Medellín, liberated

7/29/2019 Medelln, liberated

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Freedom

For decades it was acity dominated bymurder, drugs andear. oday it is acenter o innovationand hope. How theColombian city oMedelln liberateditsel.By Andreas Fink (text) and Luca Zanetti (photos)

Medelln,

Liberated

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Medelln

Colombia


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he gondolas, the clank o thedoor as it closes, the jolt as thecar begins to move, the supporttowers none o this is very di-

erent rom the cable cars you might nd ina resort town in the Alps. But this cable carsystem extends over a city a dense, closedcity o bare brick, corrugated metal and tan-gled cables. It travels over steep pathways,narrow alleys, crooked concrete steps, over

neighborhoods nestled on the hillside thatappear hermetically sealed and inhospitable.Beneath it is the worlds most innovativecity. Te gondolas that carry residents othe mountain barrios to work each day, sav-ing them two hours o commuting time, arepart o a social innovation that led theUrban Land Institute, Citibank and theWall Street Journal to bestow that title onMedelln on March 1, 2013. Yes, Medelln,Antioquia, Colombia.

Tis is the story o a city that has gonethrough hell, a city where, at one point, morepeople were murdered than anywhere else inthe world. For people everywhere, its

1) High society:Young guests at thedisco Envy, whichis located on arootop terrace in

Poblado, home toMedellns wealthypopulation.

2)Te next genera-tion o salsa musi-cians: Playing thetrumpet on the rooo the cultural center.

3) Getting thingsrolling again:

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Skateboarders inCiudad del Ro,ormerly home toactories.

4) Love is a jungle:A young couple atthe Jardn Botnico.


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name was synonymous with drugs andguerrilla warare. It was clear that only Me-delln itsel would be able to drive out theseevil spirits, and that it had the means to doso. Medelln rediscovered its civic con-sciousness, its pride and the courage to at-tempt to liberate the city rom evil.

Santo Domingo is the name o the ca-ble cars upper terminal, and also o the sur-rounding neighborhood. Aside rom thename, there is little that is holy about thispart o town. Comuna 1, where Santo Do-mingo is located, is the poorest o Medellns16 districts. A narrow lane leads rom theterminal, past shops and nightclubs withbarred windows, to a plaza dominated bythree black, gleaming blocks. It is as i giantsrom another planet had deposited threeenormous dice at the edge o the hillside. Asign at the entrance to the complex, whichopened in 2007, reads Parque BibliotecaEspaa. he buildings won architectGiancarlo Mazzanti international awards,and nally gave the residents o Santo Do-mingo a place they could be proud o.

New Lie Ater Years o ViolenceIts a gray, damp Monday. Children and par-ents crowd into the ground oor area, whichlinks all three blocks o knowledge anauditorium, a library and a social and cul-tural center. Te public health department isshowing an exhibition on hygiene, and rep-resentatives o the social welare oce arethere to help people sign up or benets. Inone room, 12 children are sitting in a circleand copying illustrations rom a picture

book; their artwork will be sent to the Lith-uanian illustrator Kestutis Kasparavicius.Tey also plan to include a ew lines abouttheir lives and their dreams, introducingthemselves beore he comes to the library tovisit them in September.

Such activities were what the peoplebehind the parques bibliotcas there arenow nine o them had in mind. heywanted to bring the wider world to thosetrapped in their violence-plagued barrios,where the pistoleros o the drug gangsstood guard on every corner, where crossingthe borders between gang areas couldmean death.

Up to then, the only positive title Medellncould claim was city o eternal spring. Inthe Valle de Aburr, the high mountain val-ley where Spaniards ounded the city in1675, temperatures remain between 22 and28 degrees Celsius throughout the year. Un-til the 1950s, the towns growth was still atleast somewhat orderly; the textile and

heavy industry sectors ourished. But thencame a ood o displaced people. Te guer-rilla war began in 1954, and even today itbrings wave ater wave o destitute, trauma-tized reugees into the city. Te entire valleywas soon developed and settlements croppedup along the steep slopes to the east andwest. Makeshit housing soon extendedhundreds o meters up the hillside. oday3.5 million people live in the greater Medel-ln region, more than 70 percent o themin slums.

