favelas in armoured cars as if the neighbourhoods are an urban extension of Knowsley Safari Park. There is often no interaction or conversation with the community that lives there, no attempt to understand local life. Tour guides will walk tourists through slums and villages so that they can gawp at local people and their way of life as if they are exhibitions in a human zoo. The driver offered us a left down to Trem de Corcovado for $30R.“Poverty Tourism’ is a controversial topic in the travel industry and a concept I have never felt fully comfortable with. Luckily after 15min of walking a minibus passed by which one of the girls flagged down. It was 4 girls and 1 guy so you could imagine how nervous we all were especially how we would have to pass by a favela at night. We took her advice and started walking down. At this point only 1 car was left in the car park. One group managed to hitch a ride and told us it’s best for us to start walking down to Trem de Corcovado. It so happened to be the case that two other groups were in a similar predicament. We were apprehensive as it was now dark and we appeared to be stranded. ![]() This was not the case as each time we thought an Uber accepted our request they then cancelled it. We took an Uber up there to see the sunset and naturally assumed we could get an Uber back to Copacabana. This is a great place to come for an amazing view where you can see sugar loaf, Christ redeemer and more.
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