Medellin, Revisited (EPISODE)

In the 1980s, Medellín, Colombia was in the midst of a full-blown crisis. Thirty years ago, it was the murder capital of the world. Pablo Escobar’s notorious Medellín Cartel waged a bloody drug war on the city’s streets. For the people of Medellín, the threat of random, deadly shootings and bombings was real and constant. To outsiders, the city became synonymous with the cocaine war and random violence.

And then, in its darkest hour, Medellín began to find a way out of that crisis. Starting in the mid-1990s, Medellín launched a massive revitalization program. The city built parks, libraries and public spaces, and a world-class public transportation system.

Medellín’s leaders also invested in poor neighborhoods—known locally as “comunas.” Community programs were created for residents who had long been neglected. This massive program was called “social urbanism”—a term coined by city leaders. It was intended to revitalize Medellín by investing in the needs of its residents.

It seemed to work. Social urbanism, coupled with a tougher police focus on drug trafficking, helped drop the city’s murder rate by at least 80 percent. Against all odds, Medellín was transformed from a notoriously violent narco capital to a more peaceful, model city. The press called it “The Medellín Miracle.”

The Miracle of Medellín

As the city’s prestige grew, Medellín’s leaders saw a huge opportunity. In 2003, a handsome, charismatic mathematician and professor named Sergio Fajardo was elected mayor. Inspired by the renaissance, he and other leaders dreamed of putting Medellín on the map as the most educated, most respected, and most talked about city in all of Latin America.

Sergio Fajardo

Fajardo created a world-class PR team touting the city’s miraculous renaissance. And by the mid-2000s, Medellín was quickly becoming one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. The New York Times ran a glowing article in its travel section explaining why everyone should experience Medellín’s “renaissance.” In 2008, Anthony Bourdain visited Medellín, ate arepas and bandeja paisa, and rode one of the city’s cable cars. Over the next decade and a half, Medellín was put on must-see lists. In 2022, nearly 1.5 million people visited Medellín. Medellín suddenly found itself with a massive influx of visitors, many of whom decided to stay long-term, which the city wasn’t ready for. And that has had a huge impact on the entire city.

The digital nomads

There has been an explosion of “digital nomadism” in recent years, thanks to the rise of remote work. People who are free to travel and work from anywhere with internet have fanned out to beautiful places like Medellín, where their vacation can begin the moment they log off. Social media is full of videos of nomads—mostly young white Americans and Europeans—telling their peers why they should come here and stay long-term.

In 2022, Colombia introduced a “digital nomad visa,” which allows people who can prove they work remotely to work in the country for up to two years. Since Colombia issued the visa, there has been a noticeable spike in foreign arrivals to Medellín. “Every month, 8,700 digital nomads come to Medellín,” says Luis Fernando, a professor of architecture at the National University of Colombia. He explains that the nomads are causing a major housing shortage in the city. “While they pump millions of dollars into the economy, they also cause rent increases, housing costs and the displacement of residents. Apartments that would normally be available to locals are now rented out to tourists and digital nomads.”

The increase in rents is forcing locals to move to more affordable neighborhoods, causing a domino effect of displacement that is spreading throughout Medellín. The lack of affordable housing options in the city has also contributed to a nearly 150 percent increase in homelessness in the past three years. In the 80s and 90s, when drug cartels and gangs fought on the streets, the constant fear in Medellín was that a bomb would explode outside your house at any moment. “The biggest fear in Medellín today,” says local activist and artist Ana Valle, “is that your landlord will evict you.”

Activist Ana Valle

Medellín’s growing social problems are also spreading to the city’s hillside communities, particularly a neighborhood on the west side of Medellín called Comuna 13. During the Pablo Escobar years, Comuna 13 was the epicenter of drug gang violence. It’s a place that is often neglected by city services. It’s also been the focus of many social urbanism projects, including those gigantic, world-famous escalators that run in sections totaling nearly twelve hundred and sixty feet (that’s three and a half football fields).

Photo by Juan Gomez (CC by 2.0)

Today, Comuna 13 is a huge tourist attraction. Nearly 6,000 visitors pass through on weekends, gliding up and down escalators past walls covered in giant murals. Along those escalators are hundreds of souvenir shops, selling Karol G trucker caps, Medellín keychains and lots of Pablo Escobar paraphernalia.

There are other, more damaging traces of Escobar’s legacy. Over the past 20 years, the local street gangs that once worked for Escobar have transformed into criminal enterprises that profit from the city’s booming tourist industry. Street gangs have taken over the nightclubs and restaurants that are popular with visitors. If tourists want drugs, the gang delivers. It’s a very profitable business,” says Deysi Florez, a community activist with Comuna 13. “Even tour guides have to pay an extortion fee to give a tour. The gangs are so organized that if you give a tour or open a business in the tourist area, they approach you and ask you to ‘pay nicely.’”

The dark side of the miracle

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this relationship between foreigners and gangs is the way it fuels the city’s growing sex tourism industry, which increasingly endangers minors. And most of these girls come from poor neighborhoods like Comuna 13. Medellín has gained worldwide attention as a result. A popular online movement called “Passport Bros” encourages American and European men to meet so-called “exotic girls” abroad. Videos with the hashtag “Passport Bros Medellín” have garnered millions of views on TikTok. Although ex-work is legal in Colombia, activists in Medellín worry about underage girls becoming victims of sex trafficking, particularly by gangs.

“The sexual exploitation of minors has dramatically worsened in the city,” said Ivan Muñoz, a public health professor and expert on sex trafficking in Medellín. “Organized crime controls all aspects of the business. Gangs recruit the girls and use online platforms to sell them to foreigners. Gang members pick up the girls from their homes and drop them off at tourist hotels and Airbnbs in Medellín.”

Things came to a head earlier this year when a 36-year-old American named Timothy Livingston was found by local authorities in his luxury hotel room with two girls, ages 12 and 13. He was arrested, but quickly released and quickly caught a flight back to the U.S. The case caused a media storm throughout Colombia.

Thousands of people online were furious with the police for letting him go, and demanded that Livingston be extradited to Colombia to face trial. The Livingston case truly mobilized the people of Medellín. It crystallized the outrage that had been simmering in the city for some time. It suddenly became very clear to many Colombians—particularly the people of Medellín—where to direct their anger. Not just at the predators, but also at the city’s leaders, whom residents blame for turning their backs on their own citizens.

Alejandro Echeverri is an urban planner who was responsible for implementing many of Medellín’s first social-urbanist projects. He says the current crisis stems from decisions made in the first decade of the city’s revival. Thanks to the PR campaign, “some (revival) projects became famous worldwide,” and he says Medellín’s fundamental mistake was to promote itself in such a way that foreigners flocked to it.

A Vitrina City

Today, Ana Valle describes Medellín as “una ciudad vitrina” – a city decorated with storefronts. She and other locals say Medellín has gone from being a great city that tries to serve its people to a global city focused on impressing and attracting foreigners. She and other activists are trying to address these changes in part by opening up dialogues between foreigners and locals.

“Tourists need to understand that their actions, no matter how banal they may seem, have real consequences for people in our communities,” says Deysi Florez, an activist with Comuna 13. “We can all dream of the city we want to live in. We all have a right to the city.”

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