It was here, in this morass o hopeless-ness, that drug lord Pablo Escobar sowedthe seed in the 1980s that eventually, in aew short years, won Medelln the unortu-nate title o murder capital o the world. Es-cobar ofered residents the benet o his lar-gess, sometimes even personally passing outcash, to secure their political support andhis success was reected in his election, ora time, to the House o Representatives inColombias Congress. In the late 1980s, theMedelln cartel controlled up to our-thso Colombias cocaine exports. Grati de-picting the mustachioed mass murderer andbillionaire can still be seen in the ninth

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1) Sixty-one-percentgrowth: MaraAdela ida amayo hasachieved great successas head o GrupoSuras investmentdepartment.

2) Art instead o war:

Musician Csar Lpezhas turned 20 assaultries into guitars, inhopes that his art willhelp to change people.

3) Chic Medelln:Adriana Montoyadesigns swimwear orthe Onda de Marlabel. Her designs arealso sold in New Yorkand Florida.

4) A hard job: MayorAnbal Gav iria isaced with thechallenge o consoli-dating the reorms ohis predecessors. He issaid to be interested inrunning or presidento Colombia.

5) Blocks o knowl-edge: ParqueBiblioteca Espaa, acultural center locatedin the poverty-strick-en neighborhood oSanto Domingo.

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districts Barrio Pablo Escobar. It wasthere, at the height o his power, that the

boss o evil which is also the title o themost successul telenovela o recent years built, then gave away 300 houses. Te tideeventually turned when Escobar and hiskillers set of bombs throughout the country,leading members o the local elite to breaktheir silence. Finally, an alliance o govern-ment authorities and gangsters started amanhunt or Escobar, who had escapedrom prison. He succeeded in hiding out oranother 498 days in the brick jungle that isthe barrios, but on December 2, 1993,he was gunned down on the rootop oa building.

Only the Best or the PoorestBut the peoples sufering was not yet ended.Te war between the guerrillas and paramil-itary orces made its way into the slums, un-til President Alvaro Uribe, who had justbeen elected, sent in elite troops in 2002.Ater several days o brutal house-to-housecombat, Medelln was ree o the guerrillas.Since that time, paramilitary orces and suc-cessor gangs have controlled the slums.

Medelln was a place o violence, so-cial inequality and still more violence, saysone resident, who spent eight years o hislie trying to change things. Mauricio Va-lencia, now the inrastructure secretary orthe province o Antioquia, was ormerly thecitys director o planning and architect othe transormacin ciudadana, or urbantransormation, a transormation that todayattracts local politicians rom all over LatinAmerica as well as Arica and South Asiawho are eager to learn rom Medellns ex-

perience. rained as an engineer, he was oneo the young, long-haired wild men who,around the turn o the millennium, gave uptheir university and newspaper careers toexperiment with a new kind o local politics,a radically diferent approach rom anythingthat had been tried beore. In 2004 thegroup, led by 47-year-old mathematics pro-essor Sergio Fajardo, won the election andbegan to make plans, under the motto onlythe best or the poorest. Te communitybuilt schools, sports acilities, cultural cen-ters, preschools, libraries, cable cars, bridgesand even escalators to connect neighbor-hoods that had once been enemies. Te

Metropolis Medelln: Te metro,opened in 1995, runs throughthe heart o the city. ango dancerson the side o a building announcean exhibition o works by FernandoBotero, the citys best-known artist.


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1) Fruitul business:In the heart o thecity, a merchant sellsmangos. Teinormal sectoraccounts or roughlyhal o Colombiaseconomy.

2) ense peace: Asoldier stands guard,overlookingComuna 13. worival drug gangs areghting or controlo the transportroutes here.

3) Picnic: A group oriends spendSunday aternoonrelaxing on a lawn inCiudad del Ro.

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320-page Guide to Civic ransormationdescribes all the projects completed be-

tween 2004 and 2011, which, with theirmodern design, actually unction today.

Te taxi winds its way up the hill tothe western part o the city, through the Ro-bledo neighborhood, where the level o pov-erty increases as the terrain grows steeper.At the crest o the hill is the bright orangeacade o the Institucion Educativa Aures.

In the area surrounding the enced-inschoolyard, this clean, three-story buildingis like an oasis o humanity in the midst oso much misery. Director Patricia Salazr, astrong-willed woman in her ties, gives usa tour o the playground, the caeteria, thelibrary and the computer room, and pointsout that the amilies o all 1,460 studentscome rom the three lowest income groups.We have every type o problem that youcan imagine, and then some. Te schoolserves a hot lunch to 430 children, ensuringthat they get enough to eat at least oncea day.

