Author: Anna Tyor

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Cartagena`s gentrification, but for whom?

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She looked almost ethereal. Sitting in a plaza in Cartagena, Colombia, her ebony skin was draped in a traditional yellow dress down to her toes, a blue scarf was tied around her hair and a basket of tropical fruit overflowed onto her lap as she gracefully sliced a pineapple without glancing down once.

Groups of tourists who had come from all over the world meandered around the plaza in the historic center of the city, occasionally stopping to pose with her in a picture. Maria stood up each time and held open the skirt of her dress with both hands, hastily smiled before sitting back down with an expression of indifference as the tourists handed her a few coins for her service.

“I don’t live in this part of the city,” said Maria, a native resident of Cartagena, “it’s mostly tourists here now.”

In 1984, Unesco declared Cartagena a World Historic Patrimony and since this announcement, the tourist industry has boomed. Last year over 130 cruise ships docked in Cartagena, 5 times the number in 1991, and there are now over 50 boutique hotels and dozens of hostels, all within a city of less than million.

More and more international tourists are flocking to Cartagena to soak up the Caribbean sun and saunter down the cobblestone streets of the historic center, meaning that foreigners now make up 40% of the tourists in the city; in Bogota the figure is just 11%.  The colonial center, enclosed by thick walls built by the Spanish to defend against pirates, has also become the most expensive real estate in the country with wealthy Colombians increasingly investing in vacation homes.

“Unesco’s World Historic Patrimony declaration has converted the city into a magnetic pole of immigration for elite members of Colombian society and international tourists,” said anthropologist Patrick Morales to Arcadia Magazine in February of this year.

With Cartagena quickly becoming a top tourist destination, many residents are concerned for the city’s future. Tourism has caused rapid price rises and forced local residents like Maria, out of the historic areas because they are unable afford basic goods and services at these new, higher rates.

Maria earns her money by posing for photographs with her traditional dress and fruit stand. She lives in Getsemani, a neighborhood just outside the historic center’s walls which shares the colonial charm of the Amurallada, or the walled city, if not its boutique hotels.

Glancing into Maria’s basket, there are only a few scattered pesos (around $10), her revenue after a day’s work. The restaurant across the street charges that same price for a couple beers, and these types of prices will soon hit Getsemani, which is still just about holding on to its reputation as the ‘cheap option’ in Cartagena, packed with hostels and backpackers.

The historic center has already been completely renovated and gentrified, but now the focus has turned to Getsemani. In 2005 only 15% of Getsemani was under construction, but so far this year, 83% of the neighborhood has been renovated, which amounts to 3 hotels per street.

But the local community has not seen the benefits of this tourism: “50% of the community is unemployed,” said community leader and social investigator Florencio Ferrer Montero to El Universal in June of this year. “That’s why this phenomenon needs to stop, and these same Getsemani residents could work within the tourist industry.”

Locals fear that the process is mirroring what happened in the colonial center: the original residents were eventually forced out of their homes due to government renovation requirements and skyrocketing prices in the area. Many of these locals found themselves living in marginalized neighborhoods like Cerro de La Popa or Nelson Mandela on the outskirts of the city, where modern indoor plumbing does not exist and sewage spills into the streets.

“Only four or five streets still have local residents in Getsemani,” said Morales, “only 24% of the original population is left in the neighborhood.”

Just outside of the city the similar effects of gentrification are obvious. A four-lane highway is being constructed in order to connect Cartagena with Barranquilla, including mini-shopping malls and gated communities scattered along the way. Local residents have had to urge the government to improve their community’s unpaved roads only a few miles away from the new highway.

But the Getsemani residents have begun to protest the gentrification process. In October of this year the Your Culture Foundation (Fundación Tu Cultura) with the help of young students throughout Cartagena, organized a movement to bring awareness to the struggle of the Getsemani residents to preserve their culture and avoid losing the history of the neighborhood.

Residents and anthropologists like Morales believe that the state should intervene in Getsemani and regulate the tourism industry. They suggest that the government give loans for renovation to those residents who wish to stay in the neighborhood. If a native resident cannot afford to refurbish their houses and add colonial-style roofing (for triple the price of a zinc roof), then they should be awarded a stipend.

As Colombia’s future brightens, with the country no longer viewed on the international stage as a crime-ridden drug hotspot, but instead as a potential spot for investment and travel, Cartagena’s popularity will certainly grow, and it’s likely that residents of other colonial centers like Barichara and Villa de Leyva will soon be facing the tough realities of gentrification.

Maria walks off into the distance through the arches of the imposing clock tower that marks the entrance to the historic center. She heads back to Getsemani with her plastic chair on her hip and fruit basket in hand, hoping that she too won’t have to leave anytime soon.

