Conference Presentation
Reference
Gang violence and the touristification of underground memories in the comuna 13 of Medellin, Colombia
NAEF, Patrick James
Abstract
This contribution is part of a larger research project exploring urban violence, collective memory and the integration of street-gangs in the emerging tourism sector of Colombia.
Following one of the main objectives of this panel and looking at the case of Colombia, this paper analyses subterranean modalities of remembering, using the concept of ‘subterranean' or ‘underground' memory. I suggest that certain ‘underground memorial practices' can be considered as forms of resistance, as they can serve to challenge hegemonic set of narratives and representations on the conflict in Colombia.
NAEF, Patrick James. Gang violence and the touristification of underground memories in the comuna 13 of Medellin, Colombia. In: Royal Anthropology Institute Annual Conference.
Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future, London, 18th September, 2020
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:141919
Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.
To quote this paper: Naef, Patrick. (2020). “Gang Violence and the Touristification of Underground Memories in the Comuna 13 of Medellin, Colombia”. Paper presented at the Royal Anthropology Institute Annual Conference. Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future. (18th September 2020)
Gang Violence and the Touristification of Underground Memories in the Comuna 13 of Medellin, Colombia
1Patrick Naef, University of Geneva Patrick.naef@unige.ch
Keywords: Urban Violence, Tourism, Underground and Subterranean Memory, Gangs, Medellin, Geography.
Introduction
This contribution is part of a larger research project exploring urban violence, collective memory and the integration of street-gangs in the emerging tourism sector of Colombia (In Process, 2021). Following one of the main objectives of this panel and looking at the case of Colombia, this paper analyses subterranean modalities of remembering, using the concept of
‘subterranean’ or ‘underground’ memory (Pollak 2006, Arenas-Grisales, 2012). I suggest that certain ‘underground memorial practices’ can be considered as forms of resistance, as they can serve to challenge hegemonic set of narratives and representations on the conflict in Colombia.
The ‘Escombrera’ illustrated in this photo (Figure 1) will serve as a red thread through my presentation. The Escombrera is an industrial waste dump situated on a hill on the border of the Comuna 13 on the western side of Medellin, the second city of Colombia; it is also one of the largest mass-graves in Latin America where 100 to 300 bodies are buried.
1 Paper presented under the original title: “Subterranean memories and alternative representations of peace and war in Colombia” at the 2020 conference: “The Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future” jointly organized by the Royal Anthropology Institute, the Royal Geography Society, the British Academy, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, and the British Museum’s Department for
Figure 1: Representation of disappeared people in the Escombrera of Medellin (Human Mark, David Val and María Velez, 2015)
I will present some examples of what I conceptualize as ‘underground memories’:
mainly murals depicting sites (like the Escombrera) and actors (victims as well as perpetrators) associated with the violence that plagued and continues to traumatize Colombia. The main idea is to examine the evolution of some of these memorial elements and to show how these
‘underground’ or ‘subterranean’ memories can reach a larger and global audience. I will for instance examine closely the touristification of some of the street art of Medellin and show how murals, considered here as ‘underground memories’, initially used as resources for resistance, became commercialized and commodified, and somehow shifted away from their primary objective. In the Comuna 13 of Medellin, many murals and discourses are very critical of the gang and (neo)paramilitary control of some of Medellin’s barrios populares; they denounce invisible borders, homicides, extortion, displacement, and connivance with the state. However, with the success of the street-art touristification, and the shift from so-called ‘community tourism’ to mass tourism, these illegal armed groups integrated the tourism sector through the extortion of tourism actors, as well as by taking advantage of the growing drug market targeting foreign tourists. I will first show that tourism actors and street-artists paradoxically empowered the illegal armed groups they were criticising in the first place. Secondly, I will demonstrate that the increasing demand of tourists resulted in the appearance of many new tour guides, many of them totally disconnected from the territory, like the ones coming from outside Medellin and
Colombia. Some of these guides were strongly criticized due to the inaccuracies they would tell on the violence and the Comuna. Many residents thus expressed a feeling of dispossession of their memory and territory. As the example of the Comuna 13 will illustrate, if urban art and tourism certainly give memorial entrepreneurs (the artists realising these murals and the tour guides presenting them) a space for activism and resistance, some evidence can also connect these visual, artistic and memorial elements to dispossessive processes.
I will first briefly define the concept of ‘underground memory’; I will then look at some illustrations of the way collective memory can be used as a resource for resistance; I will finally conclude with the example of the touristification of the Comuna 13 in Medellin and the impacts it had on these memorial practices.