Generosity, olerance, Respect Recess is at 9:30 a.m. or the primary school,

and provides an opportunity to take a lookat the classrooms. We notice two things: thelarge number o desks as many as 42 chil-dren are in each class and the white board,which is actually a projection screen. Teteachers laptop is used to project visual ma-terials onto the screen. Every classroom isequipped with the latest technology, the di-rector tells us, as she bestows kisses on thechildren who run up to give her a hug. Ac-cording to Patricia Salazr, technology is avery welcome tool. But what is really impor-

tant is clear rom the message the secondgraders have written in elt marker on theold-ashioned board in the next room:commitment, generosity, tolerance, respect,kindness.

82 percent o the entire city budget goesto social projects; in 2012 this amounted tomore than 1.24 billion dollars. Te city coun-cil spends 400 million dollars on education;no other city in the Americas spends such ahigh percentage o its budget on education.

Not Corrupt, For OnceAnd how is Medelln able to nance theseexpenditures? Part o the answer can be

ound at the edicio inteligente, a gleam-ing silver high-rise building in the heart o

the city. Tere, on the 15th oor, at sevenoclock in the morning we meet with JuanEsteban Calle, 47, the director o EPM.Te Empresas Publicas Medelln publicutilities company was created in 1955 withsupport rom the World Bank, whichstrongly urged that it be managed in keep-ing with the rules o the market and kept asar removed as possible rom politics andoutside inuences. All o its directors haveembraced that approach, a rst in LatinAmerica, and in the 58 years o its existencethe company has never been involved in amajor corruption scandal that too is arst. As a result, EPM has become Colom-bias second-largest enterprise with 55 sep-arate companies, as well as a globally activeenergy supplier, a technology corporation and a nancer o the transormacin

ciudadana. Last year EPM contributed600 million dollars to the city treasury.Everyone who works or this companyknows that our eforts benet society as a

whole, says Calle, and thats why we takespecial pride in going to work each day.Pride is a word one hears requently in

Medelln. Te paisas, as the people o Antio-quia are called, are well known in Colombiaor their business sense and loyalty to theirregion, and sometimes disparaged or those

very qualities. Tat was what saved Medelln

during the dark decades. Four huge enter-prises have dominated the business environ-ment or decades, and none has ever turnedits back on the city. o ward of the threat oa takeover during the Escobar era, Banco-lombia, the cement company Arcos, the oodprocessing conglomerate Nutresa and the -

nancial holding company SURA exchangedshares with one another. oday, they are still

the engine that drives the local economy and the most important private orces be-

hind Medellns liberation.Mara Adelaida amayo explains why.

We support social transormation becausewe believe in our institutions. A youngbusiness economist, she heads the invest-ment department at SURA, which wasoriginally the Suramericana insurance com-pany and has since developed into the coun-trys largest nancial holding company. o-day it manages assets worth 120 billiondollars or 29 million clients in eight LatinAmerican countries. In the rst quarter o2013, SURA increased its prots by 61.2percent over the previous year. It is amongthe companies that have beneted rom theFree rade Agreement with the UnitedStates that took efect in 2012.

We do well when our country doeswell, says amayo. For years now, Colom-bias economy has been growing steadily, atan annual rate o approximately 5 percent.Investments in the country have more thanquintupled over the past 12 years. As a re-

sult, SURA was able to make investments inseven neighboring countries in 2011. More-over, it has been able to support cultural,sports and social programs in Medelln.

A close, long-term partnership withpowerul private enterprises is the secondpillar on which Medellns social transor-mation rests. As Mara Adelaida amayopoints out, however, Tis only works solong as we can be condent that the pro-grams we support will last beyond the termo whoever happens to be the citys mayor.

Anbal Gaviria would not have beenelected i he had wanted to depart rom thecourse set by his predecessors; the transor-macin ciudadana has long been acceptedas simple common sense. Gaviria, 47, hasgoverned the city since the beginning o2012. Unlike the two mayors who precededhim, he is not a political outsider. A special-ist in business administration, he comesrom an elite background his amily ownsMedellns largest newspaper publishingcompany and is a member o the LiberalParty. Fajardo, a orce or reorm, was elect-ed mayor in 2004 just as Anbal Gaviria waselected governor o Antioquia. At the be-

No other city inthe Americas

spends such a highpercentageo its budget oneducation.


