Monografia Final - PEGS - Fundação Getulio Vargas

Abstract
Tourism in Brazil has been growing annually and it has been characterized as an
important activity for the country's economic development. Given the potential of that activity
and the growing tourism movement in low-income communities around the world, this paper
aims to analyze the importance of tourism for the promotion of local development in
Cantagalo Hill, a Rio slum. That analysis is done through the study on statements of residents
about how tourism currently occurs in the slum, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses
from the perspective of theories of local development and participation. The statements of the
residents have been collected through semi-structured interviews that occurred during an
exploratory survey and through two focus groups. The exploratory research has been done
through weekly visits to Cantagalo over six months and has aimed at acquiring a broad
knowledge on the hill with emphasis on its cultural, social and demographic aspects. The
focus groups were targeted for collecting specific data on the tourism and local development
themes. The work has been done at the post-pacification period, due to the approach that
tourism in slums changed significantly after the implementation of the Pacifying Police Units
(UPPs). Another hypothesis of the study is that tourism is not characterized as an activity
relevant to the promotion of local development in Cantagalo. Those assumptions have been
confirmed or canceled throughout the work through the analysis of the results obtained from
field researches and from relevant literature.
Keywords: Tourism; Slum tourism, local development; participation.