Underground Memories
The sociologist Michael Pollack defines ‘underground memory’ as part of minorities and dominated cultures. Referring to Maurice Halbwachs (1950), he opposes it to ‘national memory’ and ‘official memory’:
In emphasizing the analysis of the excluded, the left-behind and the minorities, oral history has revealed the importance of subterranean memories, an integral part of minority and dominated cultures, which is in opposition to “official memory”, in this case the national memory. […] Contrary to [the theory of] Maurice Halbwachs, this approach focuses on the destructive, homogenizing and oppressive dimension of national collective memory.
I consider here parts of the collective memory in Colombia’s self-settled barrios populares as
‘underground’. However, I will question Pollack’s dichotomy, suggesting that if ‘official memory’ can certainly be homogenizing and oppressive, similar power dynamics can also be observed within what Pollack calls the dominated and minorities. Moreover, if underground memories are part of the culture of the dominated, I will state that some of these memorial underground practices, such as street-art and commemorative ceremonies, serve as resources for resistance. I suggest that these ‘lieux de mémoire’ (Nora 1993) contribute to challenging hegemonic narratives and representations of the past. These are resources of resistance because they allow the reclaiming of public space, considered here as material (the streets and the plazas), but also symbolical and political (the discourses on the city). My results will demonstrate how collective memory allows reclaiming the ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre 1968, Harvey 2003) for residents in the urban margins, but also the many challenges these communities face. As Colombian scholar Sandra Arenas-Grisales (2012) states: ‘Rather than grand narratives, we are in the presence of silence as a form of suffering, perceiving and
resisting the domination of armed groups, as well as a tactic to survive the losses, to re-establish existence and everyday life after significant events that have subjugated people.’
Figure 2: ‘Underground memories’ in Colombia in the Comuna 13. (Author, 2019)
In Medellin, Samper and Marko (2015) examine what they see as two sets of narratives.
First, the official one describing the state as the savior of self-settled communities, through Medellin’s internationally famous program of social urbanism. Secondly, the discourses of residents of the barrios populares, based on their memory as founders of their neighborhoods:
The labor, artistry and expertise of thousands of community members in dozens of neighborhoods surrounding the city who – for six decades - had built their own communities, schools, roads, drainpipes, electricity, community restaurants and churches without state support. (Samper &
Marko, 2015)
Samper and Marko suggest that while collective memory contributes to keeping alive the discourses of self-settled communities, at the end it is erased by the hegemonic narratives of the state. The example of the Comuna 13 in Medellin is sadly a fine illustration of the way hegemonic and homogenous narratives tend to obscure the voice of communities. However, as mentioned above, many memory conflicts also occur within these communities.
Before looking at my main case study in Medellin, I will briefly present an event that occurred in 2019 in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, to illustrate the diffusion and globalisation of what I conceive as ‘underground memories’. In October 2019, the Colombian army covered a mural denouncing ‘falsos positivos’: the killing of young men who were then dressed in guerrilla soldiers to falsely present then as rebels. The mural showed highly ranked army members and the statement ‘Who gave the order?’ After the covering of the mural, MOVICE (Movimiento de víctimas de crimens del estado), involved in denouncing state crimes in
Colombia, spread the image on Twitter and encourage its sharing. The image became viral. The former General Montoya – the central figure of the mural – asked for the withdrawal of the image on social media and lost in court. This example demonstrates the reactivity of the authorities to cover this underground conflictual mural and memory. Moreover, it raises the question of the effectiveness of this strategy, since the mural went viral and global afterwards.
Collective memory, as this example suggests, is dynamic and shaped by present actions. The status of underground memories evolves: they can rise from the underground to the global sphere.
Context: the Comuna 13 and the Escombrera
In the 90’s, several neighborhoods of Medellin were occupied by urban militias related to the guerrillas (mainly FARC and ELN). In the beginning of the 2000's, the state with the support of paramilitary units expelled these militias and many of these popular neighborhoods then fell under the control of these paramilitary groups until their demobilization that started in 2003. Yet, many of these armed actors formed new delinquent groups – commonly referred to as ‘combos’ – and kept control of these territories. As many in Medellin say: ‘They just took off their uniforms’. Military and paramilitary actions – such as the operation ‘Orión’ - left traumatizing memories for the population, especially those conducted in 2002 when Alvaro Uribe became president. Operations ‘Orión’ (October 2002) and ‘Mariscal’ (May 2002) are the most infamously well-known; they were often represented on the walls of the city, in the urban art scene that developed some years later.
Figure 3: Mural representing the Orión Operation in the Comuna 13. (Author, 2015)
This first quote from a former member of the Bloque Cacique Nutibara paramilitary unit illustrates the violence of the Orión operation that took place in October 2002.
