Medellín embraces its history
The violent past of our city is not a secret for anyone. In the worst years, between 1983 and 1994, we had 46.612 violent deaths in Medellín. 46.612 human lives lost, without counting previous or subsequent years. 46.612 human lives lost, without counting other cities or other regions. 46.612 human lives lost, which also mean empty beds and families that never recovered from their losses.
Medellin suffered narco-terrorist violence like few other cities or perhaps like no other. To rise again after living it is really complex. And in that process of getting ahead, our society -unconsciously- stopped telling its own story. The journalists and academics told it, but there was no citizen appropriation of the story. As a society we focus on urban interventions, on social programs, on job creation; crucial issues for that reconstruction process. But what happened is that others appropriated the story, turning the perpetrators into the main characters of it.
That is why we decided to start a project focused on the narco-terrorist violence memory. We are telling the stories of its victims and heroes through lectures in schools, a memory tour, projects for at-risk youth, and building an additional room that will have our House of Memory Museum dedicated to the subject. But, beyond every initiative, this is a conversation for all the citizens to understand why is it that this happened to us, to reconcile with our own shadows and to give light, finally, to those who deserve it.
