Someone I know went to Rio with his then girlfriend and her sister. I knew him through my girlfriend and she was friends with his girlfriend, a bit confusing I know. What I found even more confusing was that when he came back from Brazil he brought back this thing made out of bottle caps. I don’t quite remember what it is except that it was supposed to be artistic and it said ‘Ordem e Progresso’ the motto found on the Brazilian flag meaning Order and Progress. Go figure. Anyway, he explained that he had gone on a tour of the favelas (slums) in the hills surrounding Rio and that this thing was made out of bottle caps by the people who inhabited the slums.

“Cool” – my girlfriend agreed. I can’t speak for her but I actually thought the bottle cap thing was quite ugly and imagining the sight of this person walking through a ghetto in a third world country perplexed me further. He was from New York, and I asked myself ‘Perhaps I can ask him to take me on a tour of the projects in the New York City area.’ I mean, if he finds slums so interesting why not start in one of the most culturally rich cities in the world right?

Taking it another step, and giving slum tourism the benefit of the doubt, I decided to analyze the financial impact that slum tourism would have on a place like the favelas. Here are some basic facts first.

1. The favelas are run by drug dealers
2. People who live in the favelas trust the dealers more than they trust the corrupt cops
3. Straight and crooked cops don’t like going to the favelas

So the money that paid for the bottle cap art thing probably benefits the drug dealers somehow. You can argue that it keeps those who sell the bottle cap works off of the ‘streets’ but guess what? The favelas are the streets.

Can you really believe that the tour operator isn’t paying off a drug dealer? Think about this one. Straight cops do not want to go to these places. The peace is kept by the drug dealers. So who is going to keep the tourists safe, or is that a part of the adventure? ‘Look Ma, I took a bullet from an AR-15! It’s the Brazilian drug dealer’s weapon of choice!!”

“Yeah, I went to the favelas!”

His eyes lit up as he notices that his experience has elicited the desired effect on my girlfriend’s eager look.

At that moment I fully understood what the payoff was for a slum tourist. Similar to many other tourists infected with a Marco Polo complex, a slum tourist is there to see and tell. I’d actually like to meet a traveler, someone who immerses themselves in the culture that is hosting them, who truly visited (stayed in) the favelas. A slum traveler if you will.

What difference does any of that make to the inhabitants of these slums? Not much. The last time I checked, travelers to third world countries have generally been exposed to extreme poverty, take Manila for example, where slums and mansions come together barely separated. Bringing tourists closer to that poverty doesn’t make things better. Awareness - can we argue that awareness will make things better? Tough call, it would take an interesting person to choose to clean up a slum in another country as opposed to their own. The socio-economic nuances of a foreign land is not easily understood.

I’m going to New York City this weekend and perhaps I’ll come home with my piece of bottle cap art that says ‘I [HEART] NY.’ Oh wait! I live in DC, don’t we have better ghettos? We sure do, but the idea of an out of town ghetto seems so much more…exotic.