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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37 No. 3. March 20, 1974

Poverty becomes tourist attraction

Poverty becomes tourist attraction

Rio De Janiero (LNS) — A Brazilian tourist agency is making an effort to market misery as a consumer item.

The tourist agency. Agaxtur, recently published a brochure for international tourists and rich Brazilians promising its clients "something different: the poor of the Amazon".

The ad went on to proclaim: "During this trip we will be able to witness something different, scenes that are a mixture of courage, drama and necessity." The agency makes it easy for tourists to enjoy the Amazon region, providing them with boat passage and even with plastic bags to protect "presents" they might want to throw to the people in the small villages along the shore.

"Such is the anxiety of the population of the riverbanks when the ship passes by. It is when they can get things like dresses, shoes, candles, matches, buttons, medicines, food, etc. In the fight for grabbing the objects thrown from the ship, generally in plastic bags, they risk their lives by confronting with their fragile boats the current and the waves produced by the ship.

"These people belong to a community very attached to their native place," the ad asserts, "without knowing anything, under the circumstances, about the luxury, the comfort and the facilities of the big metropolitan centres. For this reason, Agaxtur counts on people like you."

Handcuffed hands