Medellín: Revival and Risk

This article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 8 July 2008. It looks at the work of civil-society and human-rights groups in helping a Colombian city reach beyond conflict and notoriety.

=======

"This city used to be the murder capital of the world, but now look around Medellín", Mauricio Mosquera tells me with a smile. The director of the community TV TeleMedellín has a point: there are so many visible improvements here, it is impossible to deny things are looking up for Colombia's second city.

You can see it all around as you travel in the cable car that takes you up the mountain to the neighbourhood of Santo Domingo Savio. The high-wire ride is not a tourist attraction; it is a part of the public-transport system that moves people from the metro train at the river up to what was once one of the most violent parts of the country. The bustling neighbourhood is still poor, but it is safe to wander around, and it exudes an unmistakable pride: there is almost no litter anywhere, and none of the cable-car stations, not even the posts supporting the line up and down the mountain, have the tiniest tag of graffiti.

This system, built in 2004, is just one symbol of Medellín's renaissance.

Colombia: Tocadas pero no hundidas

El Mundo (Spain) ran this piece by my then colleague Juan Munévar and me on 4 July 2008.

=======

El emotivo comunicado sobre el rescate de Ingrid Betancourt y de otros 14 rehenes secuestrados por las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) ha sido una noticia bien recibida por todas aquellas personas y sus familias que han vivido una terrible experiencia, muchos de ellos durante casi diez años. El frenesí mediático es tan predecible como merecido. Sin embargo, sugerir que dicha noticia supone el fin de las FARC, tal y como dicen algunos comentaristas, es una exageración.