Picture by Dan Baker

Category: Comment
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The stateless Colombia

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Anna Tyor recently spent time in Regalo del Dios, Antioquia. Ana`s portrait of this Forgotten Colombia is published on Colombia Politics over four articles exploring education, the displaced, conflict and the lack of state presence in this “Paisa” community.

His steady voice comes from the corner of the community center and the dusty room gradually grew silent as everyone strained their ears to listen to Jeison, 22 year-old local rapper, whose lyrics are fueled by the struggles of poverty-stricken Colombians. The wind beats on the tin roofs and whips through the cracks of the buildings, carrying the sand from the road outside into the houses of Regalo del Dios.

“I like my neighbors, seizing their destinies, surrounded by blessings. And the owners of the future, they’ll give us land, land for the children. They won’t strike us down, dominating us, like they do now. Dominating us, like they do now” rapped Jeison, as the other kids in the room drummed the beat on the plastic tables.

Although Regalo del Dios has a breathtaking view of Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, the community shares precious little with the sky-scrapers and high-rises and racing metro in the valley below. Ancient buses bounce up the few dirt roads in the area while open trash dumps overflow and wooden shacks cling precariously to the steep-sides of the hill, threatening to fall at the next down-pour.  Medellin is booming, but none of the money has made it this far up the hill.

“Yes there are some businesses up here in Regalo del Dios, but they employ less than 1% of the community,” said Mark Kaseman, director of local foundation Angeles de Medellin. The community is mostly made up of displaced persons, meaning that many of the residents arrived in Regalo del Dios with only the clothes on their backs and no job prospects. If they are lucky, some will find temporary construction jobs, but many are forced to walk all the way down the mountainside to wash car windows or sell chicle (gum) on the street.

“If I said today that I needed 5 or 10 people to work I would have 100 people. If they knew I would pay them, they’d do it in a heart beat,” said Mark.

In 2012, Medellin won Wall Street Journal’s ‘Most Innovative City of the Year’ award for their impressive public sector improvements, which include a clean, fast metro that connects to gondolas that float up and over the city’s comunas – the shanty towns – and the imposing architecture of the Spanish Library, overlooking the valley from the heart of Comuna 2.

But most residents in Regalo del Dios cannot even afford the bus to the gondola station, let alone the $0.77 needed to take the gondola down into the valley to connect to the metro. “I’ve lived here almost my whole life and I’ve never taken the metro,” said Luis, a local resident.

Community members cannot work in the town because businesses are unwilling to invest in the hills due to the growing danger from the local combos, street gangs.

On the dirt road that winds up to Regalo del Dios, the bus leaves the municipality of Medellin and enters Bello. Some days of the week, local gang members extort money from the passing public buses through a toll known as a vacuna. Depending on the neighborhood, a combo could charge up to 50,000 pesos per day ($25) which adds up to up to 1.5 million pesos per month ($800) for just one bus route, making the vacuna extortion a highly profitable business. Many bus drivers complain that the government only takes notice when one of them is murdered for refusing to pay the vacuna, and bus routes are suspended for a few days.

Apart from the lack of job opportunities and the danger of gang-related violence, Regalo del Dios also suffers by virtue of being zoned as part of the municipality of Bello, as opposed to its rich neighbor Medellin. The Bello government does not provide vital resources for the community.

“There are not really any government services here, not even drinkable water,” Luis said. Residents are forced to boil their water before drinking and suffer sporadic power blackouts, a side-effect of the woeful electrical infrastructure in the area.

Poor construction leaves many houses susceptible to collapse during the rainy season. Two years ago, 74 residents were killed when 35 houses were swept away during a mudslide in Bello. Despite the scale of the tragedy, the local government did not ask for any changes to be made to construction standards.

One of the main problems that prevents funds and services reaching Regalo del Dios is government corruption. Colombia has long been plagued by corruption, to the extent that the population believes that there are few clean hands left. A recent survey by the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International showed that 80% of Colombians believe that government officials use taxpayer money for their personal affairs. Two of the last four Presidents and 25% of Congress have been recently investigated for political misconduct and abuse of power.

Even the heroes of recent Colombian history, like former Medellin Mayor Sergio Farjado, widely held responsible for the city’s transformation from hotbed of violence to innovative center, is under investigation for corruption. He is accused of enriching himself through big government deals.

Government corruption and the misuse of public funds deeply affects poverty-stricken areas like Regalo del Dios, whose residents depend on government resources.

It was a week before Halloween and three girls in their late teens sat around the table casually chatting about their plans. They wanted to go to one of Medellin’s ritzy areas to celebrate the holiday. “But how would we get back?” one girl asked the group.

“Well, we can’t walk, there are no lights on the roads,” said one of the girls. They nonchalantly mentioned a rumor about a girl being raped just last week while walking home on the same road.

