The Importance of Art, Culture and Community in the Socioeconomic Transformation of Comuna 13, Medellín

Whilst the roots of the political violence within Colombia date back to the 19th and early 20th century, the unprecedented, striking presence of gang and drug-fueled crime, human rights violations, and government failure after 1985 shaped a horrific war that has since been frequently studied. The final decades of the 20th century and the primary years of the 21st century were characterised by mass political violence, deep economic recession, widescale forced displacement, and continuing state absence, thus prolonging these issues.[1] San Javier, undoubtedly became the epicenter of this violence due to its sociopolitical and geographical positioning.[2] Consequently, the residents suffered in the crossfire caused by the urban coexistence of paramilitary groups, the armed state, illegal insurgent groups, as well as local criminal gangs and drug traffickers.[3] The most conspicuous guerrilla groups, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), amongst other guerrilla, paramilitary, and militia gangs inhabited the area, causing such a parasitic occupation that exhausted the residents into submission and compliance through violent intimidation tactics, and a total invasion of their community.[4] Responding to the lack of government assistance and conflicting local micro-powers, the community implemented social urbanism through a series of non-violent initiatives to widen accessibility to more creative, peaceful futures, laying the foundations for community resilience.[5] In an attempt to contain the war, defend their human rights and eventually democratise as a community, the residents introduced creative practices to generate a feeling of ‘togetherness’, and cultivate alternative future pathways for the younger generation, that were peaceful and void of the prevalent gang warfare.[6] The community was inherently limited by the critical deficit in government intervention, and their accessibility to effective instruments for change. Consequently, the outlet of hip-hop, rap, dance, graffiti, and other artistic methods of expression were channeled in to forcing sociopolitical change; the art created throughout this period treated themes such as: stigmas around the Comuna, memorialising the tragedies that occurred, criticising the governmental failure amongst other themes of community resistance.[7] Since 2003, the government has implemented strategies to encourage social inclusion and development, propelling Medellín's civic transformation and earning international accreditation.[8] Nevertheless, the creative community approaches in Comuna 13 created open and available channels of discourse, amplifying the collective denunciation of the authoritarian micro-powers that had ruled them. This mobilised the territorialisation of San Javier, paving the way for urban transformations that would have a lasting impact. [1] Catherine LeGrand, ‘The Colombian Crisis in Historical Perspective’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 28.55 (2003) pp.165-209 (p. 166)[accessed 27 January 2024] [2] Elyssa Pachico, ‘Medellin’s Turbulent Comuna 13’, InSight Crime, 12 May 2011,[accessed 5 February 2024] [3]Mary L Alzate-Zuluaga, ‘Collective Actions in the Face of Violence. Disquisitions Based on a Case Study: Comuna 13 in Medellin’, Frontera Norte, 22.44 (2010), pp.161-184 [4] Rendón, The Drama of the Armed Conflict, pp. 20-22 Gustavo Rojas-Páez, ‘Narratives from the Margins of the State: Resisting the Politics of Exceptionality in Comuna 13’ Oñati Socio-legal Series, 8.6 (2018), pp. 901-924 (p. 909)[accessed 7 April 2024] [5] Alonso Salazar, ‘Guerra en las Calles’, Semana, ed. 1077, 23 December 2002[accessed 19 April 2024] Luisa Sotomayor, ‘Dealing with Dangerous Spaces: The Construction of Urban Policy in Medellín’, Latin American Perspectives, 44.2, (2017), pp. 71–90 (p. 86)[accessed 3 March 2024] [6] Luz Amparo Sánchez Medina, ‘Meanings and Practices of Non-Violence: Lessons learned in the midst of the urban war in Comuna 13, Medellin’, in Community-Based Urban Violence Prevention: Innovative Approaches in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Arab Region, ed. by Kosta Mathéy, and Silvia Matuk (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014), pp. 150-63 (p. 151, 155) [7] Yenny Carolina Ramirez Suarez, ‘Divergent citizenships: Social urbanism and hip hop collectives in Comuna 13’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 42.3, (2023) pp. 385-400 (pp. 386-9, 396-7)[8] Alexandra Young, ‘Creative Resistance in Medellín’s Changing Public Space’, NACLA Report on the Americas: Radical Cities, 51 (2019) pp. 341-347

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