Strolling through Medellin made me realize how far the city has come. We started off our tour with a roughly three mile walk across the city. When we arrived at our first official stop, we discussed the impossibility of making that walk 20 years ago. Where once there was systemic violence, there was now a bustling city, where even a group of American high school students could walk without worry.
From there, we began the official part of our self-guided tour. The three things that stand out most to me about that time are a particular room in a museum, the countless shops along the road, and two bird statues.
In la Casa de la Memoria, one of the rooms was all black glass with little pin dot lights. Embedded in the wall were dozens of screens that lit up with the photos of people who had been killed, kidnapped, and disappeared during the period of violence in which cartels fought over the city. A small speaker in the corner of the room played the sound of a child laughing. The contrast between the two sensory inputs added to the sorrow that had been building throughout the exhibit and heightened my awareness of the need to remember and grieve.
As for the second of the things that stood out to me, was how the nature of commercialization had changed. One area, Junín, had started out as a place for rich people to come and spend money. Now it is a place where you can find cheap counterfeits of watches, DVDs, clothes, and more.
As for the two bird statues, the first was blown up in a bombing that killed 29 people and injured 200 others. The bomb had been planted on the bird’s back. The force was strong enough to blow apart the massive bronze statue into two pieces. The face of the bird was intact except for all of the shrapnel holes going through it in all directions. Engraved on the pedestal of the bird were the names of all the victims of the attack along with their ages. The youngest was 7 years old. Originally, the remains of the bird were to be removed, but the sculptor, Botero, insisted that it remain in place so that Colombians would learn and remember the need for peace. In exchange for this concession, he agreed to donate an additional statue.
That second statue is immediately next to the original. For me, the second bird represents how far Medellin has come, while providing an additional reminder of the past. I saw another representation of Medellin’s changing relationship with the past in a different park. One of Bolivar’s generals is portrayed in a massive statue in the center of the park. In recent years, protestors have thrown red blood on it to represent the bloody nature of the past. On the other side of the statue is an angel. The only thing out of the ordinary is that the angel’s face had been blacked out with spray paint and her book had additional red paint dripping from it. Finally, I saw one additional example of similar protests. One of the famed buildings on the periphery of a main square had red handprints on the wooden door.
All of these reminders of Colombia’s violent past made me even more grateful to be here now. Colombians are clearly not afraid to learn from their past. The efforts for peace continue to this day, but I see plenty of evidence to support the fact that they are on the path to peace.
Rohan Lindeman
Thanks for your account of Medellín! The transformation of the city is so impressive. Did you take the series of escalators up the mountain side? These were built so that the poor people living in shacks on the hillsides could commute to town to work in 15 minutes instead of the 1 – 2 hours it used to take. I would like to live there for several years if I were young again.