Cerro Rico

Why do people travel? Personally, I travel to see different landscapes, absorb local culture, photograph natural phenomena, hike beautiful mountains, and eat exotic foreign food. I think many people are in the same boat.

Recently, both here in Brazil, and on vacation in Bolivia, I was introduced to the concept of poverty tourism, and I have really been grappling with the idea. Poverty tourism occurs when individuals deliberately patronize areas of low economic ability motivated by curiosity and the desire for adventure.

Potosí is a city in Bolivia which boasts to be the highest (altitude-wise) in the world. Sitting at approximately 13,420 feet, the only thing towering above the city is the mountain referred to as Cerro Rico. In its heyday, Cerro Rico bestowed great importance on the city by providing wealth from an abundance of silver ores which, by this time, will have been depleted. Once, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, Potosí is now greatly depressed. Aside from offering spectacular Spanish influenced architecture, one of the main tourist attractions in Potosí is to actually visit the mines which are surprisingly still in use.

Although many tourists claim this experience as one of their trip highlights, I chose to sit this one out. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of paying money to a tour operator to visit hoards of impoverished young men working long hours in a dark, damp, dangerous, unhealthy, and a really desperate work environment. The idea never sat right with me.

Similarly, before I left Rio, I had the opportunity to go on a guided tour on the favela Rocinha. I have been to this favela several times, but have never been on a professional tour (probably owing to a similar inner complex concerning poverty tourism). In any event, during the World Urban Forum, I met a very friendly tour guide and he invited me along. So, I gave it a shot.

Our guide was knowledgeable about his neighborhood and even welcomed tourists into his home to show off the view. However, even though he suggested that there was more to favela life than drug trafficking (of course!), this aspect was sadly all we saw. Our guide also mentioned that a certain percent of his proceeds went to fund an art project, but we never even saw it!

I was left wondering if this art project existed, and left with an unshakable and profound distaste of bourgeois insensitivity and ignorance after witnessing countless clashes and knowledge wars between our tour guide and his patrons.

Sex and violence sells. Tourists crave danger and the extraordinary (and maybe even to learn something new). I totally get it. But my problem with poverty tourism is that voyeurism adventure simply serves to exploit the living and working conditions of others. Meanwhile, the money generated by these poverty tours only find its way back into the hands of those running the tourism infrastructure e.g the tour operators, hotels, and restaurants.

What do you think?

Jamie Worms is currently a volunteer for Catalytic Communities in Rio de Janeiro. For more about the ethics of poverty tourism, check out the post “Favela Tourism: Harmful or Helpful?”

One of the things that I most love about volunteering for Kiva in Barranquilla is that I’m in a city that (aside from Carnival) is unfairly maligned by Lonely Planet-wielding tourists—Lonely Planet is a dirty word amongst some of my friends here—and that I get to see every part of the city. I live in what I see as a safe barrio, a word which has no negative connotations in Colombia, but have a role that takes me to all areas of the city. The result of this is that I know several areas of the city better than some of my Colombian friends. Whenever I tweet that I’ve made a trip to a barrio like El Bosque, or parts of Soledad, a neighbouring municipality, I normally get one or two comments about them being dangerous areas of the city.

Only on one occasion have I actually felt threatened that I was in any kind of danger in these barrios, and that was during a visit to a borrower where neither I nor my colleague knew the area well. The loan officer (a local who usually would have accompanied us) was ill; we didn’t go to the barrio until the mid-afternoon; and when the borrower wasn’t at home and something didn’t seem quite right about the way that people were moving around us, my colleague and I left straight away and got into the first taxi we saw. This might make us sound like wimps, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

On the other hand, whenever I’ve gone to similar barrios with one of the loan officers, I have yet to feel at risk. I think that this boils down to a few things:

* Knowing the area. The loan officers that I work with know the areas they work in, they know where they’re going and who they’re expecting to find there.
* Being known in the area. This is the other side of the same coin. If the community knows you as a loan officer of a microfinance organization, you’re more likely to be safe as people recognize you as a source of financing for their family. I also feel it’s rare for a supposedly dangerous barrio to be dangerous for its inhabitants. I am always struck by the number of borrowers who tell us that their barrio is safe, even when it has a really bad reputation.
* Getting out early. The foundation I work with has some clients in an area of Barranquilla with a particularly bad reputation where a loan officer has advised me not to take anything: no bags, no papers, nothing. The key to visiting this barrio, she tells me, is to be out of there by mid afternoon. As another colleague explained, potential muggers are lazy.

