See below article for photo captions.

By Ana Maria Bermudez

Medellin, Colombia

Medellin is a city in the middle of a contradictory country, the history of which can be told by the stories of people who lived in the center of violence that has erased many a name in the last century.

Between the 1980s and 90s, the poverty and drug battles, combined with the poor educational system and the marginalization of individuals, resulted in Medellin being the most violent city in the world. Massacres were not uncommon and bombs in shopping centers threatened everyday activities. Kidnappings, extortion and war-like statistics led to a rise in fear city wide.

In 1991, the annual number of murders rose to a macabre 6,500. The crisis was felt all over the country, but it was at its worst in Medellín. At the time, notorious Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, attained the sixth largest fortune in the world through a  drug business that perpetuated violent activities, which continued in the country until his death in 1993.

In the year 1999, a group of academics who were working on several projects within the universities of Colombia, decided to start a political career. Their leader was Sergio Fajardo Valderrama, a mathematics professor at the University of the Andes. They became involved with social issues in the city.

Their project was simple, but daring: to transform Medellín into a model city for the rest of the world—“from fear, to hope.” This would involve reconciling Medellin's past as “the world’s cocaine capital,” a title it held since the 1980s. As their principal strategy, the group proposed honesty and transparency for the use of public resources during the development of their government program.

Sergio Fajardo was elected as mayor in 2004, with 208,541 votes – the maximum number in the history of Medellín – demonstrating the hopes of the voters and the high expectations that they had.

Between 2003 and 2007, Fajardo focused on representing some of the forgotten and marginalized communities in the city. Calling his strategy “social urbanism,” Fajardo emphasized projects that reflected his slogan: “Medellín the most educated.”

Thus emerged the network of library-parks and quality schools. In this regard, Fajardo stated that the library was built as a “symbol of the new Medellín,” trying to show that violence, which limits opportunities, can be confronted through ‘knowledge and social inclusion.”

Fara Montero is doing her last semester on judicial investigation, and she wants to start her professional career in criminology as soon as she finishes her degree. “When I ended  high school, I didn’t have a clue about what to do with my education,” Montero recalls. “I knew I wanted to keep in school but I didn’t know how to pay for it. A friend from my school told me about the EPM Fund, and I decided to try it. Since I had really good grades in my state exam, I got selected.”

She is one of the 18,000 students who has benefited from the EPM Fund, a loan which allows people with low resources access to university education. Instead of having to pay the loan back with cash when one's education is done, however, it can be paid with high grades and social service.

“I’ve been deeply benefited by the EPM fund, because it gave me the opportunity of studying without any concerns about the money,” Montero continues.

“The sustenance is one of the things that worry the families with low income the most, but I don’t have to think of it during the development of my career, which leaves me more time to focus on my grades.”

Montero lives in one of the neighborhoods of Medellin that is known for its criminal organizations, but  her location does not stop her from she insisting that with education, one's quality of life can be improved, and with the help of the programs that came from the government of Sergio Fajardo, her goals are easier to achieve.

During his term as mayor of Medellin, with the support of another independent activist and now current mayor of the city, Alonso Salazar Jaramillo, his office made changes by putting positive structures in the place of impoverished communities.

This change is not yet complete, but it can be seen in the public culture of hope that permeates the city. The current mayor, Salazar, thinks that the current state of the city is about “activating the power of aesthetics as a driving force for social and cultural change.”

The most remarkable tasks in the course of this transformation were five enormous Library-Parks in the most deprived comunas (subdivided areas of the city), an innovative public transport system, which has dramatically reduced the distance between the old urban ghettos, and a large cultural center which stands on the site of the old rubbish dump in Moravia. Two thousand families used to live there in extreme poverty before being re-housed in better areas.

Additionally, cultural and educational building projects included the Science and Technology “Explora Park” with interactive activities, the biggest fresh and sea water aquarium in South America and the exuberant Orquideorama an enlarged botanical garden with plant species that are representative of the tropical rainforest, flowering in what was once the most dangerous part of the city.

Finally, the recuperation of public spaces led to newly pedestrianized areas like the Carabobo and ten new state schools, sport stadiums, linear parks and coliseums.Each individual project collectively transformed the city into a new society.

The library parks were a revolutionary idea that was proposed to create spaces for the citizen encounter, a space beyond the library, where people with scant resources could find the opportunity to develop their bodies, ideas and spirit.

“The library park gave the place a new breeze, more spaces for the education and less for the violence,” says Joan Suarez, a young man that lives in the area influenced by the first library park built in the city. “Its architecture is very  beautiful, and with it started a lot of cultural and artistic groups, giving the young people an opportunity to express themselves in other ways, and keeping them away from the criminal bands.”

With these constructions, the city government was looking to recover the strength of these neighborhoods in order to provide dignity to the inhabitants, starting with the actions of urban renovation and the environmental reestablishment of the city.

The journalist Oscar Henao Mejía says that, “The evidence is that they are now clear referents of the social transformation, the spaces where the air is another, where the spirit of community is different, where the motivations not only for the use of the free time but also to feel the sense of the collective, are amazing. It’s a privilege having them close at hand”

The library parks are one of the first places shown proudly to visitors, and they became a model to other cities in Colombia and the rest of the world.

