Slum Tourism: Exploitive or Progressive?

What is slum tourism?

I did not hear the words “slum tourism” until high school. Despite not knowing the term in my early life, I had often moved through slums with my family during trips in places like Ecuador and Guatemala as a child. I knew what a slum was; it was where the poor people lived. I knew what tourism was, it was to visit a place as an outsider for the purpose of adventure or relaxation. When I heard the word “slum tourism” for the first time, many aspects of my travel life began to connect and make sense to me. I realized it was true: people paid money to see how poor people lived.

With globalization and tourism at its highest in the 21st century, slum tourism seems to have gotten popular. The internet, especially travel websites, are filled with advertisements by professional companies such as Reality Tours & Travel, Slum Gods Tours & Travel, Favela Tour, and Rainbow Tours. In these tours, tourists often learn the plights of the slum citizens, are shown how the people live, and may purchase a handmade souvenir or two from a local. Today this form of tourism is on the rise in developing nations such as in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Nicaragua.

This activity has sparked ethical debate among travel companies, tour guides, and anthropologists/sociologists. It has left lots of travelers, including me, with mixed feelings. Is the slum tourist necessarily just an observer? Are slum tours inherently exploitative? Does it make you a terrible person to witness these starving lives with plans to eat out later?

There are slum tour companies like “Reality Tours & Travel” believe that slum tours and tourism in general is a way to create local development. Their website claims “Eighty percent of our post-tax profits go directly to ‘Reality Gives’ which runs high quality education programs in areas where Reality Tours works” (realitytoursandtravel.com).

On the other hand, many people have their suspicions. Tricia Barnett, a former director of Tourism Concern, a United Kingdom-based charity that fights tourism exploitation, told BBC News that “slum tours could be unfair if the community isn’t involved” (Robertson, 2012). I have read and heard of horror stories involving exploitative slum tours. Tourists have photographed starving children and civilians defecating in the street. Some tours have even bothered families in their own homes without invitation.

Having traveled to places like Ecuador, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua, I have seen my share of poverty from a young age starting at seven years old.

Nicaragua especially made an impression on me as a fifteen-year-old. I witnessed the horrors of Nicaragua’s social inequality through the politically independent grassroots organization, Witness for Peace, in 2009. I toured through NEMAGON where there are constant protests by poisoned workers who grew sick from chemicals used in the banana plantations they worked. I visited the outskirts of a dump where people lived off trash. I toured a rehabilitation center, Los Quinchos, meant for street children who sniffed glue to rid them of hunger pains.

After these experiences and about six years of reflection, I came to various realizations. In my six years of contemplation, I have travelled more, studied abroad, worked as an intern for study abroad, and studied for a major in anthropology/sociology. It’s with experience that we gain sensitivity and awareness for other cultures and people; at least that’s how my life has been. I have constructed my own ethical perspective of slum tourism through my studies and experiences. There is bad, but there is good in the act as well. There are steps that can be taken to make sure to keep the good without the bad. Even applying this to a single trip can shed a lot of light of how slum tourism can be good and bad.

The Bad

To start off, this photo is my prime example of the ethically disturbed side of slum tourism. Many things from my Nicaragua experience keep me up at night, and the story behind this photo was certainly one of them.

In our tour bus in Nicaragua, we parked outside of a dump. We never went in, only discussed what was beyond the walls.

Apparently tours used to happen in the dump where a population of the poor lived. These people living off of trash were having photographs taken of them and talked about like they were zoo animals.

Now whenever a tourist or suspected tourist enters the dump, all those who live there run away or hide. They are ashamed of how they live and flee at the mere probability of being seen by tourists.

The photo is all I was given as a window to see what the dump was like. Since it is a photo of a photo, it could be a little difficult to discern that the people in the photograph are searching through trash for food, anything useable, or sellable.

