MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil promotes tourism to Rio’s (crime-free) favelas (shanty towns)

Favelas cover Rio’s mounts

Tourists usually try to run from Brazil’s Rio do Janeiro's notorious slums. Now officials headed by President Lula da Silva are inviting them to come and visit instead. The Santa Marta shantytown this week became the first community in a program meant to promote tourism in the poor neighbourhoods that are home to some unique music and art work.

The program, “Rio Top Tour: Rio de Janeiro in a Different Perspective,” also rewards communities like Santa Marta that have been cleared of the violent drug gangs that have long made Rio's crowded hillsides famously dangerous.

Slum residents will be trained to work as tourist guides, and street signs in English will be posted throughout the shantytown of some 5,000 people, which will have about 30 attractions such as the place where Michael Jackson in 1996 filmed a video, a samba school and works of local artists, as well as a vista point with a breathtaking view of the city.

“Rio won't be known only for the Christ the Redeemer statue, the Sugar Loaf Mountain or the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches,” Brazil's Tourism Minister Luiz Barreto said.

The program created by federal and state authorities includes a marketing campaign and information booths posted in more traditional tourist spots.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Santa Marta to officially launch the program, and said he intends to spread the program to other poor communities in Rio and across Brazil.