“We managed to reach the middle and attack them [the guerrillas]. We decided to mix gasoline and fire to burn all the houses and win the war. There were also innocent people in the place who started to raise white rags and ask for peace… Because there was also a helicopter which was firing a hail of bullets ready to kill whoever was crossing. Innocents asking for peace and orders from our superiors to continue. […] The numbers of people bleeding and lifeless was exaggerated.” (Former member of the BCN paramilitary unit, Personal Communication, 2019)
The second quote sadly presents the low value of the unknown bodies that were dumped in the Escombrera following Orión:
“Only people who died from the confrontations and whom nobody would claim. They were considered as ‘unknown’ or guerilla. So, pickups would climb the hill full of dirt and inside were the bodies.” (Idem)
Yet, many believe that if the bodies of guerrilla soldiers are hidden in the Escombrera, many other ‘undesirables’ also lie there: prostitutes, petty criminals, low-ranked drug dealers, mentally ill, social leaders, etc.
Collective Memory as a Resource for Resistance
AgroArte, a group of activists in Medellin, uses art, urban gardening and collective memory as resources to denounce the disappearances that traumatized their neighbourhoods.
This collective proposes to the neighbourhood youth activities related to Hip Hop (rap, dance and graffiti), and in exchange, youngsters who want to integrate the parche (a collective) have to take part in urban gardening practices that consist of transforming random waste deposits all over the city – symbols of the Escombrera – into garden plots (medicinal and ornamental plants). Furthermore, every year from 2014 to 2018, around the 16th of October – anniversary of the infamous Orión Operation – this collective organized a commemorative event – called
‘Cuerpos Gramaticales’ – where dozens of people – many of them relatives of disappeared people – buried themselves for 6 hours. This commemoration gained fame in Medellin and Colombia – and is now travelling beyond the national borders, with performances organized outside Colombia. (In Spain, and there is now a project to do it in France and Northern Ireland).
Figure 4: Beyond the symbolism of the Escombrera, one of the main ideas of Cuerpos Gramaticales is to literally plant bodies and root them in the soil and in the territory.
(Human Mark, David Val and María Velez, 2015) .
Another project of AgroArte was launched in 2018. It is based on the mobilization of a cemetery as a place for gathering and for a mural exhibition. The walls of this place, presented by the collective as the ‘largest painted cemetery in Latin America’, are now covered with murals associated with Medellin’s urban violence.
Figure 5: Representation of the Escombrera with the two former presidents Uribe and Santos depicted as snakes and the trucks symbolizing the fact this waste dump is still partly operational
despite all the bodies buried (Author 2019)
Murals of assassinated teenagers (here hip-hop artists) but also of people still alive and actively taking part in memorial practices related to the disappeared are painted on the walls of this cemetery. (Figure 6)
Figure 6: Mural top-right: One week after this mural was done, it was attacked, the neck and the face of the young man scratched with a knife. (Author 2019)
Mural top-left represents a neighborhood community leader (posing in front of the mural).
(AgroArte Facebook page)
Mural bottom-right represents Fabiola Lalinde and the Sirirí bird symbolizing the quest of this woman for the truth on the death of her son. (Author 2019)
Mural bottom-right represents Pedro2 who was killed in 2017 crossing an invisible border.
(Author 2019)
As Pedro’s mother told me:
“It was an invisible frontier… Look… Down there, there was a street much longer to reach the main one. Twice, when it was raining really hard during the night, they used the stairs. They saw them.
This was the motive that was so important it cost the life of my child.” (Personal Communication, 2019)
And she adds, referring to the Escombrera:
“They killed two of my sons, but I know where they are. But there are many mothers nowadays who do not know where their children are.” (Idem)
2
Pedros’s mother had to leave La Loma in Comuna 13, two months after the assassination of her son. His murderer was living next door and the prosecutor told her that if they wanted them to prosecute him, she had to leave because of the risks of retaliation.
From ‘Community-Based’ to Mass Tourism
The cemetery of La America – where the Galeria Viva project lies - is now a place for gathering: an increasing number of people, mainly from the local community, are visiting the murals. The local youth ae also working on a garden plot set inside the cemetery. Not far from the cemetery are situated the world famous outdoor electric stairs, commonly referred to as Las Escaleras. (Figure 7b) This place started to be touristified in 2014, mainly through the presentations in this area of many murals and graffiti by local artists, a tour called the
‘Grafitour’, Before the pandemic, Las Escaleras and the street art surrounding them was considered the most visited site of Medellin with more than 160’000 visitors in 2018 (The diary El Colombiano reported 3’000 daily visitors before the COVID-19 pandemic). With the success of tourism in the Comuna 13, many residents started to criticize the increasing commercialization of their neighborhood. With tourism development, souvenir shops, cafés and art galleries arose all around Las Escaleras and on the new viaduct overlooking them (Figure 7a). The Comuna 13 became itself a brand and is now featured on all the merchandising sold to tourists: tee-shirts, postcards, caps, mugs, etc. (Figure 8a and 8b). Tour guides wait for potential visitors at the metro station. (Figure 9)
Figure 7a: Souvenir Shops around Las Escaleras.