This was obvious exploitation to me, the reactions of the people to our coming was evidence enough to how they felt about visitors. If they feel that they are exploited, then it’s a fact. You can’t just tell someone they aren’t being exploited when they claim they are for the same reason you can’t tell someone you haven’t hurt their feelings when they’ve claimed you have. They all dodged the views from our bus by ducking behind the walls of the dump. Those before me who took these slum tours probably had an educational experience in mind like I did when I joined Witness for Peace. Despite this wholesome desire, the people in the dump suffered more than they already were. There was a clear lack of communication between those who organized these tours and the people who lived in the dump.

The Good

The rehabilitation center for the street children, Los Quinchos, told a different story of what slum tourism could do for a community.

Los Quinchos was founded in 1991 by an Italian woman, Zelinda Roccia, who witnessed the plights of street children through visiting the slums of Nicaragua. She began the organization with the goal of helping children with their health issues caused primarily caused by sniffing and consuming glue to cure the aches of starvation. She also gave them a place to live and receive counselling, food, and care until they are old enough to live on their own.

These children came from the most desperate of backgrounds. Many sold trinkets such as crickets folded from palm tree leaves for less than a quarter on the informal market for survival. Many were run away from broken homes. Some girls were even used as drug mules.

If tourism in slums did not happen, stories such as Los Quinchos may not have happened. Zelinda was a foreign visitor who witnesses the poverty and decided to do something about it. If not for her slum experience, these children would likely still starving and cold on the streets.

Role of a Witness

When you travel, what is it that you desire?

I know I travel because I believe it makes my world bigger and more real. Places don’t feel like they really exist until you go there and experience it for yourself. This may sound cheesy but, for me personally, travelling in a spiritual journey. Every time I leave and return home I feel complicated, maybe older is the best way to describe the feeling.

A lot of people search for difference, the exotic, maybe an escape, a different world to remind us who we are. I know I have such desires. We need to be critical of ourselves though, because these are postcolonial ideas. It is so easy to make travel about us and ignore the society we are involving ourselves in, viewing it as a place for us to consume for our own self-discovery.

But from Zelinda’s story, I want to take a step back from the conclusion that slum tourism is bad. In Nicaragua, I still have very vivid memories of my time in Los Quinchos. What was most powerful were how the children hugged me. They had a way of touching that felt like an ache to be loved. Despite the language barrier, I could tell how badly they desired to loved and would let them sit in my lap, hold my hand, and be held as long as they wished. These memories inspired me to spark any change I could. I lobbied to Congress a year later with the same group about the dangerous chemicals used in NEMAGON that was provided by the American government, hoping to get those affected some aid. The government was not so helpful, and my desire for providing aid did not leave me. I traveled again in 2012, this time to help build a clinic and aid a child’s place for special needs in rural Ecuador. My group, Volunteer Medical Partners, donated books to the children and hygiene packets. Every little thing counts.

So what can you do?

Before booking your next trip, look for companies that prove their care about the community.

There are various ways tours show that they actually care about the people rather than their own profit. Look for companies that limit or prohibit picture taking. Photo-taking of residents is exploitive when you don’t personally know who the person is and don’t ask permission. The residents who may feel demoralized by these companies that tour through their slums too often have muted voices, so people should take effort to listen and communicate with the residents most of all.

Since there is no central rating for slum tourism operators, travelers who are interested in picking a responsible tour should ask questions about the size of the tour group and how much the community is involved in working with the company.

Harold Goodwin, professor of Responsible Tourism Management at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK, wrote about his experience in the Cape Town, South Africa township of Khayelitsha, with a tour operator that was well-known in the community. “We stopped several times along the way and talked with local people who were evidently pleased to see us,” he said. Right as he had this positive experience with a local though, a tour bus came up and he saw tourists taking photos of the slum through their lens and windows. The woman he spoke to scowled that the people on the bus were on a safari.

To Conclude

When visiting Los Quinchos, this little boy borrowed my camera. He ran around taking pictures of his fellow residents for me. I remember when I returned to my bus and looked through the photographs, I laughed aloud to see he had taken this picture of himself as well.

I want us to travelers to not just be there for each other, but be there for the people we are visiting in a positive way. We should not forget that while we are experiencing a piece of their lives, they are experiencing our visit. Let’s make it a happy one.