“We used to live in fear,” says Suarez. “Now we are surrounded by art, young people full of expectations and goals, kids with the perspective of a better future and most important of all, with the possibilities of leaving in the past those scenes of death, re-building our city thanks to those new scenarios.”

The Cultural Development Center of Moravia, known as Cedezo, was built in a space that was previously occupied by a garbage dump.
In Cedezo, culture, the recreation and the arts all have their place, replacing the misery and abandon that preceded the center.

There was a huge mountain of garbage here, in the north of the city, which was used for dumping between 1977-1984. During this period, the mountain grew 197 meters high, and 492 meters wide, in the middle of the city, and was formed by organic and inorganic garbage. With time, it went from being a heap of trash to the home for more than 2,000 families. Several fires, caused by the gases expelled by the toxic waste, killed five people in just five years—four of them were children.

Sandra Morales, a 40-year-old woman who used to live in the garbage site, but now has received a home for herself, her brother and her daughter, considers her previous living arrangement at the dump to be a health issue. “We lived among trash,” she remembers.

“This, as you can probably imagine, was terrible. The smell was horrible and there were animals and insects all over the place. I was so worried to see my children growing up in that environment, with so many possibilities of getting sick, and I couldn’t do anything to avoid it.”

The local government finally accepted that the state of this garbage site was an issue affecting health and livelihood, and so began the efforts to renovate the space and transform it into a cultural center of the city. The families were relocated to a better home.

They created a program called the Partial Plan of Moravia, that was not only focused on the old dump, but also on the legalization of the grounds. The government invested large financial resources into the project. The biggest part of this contribution has been used for the construction of Medellín hall. The rest of the government money provided for the project is scheduled to be used in December, 2011 and January, 2012.

In August 2011, 2,082 families left the space now occupied by Cedezo, and got a decent home in a project called Citadel New Occident. There were still another 290 in the process of receiving their relocation.

Approximately 80% of Colombians in the old site did not have to pay for their new homes. The people who didn’t originally own their houses had to pay between 7-8 million pesos [approximately $3,000 USD], for their new houses. 

“I feel happy because I’m going to my own place, but I’m sad because I wanted to share this happiness with my mother, who already died,” says Morales. “She also wanted to have a house as the one they gave us, with a room for each [person].” 

In the garbage site, Morales lived in a house made of wood, built 28 years ago with recycled material. This is where she stayed with her brother, her mother and her grandfather. Her daughter was born 16 years ago.

The building materials were acquired over time. “I was working at a sawmill,” Morales remembers. “We bought little by little the boards. A partner gave me the zinc tiles.”

The lives of many individuals were changed drastically by this project. They were able to move from living among the smell of garbage and sewage, to a house in an open space, with park lots and green areas with playgrounds for children.

These children, who used to live with no hope for their future, now have the opportunity of studying in one of the 11 schools built in zones of the city that needed the most improvement. With a new education infrastructure, teachers are qualified for what they teach, and enjoy a safe environment for the learning process.

In that old space occupied by the garbage and the houses, two cultural areas were built, where kids have their own place to learn and have fun. Henry Pradilla is a young employee of Cedezo, who found in these cultural centers a place to help the community, improve his life and get paid for doing something that he loves.

“I used to live in that old dumpster, but I found my way out from the conflicts and the violence through music,” he says. “Now I have the opportunity to interact with the children, teach them the things I know, learn other things with them and join them in the happiness of reading a good book , doing manual work, and sharing with their peers in a place where we all  know they’re safe.”

In the words of Mayor Fajardo, the idea of these cultural centers was “the most beautiful things for the most humble people, so that the pride felt in that which is public illuminates us all... Where before there was death, fear and dislocation, today there are the most impressive buildings, all of the highest quality - cultural and educational focal points around which we can all come together in peaceful coexistence.”

With Medellín still in this process of change, the hope is increasing and the expectations are growing. Most importantly, the quality of life of the people who were always pushed apart is improving day by day, and the city is losing its past stigmas, giving more importance to education as the best way to bring change to Medellin's society.

Photo captions:

1. Parque de los Deseos (Wishes Park) where people can interact with educational installments that teach about concepts on astronomy and physics.

2. Parque Explora (Explora Park) is the biggest science project in Medellin.

3. The modernized botanical garden, dates from the Twentieth century, and was transformed in 2007.

4. The orquideorama, inside of the Botanical Garden, built originally in 1972, and redesigned in 2007.

5. The Center of Cultural Development in Moravia.

6. A Mural painted in the Linear park of La Bermejala, a project of recover the water in Moravia, in the old dump of the city, which used to house more than 2,000 families

7. Children in the Center of Cultural Development, Moravia.

8. A quality school built in Miranda, a neighborhood in the north of Medellin

9. The new appearance of Moravia's old dump

10. A kid playing in the toy library in the Library Park in Santo Domingo

11. Teenagers from the Visual Arts Network paint a mural near the library park in Santo Domingo.

12. Library Park Spain in Santo Domingo