ABSTRACT
The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are places of contested meanings. If in the past these areas were signified as deforested, risky, poor, and violent, problems that affect “the wonderful city”, in the context of the mega-events, favelas were under the spotlight. Recognized as official tourist attraction of Rio, public policies were conducted to expand favela tourism and resignified these areas as green, safe, and cool. Based on multisited ethnography, I moved through the expansion of tourism in favelas and presented how tourism and the networks it mobilizes have provoked dispute regarding new meanings for the favelas and, in the specific case of this chapter, the contestation of a dogma – the antiecological favela.