From my experience throughout Barranquilla, my view on favela tourism is positive if it’s done in the right way. If the tour proceeds go toward supporting local entrepreneurs, rather than people involved in the drug trade, then I think it can be a useful way of normalizing these barrios or favelas. I suspect that areas get more dangerous when people fear visiting them; though the initial fear may be a real, rather than imagined, one, I would guess that it becomes self-perpetuating. And if a tour ends up convincing local people that tourists (no matter how much you may try to protest, you are—and are seen as—rich) aren’t all bad, then it might contribute to social reconciliation in highly polarized Latin America, albeit in a very, very small way.

If you want to see what favelas are like and you do your research to find a trustworthy guide, then I would say go and take a tour. But don’t go on your own.

Rob Packer is currently working as a Kiva Fellow with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.

To quote a great movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy: “It was the most useful thing the gods had ever given them, a real labor-saving device. But the gods had been careless. They had sent only one. And now, for the first time in their lives, here was a thing that could not be shared because there was only one of it. Suddenly, everybody needed it most of the time. A thing they had never needed before became a necessity.  And unfamiliar emotions began to stir…anger, jealousy, hate and violence …”

Did I mention my sister and I fought over the computer? Savagely. Something needed to be done. My mother proposed we take turns. One hour of work, and then switch. Seemed like a novel idea. Until one day, I desperately needed to type a paper for school, and my sister sat there on the computer, playing Arconoid and Oregon Trail.

That’s not the point. The point is that work should take priority over play, right? This hour for an hour thing had not been thought out well enough. The fighting ensued…

In any event, I bring up this story to highlight a recent conundrum. Just last week, I was just about to leave on a trip with a friend. I knew I would have limited access to internet, so I jumped on the computer one last time. My name is Jamie and I am an addict. In my last five minutes with a computer, I didn’t know what to check first.

So as to not annoy my friend or delay our trip, I decided I should only check the essentials.  And then I realized. Everything had somehow become essential. I NEEDED to check Facebook, for work, although it may not have seemed like that to my friend. (At least I wasn’t playing Farmville.*)

As there are so many ways to connect and relate to others these days, I often question the proper tactic. Call, write, text, chat, Facebook, Skype, blog; share a map, pictures, calendar, or a document, etc…The list goes on and on.

In the next few months my organization, Catalytic Communities, will offer social media training to community leaders being displaced, or threatened to be displaced, by the Olympics here in Rio. Our goal is technology training, unification, and thought dispersal. In deciding what is most essential for me, I also wonder what will be most essential for them.

What are the best social media and technology devices out there to help them get their ideas, opinions, and voices heard?

*I have never, EVER played Farmville.

Interested in learning more about what others are doing in Latin America? Stay updated by subscribing to our feed, following La Vida Idealist on Twitter and/or joining our Idealists in Latin America Facebook group.

Machine used for stream cleaning

Last week, I introduced that Catalytic Communities is running in the Ideablob contest. We’re running out of time, so please vote for our idea! We would like to use the $10,000 in prize money to help give community residents of Rio a voice during the process leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games.

It goes without saying that there are a lot of well-functioning communities, but this is a fact that is commonly ignored. According to one resident of Vila Autódromo, the rich never call favelas what they are: communities filled with poor people in need of help. The rich always call these communities simply, favelas.

Trash piles like this one, dug from the stream, line the road

It is as if this term is a way of masking the truth. It makes communities anonymous and equal, when in reality, each community is completely different. Over time, each community has adapted organically to their physical surroundings and slowly developed a character and an identity of its own.

But this is often overlooked. Many people cannot see past the shoddy exteriors and unpaved roads. Many cannot see that these communities are filled with bright, inventive people who are left to fend for themselves. And, amazingly, they do just that. Communities across Rio have risen to the task of uniting their residents and have developed a variety of innovative social, environmental, educational, and recreational programs.

The portion of stream that still needs cleaning

Asa Branca, for example, has been able to organize itself in such a way. Located one kilometer away from the future site of the Olympics, their community is now equipped with an underground sewage system and houses which are raised to prevent flooding. This community successfully collects R$10 from their residents to perform regular stream cleanings, and has even developed a specific type of machinery to better clean the stream that borders their community. Residents are also fully aware of the environmental and health hazards a dirty stream poses, and are working independently to improve their community.

We want to make sure that the 2016 Olympics bring positive results and benefits to communities like this one. We want to make sure that well-functioning communities continue to improve. With your help, we will use this award money to train leaders in 200 communities so that they can successfully and powerfully communicate their needs and concerns with city officials.

So, what are you waiting for? Please vote for our idea! It’s quick, easy, and doesn’t cost a thing.