City planning

Wherever you are in Medellin, you can look up and see the hilltops of the Aburrà Valley.

Imagine God pressed his thumb into Colombia, and the city lies in the indentation left behind.

The flat city centre and suburbs are home to Medellin's middle classes, while the poor live in barrio neighbourhoods, built steep into the hills. 

Medellin's violent history and it's hope for a peaceful future can only be understood in the context of this geography. 

As I learned from visiting Museo Casa de Memoria (Memory House Museum), 'it's the land, the planning, the infrastructure that paved the way for the conflict to end, not just talks.'

I watched video testimonies from people on all sides of Medellin's conflicts, perpetuators, victims and witnesses. 

I learned that it was never a straight fight between the drug lords and the Government, but a four-way conflict that included armed right wing paramilitaries and left wing guerrilla armies. 

The struggle for dominance between them was brutal, with Medellin once having the devastating reputation as the most violent city in the world.

I heard the story of a man who once led a troop of paramilitaries and now heads up a reconciliation project; a young woman who joined the communist guerrilla army who has since struggled to reintegrate back into society; a mother who led a movement of families searching for their 'disappeared' children; and another woman who was raped by a paramilitary soldier as a child and is now a peace activist. 

These were powerful stories, but the words that struck me most were from an academic who said of Medellin: "There is more or less invisible but permanent resistance every day."

This resistance took a great leap forwards in 2004 when a cable car connecting Medellin's lofty barrios with the city was integrated into the public transport system. 

You can now hop on the metro to Acevedo station and jump straight into a cable car.

Before this, it would take a person living in the Santo Domingo barrio two and a half hours to commute to the city. Now they can be on the metro line within five minutes.

Imagine what this connectivity does for your life and your aspirations when suddenly you have fast and cheap access to education and jobs. 

The cable car is literally raising people up. It's giving people hope for the future and hope is the antidote to violence.

Medellin's work is not yet complete, 28% of people live below the poverty line and while the murder rate has dramatically decreased in the past decades, more than 600 people were killed in 2018.

But the daily resistance continues, and being part of it is as simple as buying a ticket for the cable car.