Figure 7b: A group of tourists and their guide looking at a mural at the start of Las Escaleras (Author, 2019)
Figure 8a: Postcards of murals (one representing the Mariscal Operation) in the Comuna 13 Figure 8b: Merchandising with the Comuna 13 brand. (Author 2019)
Figure 9: Tour guides at the San-Javier Metro-Station. (Author 2019)
The fact that some of the tour guides are outsiders, some of them newly arrived from Venezuela, Argentina or France – and that they are relating the history of the conflict in the Comuna 13 despite having no connection to the neighborhood - is seen as offensive by many inhabitants.
For a resident who initially viewed the tours with enthusiasm in his comuna, the economic opportunities behind it distorted the practice.
“I feel it as a cool process and that it has good things, like how the people started to manage entrepreneurship… how the señora de la cremas [the ice-cream lady] manages to support her family. But I think we lost what was in the center; it became a business to show graffiti and to charge [the visitor].” (Personal communication, 2020)
Economic prospects attracted many outsiders to work as tour guides or other related activities.
The inaccuracies of their discourse on the comuna and its history was severely questioned by many residents, as the following example illustrates:
“You go over there, and the graffiti are very bonitos, but they do not speak to me. […] People know that in this business there are a fair number of foreigners, so random people [tour guides] stand there and pay the vacuna [extortion tax] telling the wrong things, false histories… And they [the foreigners] take pictures and leave. This is not a site of memory.” (Personal communication, 2020)
Finally, as mentioned in the introduction, the economic success of tourism in the Comuna 13 led to the involvement in 2017 of the local gangs, with a growing drug market targeting foreign tourists and the beginning of the extortion of tour guides and other actors such as this street musician:
“The kids… they don’t go to study. […] Their parents won’t tell them to go study but to go to the viaduct because they know that a 5- or 8-year old kid will manage in less than a half-day to earn 50’000 pesos. The girls are turning to prostitution. This is exploding! […] Something that started in a good way (de una manera bacana)… something like showing the art [to the visitors]…at the end diverted into something else. Because seeing so much money entering the comuna, it corrupted the minds of many people. And most of all, the money that entered for drugs.” (Personal communication, 2020)
The figure 10 illustrates the apparition of Pablo Escobar in these tourism narratives and in the merchandising around the practice - Pablo Escobar, who was hardly involved in the Comuna 13, is now part of the comuna touristscape.
Figure 10: Two tee-shirts contrasting the “miracle of Medellin” and the Comuna 13 brand (symbolized by Las Escaleras) and the dark past of the city (symbolized by Pablo Escobar who has also been commodified as a brand). (Author 2017)
After looking at underground memories representing the victims of the violence, l will conclude with somewhat opposing images. In the Barrio Pablo Escobar, it is the perpetrators (Pablo Escobar and his main sicario (hitman) Popeye) who are pictured on the walls of the barrio.
Here again, before the pandemic, the emerging tourism market was controlled by the local combo, the street gang who control this territory. (Figure 10)
Figure 11: Murals in Barrio Pablo Escobar (Author, 2020)
Conclusion
In a context characterized by competing representations and discourses on the violence, through creative means such as visual and corporal memorialization, some actors involved in memorial practices attempt to challenge hegemonic narratives about their city. Through the presentation of murals that I initially saw as underground memories, my aim was to demonstrate how street- art in the comuna got commercialized with its integration into Medellin’s touristscape.
Moreover, I wanted to demonstrate 1) that this tourism practice started with local artists and activists using these murals and the memory associated with them to denounce the violence and the illegal control of their territory. In other words, these memorial objects were used as resources for resistance. However, with the success of tourism, illegal groups integrated the local tourism economy. A practice initiated by peace militants paradoxically empowered these same street-gangs, who were (and still are) the focus of their criticism. 2) The growth of tourism attracted many people to this new market and many ‘outsider’ tour guides started to offer tours of the comuna. This generated an increasing amount of criticism from residents who felt they were dispossessed of their memory. Finally, the examples that I have just presented shed light on the way the commercialization and homogenization of collective memory can impact on the
‘right to the city’ (material and symbolical) of self-settled communities in Colombia.
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