Gringa tales in favela Santa Marta

This paper provides an autoethnographic account through tourist favela Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro. It aims to grasp the role of tourists' practices and performances and their potential to re-signify and transform the physical, social, and cultural landscape of slummed communities at urban destinations. Tourism in informal urban settlements is a phenomenon studied from different disciplines and perspectives, mainly covering representational and ethical issues. The paper incorporates insights from the Performative Turn and relational studies to guide the author's reflection over her cultural experience as a favela tourist/researcher. These stories compound the myriad of heterogeneous elements making and shaping the favelas' complex and dynamic assemblages. They also unveil multiple underlying issues that could be further analyzed from different scopes. Finally, favela tourism is seen as an avenue to foster social change. Autoethnography was first being applied to slum tourism research, and it proved to be a useful method to embrace the subjectivities of the field.