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ginning o 2012 the two men switched roles;Fajardo now governs the province rom abuilding located right next to the mayorsoce, with its bulletproo windows. Te twocontinue to work closely together, as inthe past.

Gavirias predecessors set the ball inmotion, and now he is aced with a less spec-tacular task: consolidating the transorma-tion, in a very complex environment. Since

the Free rade Agreement entered intoorce, the textile industry has elt the nega-tive efects o open borders. And since thepeso has continued to rise in value, it no lon-ger makes nancial sense to cultivate cofee,a crop that has been a source o income orrural Antioquia as long as anyone can re-member. For many campesinos, thereore,the choice is between planting coca andtrying their luck in the overpopulated city.

And Medelln is still one o the world smost perilous cities. Although it droppedten places in the 2012 listings o most dan-gerous cities, it still ranks third in Colombiaand 24th worldwide, with a murder rate

1) More un! Playingis allowed in theountains in ront othe Parque Exploraexhibition center.

2) More knowledge!A librar y readingroom in the SantoDomingo slum.Te city spends400 million dollars

on education.

3) More art!Director MaraMercedes Gonzlezat the Museumo Modern Art.

4) More time!Cable cars makethe slums moreaccessible andget people to workmore quickly.

Pride was whatsaved Medellnduring the darkperiods.

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o 49 or every 100,000 inhabitants (1991:381). Furthermore, the situation can easilydeteriorate quickly; in the neighborhoods,drug dealers are still ghting or control o

drug routes. In the Comuna 13 districtalone, authorities have stationed our bat-talions o police ocers and military per-sonnel and this in the same district thatinstalled six escalators, one o the showcaseprojects that earned Medelln the title omost innovative city o 2013.

Te Goal: o Be Part o the Avant-GardeMayor Gaviria is hoping that many moreinternational companies will show interestin Medelln now that it has been recognized

as a city o innovation. Te city has longworked with an agency that is highly skilledat helping its clients achieve their goals obtaining tax breaks, establishing connec-tions with universities, opening start-up o-ces and nding attractive sites. Te Parqueecnolgico Manantiales is located in thehills overlooking the elegant El Pobladosection o the city, where the wealthy haveestablished a well-guarded rst-world en-clave with shopping centers, sports clubs,restaurants and discos. Tis is where theAmerican company Kimberly-Clark hasopened a global innovation center. And be-low, in the city, is a sign bearing the name o

the computer giant Hewlett-Packard, whichhas set up its service center or Latin Amer-ica there, in an ultramodern oce building.wo oors below is the Swiss cement com-

pany Holcim, which has been managingits regional services rom this locationsince March.

Te aim is to be part o the avant-garde; it is here, in the Ruta N complex, thatthe citys innovative activity is concentrated.

Juan Pablo Ortega, the centers director andlandlord, has devised a three-part strategy:First, he wants to help local companies es-tablish contacts with international marketsand is working to support oreign startupsin Medelln; an entire oor is set aside orthat purpose, where oreign companies canuse ully equipped oces or a period o twoyears. Over the medium term, he wants to

make Ruta N a platorm or collecting andmarketing innovations in cooperation withuniversities and research laboratories aMedelln cartel or progress, as it were. Over

the long term, this combination think tankand marketing center is intended to encour-age a systematic culture o innovation thataccepts risks including nancial risks and understands that ailure is merely achallenge to try again. And the goal is toopen up new vistas, despite the mountainsthat surround us, Ortega remarks with asmile as we say goodbye.

Only ve minutes ater we leave RutaN, our taxi driver puts an abrupt end to thistantalizing vision o the uture. His 15-year-

old daughter died only a short time ago,killed in the crossire between twodrug gangs.

Te goal is to makethe innovativeheart o the city aMedelln cartelo progress.

Perect orm:A curvedconcretestructure leadsto the revitalizedJardn Botanico.Like everythingbuilt duringthe civictransormation,it boasts amodern design.

Andr as Fink is a South America correspondentor Focus (Germany) and Die Presse (Austria).

Lca Zantti is a reel ance photographer wholives in Zurich and Medelln.


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Latin Americas EconomyWhen the growth surge o the rst decadeo the 21st century came to an end, reorm was unavoidable.

