On: Medellin
the hills are alive with the thrumming glimmer of hope
I quit my job and began the end of 2019 with a two-week-long trek across Northern Colombia, with the latter week inhabiting this beautiful city of Eternal Spring.
Part of a week-long series to close out 2019
A t night, Medellin’s skyline is a little different than that of the coastal cities that rung familiar in my mind. Regardless of where you’re standing, but especially near the metro, its not the high-rises and skyscrapers that draw your eye. These pinnacles of the rich and wealthy: of corporations and government and the few that bend them to their will; lay obscured in the valley, nowhere close to touching the clouds, much less the sky.
Instead, in this city of Eternal Spring, your eyes are drawn upward and outward: to the swaths of tiny lights that fill the hills and mountain-sides, surrounding you like a galaxy of stars in embrace. In the time leading up to Christmas: which is when I traversed Northern Columbia to end up here; those hills were filled with an ocean of color. Here, the poorest and least privileged live: out of reach, but always in sight; defiantly refusing to be hidden from view.
In New York, conditioning quickly takes the wheel. A half-a-dozen-or-so rides on the subway and out of necessity, the worst-off lose your attention quicker than a drop of a dime. Because charity is a travesty-failing of us as a society to care for those who have nothing else, and how can I alone expect myself to help every person that asks for food or money for it?
I wonder what this constant visibility lends to the Paisa psyche: to the residents of this mountain-ringed metropolis. Does it make these people more conscious of their coalesced experience, more willing to celebrate what they have, to share with one another?
Or was it the class violence of a city infamous for a name: who, to this day, attracts tourists to bolster the burgeoning domestic drug consumption in Colombia. A name who doused fire on a political war that only pushed sides and classes further to extremes, until violence raged on and only in recent history has quelled into relative peace. It made for an entertaining Netflix series, but made me wonder at the parallels between apolitical men seeking chaos to satiate their own greed.
In this time of bargaining how much we should destroy our economy before we pick and choose who should and shouldn’t die in times of pandemic, I pray domestic war won’t be the point the United States needs to mimic in order to realize the value of a life.
Because nothing more made an impression on me: in visiting Colombia; and especially wandering the streets of Medellin; than the inherent reverence for life flourishing even in the specter of violence.
Medellin’s citizens are assigned a level based on the quality of their housing and neighborhood; providing a level of socio-economic stratification that defines the larger communes (comunas). This determines rights to subsidies on public utilities for lower ranked sectors, or how much extra residents of higher-estrato neighborhoods have to pay.
But this also in a way, manages gentrification: a way to ensure that the poorest members of society still have a place to live even if they are in these less-developed neighborhoods. Since these are defined beforehand, these mountainside comunas are at least supported financially by the wealthier low land neighborhoods.
And yet, despite all these efforts to support these poorer, mountain-side neighborhoods: stacked atop one another with a dizzying maze-like verticality; these communes are often not even policed by the central government. Instead, the cartels are allowed to operate without interference under the condition that they can’t commit violent crimes or kidnappings, and in return, provide protection and security in place of a centralized police force. They earn their pay through protection taxes, selling drugs, and keeping the peace, and yet as an American, it boggled my mind that
at some point, the Paisa people realized that killing people over cocaine wasn’t worth it.
That if life is the true primary concern, anything, even taxes, is on the negotiation table.
These systems are not perfect, but instead, reflect an understanding about what might be most important during this fraction of a moment shared on this floating speck of dust. Hurtling through a vast emptiness of vacuum and blackness, perhaps life has more value than we give it credit for.
Like a central nervous system, Medellin’s metro lies in the valley of the city. Its tenuous branches reach out toward the neighborhoods scattered along the ring of mountains either by rail, trolley, gondolas, or even outdoor escalators.
The pride and heartbeat of the city: the metro lies spotless; a glimmer of opportunity through infrastructure, a real means by which social mobility, hope, and traversal through Medellin’s socio-economic hierarchy exists.
“I’ll be the first in my family to move up in the class system,” he beamed, “giving these walking tours; talking to foreigners and learning English; teaching you about my experiences growing up here: losing my closest friends to gang violence; has given me the opportunity to buy a new home for my mom in a better neighborhood.”
The cynic New Yorker in me checked out: This is all just a story to make us feel good about the tip we just gave him for entertaining us the entire afternoon.
And yet another part of me wondered:
Is this what living is like?
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I am, by no means, an expert on Medellin, much less Colombian society. And yet: in visiting; I couldn’t shake the buzz of hopefulness that invigorated me and the strange sense of trepidation felt when it came time to return to the States.
Hopefully, I can return soon. The free / pay-what-you-want walking tours given by locals that grew up within the city conveyed a real passion for their home and were an absolute delight to share the experience with.