Following weak growth in the1980s and mixed results in the1990s, Latin America achievedsolid growth during the globaleconomic boom o the rst de-cade o the 21st century. Tissuccess was due in large part toan economic policy o greateriscal and monetary stability,ater many years o crisis. Dur-ing that rst decade, increaseddemand rom Asia was particu-larly helpul or commodity-ex-porting countries, and domesticdemand was reinorced by a-vorable ina ncing conditions.Overall, however, expansionduring this period was muchslower than in other emergingregions, such as Asia.

No World ChampionBrazil, which accounts or near-ly hal o Latin Americas eco-nomic activity as well as its land

area, has been the ocus o con-siderable attention over the pasttwo years, owing to its weakgrowth. Protectionism and astrong currency have weakenedthe countrys industrial sectorand compromised its ability tocompete. Te country also su-ers rom a lack o well-trainedworkers and inrastructure.

Although Brazil will soonhost the soccer World Cup and

the Olympics, it still nds itselin Mexicos shadow. Since theinancial crisis, reorms havebeen implemented to promoteinvestment, but no progress hasbeen made in certain importantareas, such as the simplicationo the tax system. Weakergrowth and the 2014 electionsare likely to increase pressureon the government to imple-ment more market-riendlyreorms.

Inadequate ProductivityAs a result o Latin Americasincreasing urbanization (in2009, 80 percent o the popula-tion lived in c ities, comparableto the level in industrializedcountries), major cities arestruggling with overburdenedtransportation systems, risinghousing prices and worseningpollution. Tese inrastructureproblems are impeding devel-opment.

Te main problem acingmany Latin American countriesis low growth in productivity and productivity actually de-clined in the 1980s and 1990s.Te primary causes are low lev-els o savings and investment.Small and medium-sized enter-prises (SMEs), which employ alarge percentage o the workingpopulation in Latin America,just as they do in other coun-

tries, show relatively littlegrowth as compared with simi-lar companies in East Asia.Likely reasons include bothperverse government incentivesand an underdeveloped cultureo entrepreneurship.

o genera te in cr ea se dgrowth, the Latin Americancountries need to implement re-orms. Instead o government-created jobs and subsidies to

promote consumption, impor-tant steps include targeted e-orts to promote long-term or-eign investments. Making suchinvestments more attractivewil l require reorms o the labormarket, the tax system and s-cal policy, as well as the deregu-lation o certain sectors.

Some Latin Americancountries have made muchgreater progress toward reormthan others. Chile is widely re-

garded as among the most de-veloped countries in the region,thanks to the governmentssound management o mone-tary and iscal policy and thecountrys well-developed insti-tutions. Peru and Colombia,too, have taken steps to promoteinvestment; in Argentina andVenezuela, however, the level oprotectionism has increasedsince the nancial crisis.

Mexico Ofers HopeMexicos new government hasinitiated what are probably themost promising steps toward re-orm. It has pushed to make the

labor market more exible andderegulated the telecommunica-tions sector. Also on its agendaare reorms in the area o scalpolicy and steps to open up thestate-dominated oil industry.

Reorms clearly lead to

success, in Latin America andelsewhere. Countries that ne-glect reorms, on the other hand,

will have a hard time competingwith the well-positioned emerg-ing countries in Asia.

30 %Incom inqality has dclindin Latin Amrica sinc th1990s, although it remainsrelatively high. Te share o thepopulation with income belowthe local poverty line hasdropped substantially, romroughly 50 percent to 30 percent.

At the same time, advancingurbanization has led to anincrease in employment in theindustrial and service sectors,adding to the number o middle-income workers.

8 %Sinc th 1990s, Latin Amricahas hardly incrasd its sharof global gross domstic prodct(GDP),which remains at roughly

8 percent, while the emergingcountries o Asia have quadru-pled their share (approximately20 percent).

70 %Approximately 70 percent oMexicos exports, or the mostpart industrial goods, areshippedto the United States.As a result, Mexicos cyclicaldevelopment is extremelydependent on US growth. Te

rest o Latin America, incontrast, is more ocused on Asia.Since 2000, Asias share o allLatin American exports has risenrom about 3 percent to 17percent. In the largest SouthAmerican countries , commodi-ties account or the bulk oexports. Tus these countriesare largely dependent on growthin Asia, and particularly inChina. Structurally weakergrowth in China could thereorehave negative consequences.

THe ReGIONTODAY: FACTSAN D FIGu ReS

Nora Wassrmann works inGlobal Macroeconomic Researchat Credit Suisse.

Medellín, liberated

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