“What about a bus, or even a cheaper taxi,” suggested the youngest of the three.

“If the buses are even running they only go until 10 and taxi drivers won’t take customers up here, silly.” They talked about these issues – rape, violence – as if they were talking about the weather or what to wear to school. They ended up deciding that going to the city for Halloween was impossible – it was just too dangerous.

Due to Colombia’s laws on prostitution – it is legal if the woman is 18 or over and no intermediaries are involved – and Bello’s lack of safe forms of transportation, rape and underage sex are becoming more frequent in the hills of Medellin. It is a common practice for combos to recruit the prettiest girls, aged 10-15, into the gang by seducing them with perks like a new cell phone or nail manicures. Soon after, the girl’s virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder, who might have to pay as much as $2600, according to NGO Corporacion Consultoria de Conflicto Urbano. It’s a profitable enterprise for the combos.

Regalo del Dios is a forgotten community: forgotten by the local government, and forgotten by those who are seduced by the Medellin success story – by its fancy metro and its booming economy. But the residents here know the score. They sit around Jeison, drumming the tables, hypnotized by his words, forgetting the violence and hardship of life outside the community center’s walls. “My path is next to the creator, calm and away from all of this.”

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Too poor for school in Regalo del Dios

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Anna Tyor recently spent time in Regalo del Dios, Antioquia. Ana`s portrait of this “Forgotten Colombia” is being published on Colombia Politics over four articles here.

The view from the school high in the mountains is impressive. From inside the barbed-wire fences you can see the line of newly developed cable cars drift down the valley’s sides, over thousands of tin roofs gleaming in the midday sun. The shacks that cover the hillsides are a jumble of plastic and plaster and a far cry from the pearly-white school buildings equipped with customized wooden doors.

Fe y Alegría (Faith and Joy) is a recently constructed vocational school located in Regalo del Dios, an impoverished town that lies high above Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city.

“The facilities here are great and free,” said Lady, one of the teachers from Fe y Alegría, while walking from the engineering building to the cooking school. “The problem is that the people choose not to take advantage of them.”

The people Lady refers to live in the area of El Pinar, of which Regalo del Dios is a part. The population is mostly made up of internally displaced persons from Antioquia and Choco. They were often forced to flee their ancestral homes after repeated violence and threats, perpetrated by Colombia’s main rebel groups, the FARC and the ELN, neo-paramilitary groups, and other illegal armed groups. They came to Medellin hoping for a better life, but ended up high in the hills surrounding the city, in the comunas – the shanty towns.

“They don’t come to the school for many different reasons,” Lady continued. “Maybe a woman can’t come because her husband is gone, she already has three children, and she has to work. Others don’t see the point of studying here when they can make easy money through illegal work.”

Fe y Alegría is located in the municipality of Bello, north of Medellin, and is funded by the National Learning Service (SENA). It offers free technical classes for any person over 16 on weekdays, with daycare services for the children, and organizes a 6-month paid internship for each student after their theory classes are finished. Those who complete the full 2-year program are guaranteed jobs at local factories.

According to Lady, the availability of the schools in Regalo del Dios and the surrounding area is not the main problem. “No, the problem is that there are so many bad options for the people who live here, and they don’t think about their future, just what would make the present better in that moment.”

Many residents in the area, especially young men, turn to illegal forms of work to make quick money, becoming parts of the combos, the small gangs – often employed by larger organizations like the Urabeños and the Rastrojos – who control the drugs trade in the comunas. Medellin has several hundred combos operating throughout the city many of them located in the northeastern sector of the city, close to Regalo de Dios.

When money is readily available for criminal work, and the benefits of education are just intangible rewards far off in the future, it is no wonder that young men – and increasingly young women – are joining the combos before they join a class at Fe y Alegría.

“I had one student in my class who was beautiful young girl. Soon she began dating someone who could seemingly provide her with a lot of money and expensive things because he was involved in illegal activities. She ended up quitting the class,” said one teacher at the school.

Other women do not even have time to begin the classes. Most women in the area have children before they are 18 years old, and many of these women have families of five or more by the time they reach 25. With hungry mouths to feed and the responsibilities of a growing family, there is simply no time for school.

A report released in the last week of October by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that one in five girls in Colombia gets pregnant before 18. In Regalo del Dios, where poverty is high and sex education is non-existent, the rate is significantly higher.

Some children who grow up in Regalo del Dios and similar communities are disadvantaged from the start. UNICEF states that each year in Colombia 500,000 children do not register for elementary school and only about 75% of Colombians attend secondary school.

In the hills of Medellin over the last 10 years, schools have been forced to close temporarily due to violence in the area, and some have even been directly targeted. When the schools are reopened, students and teachers alike are afraid to return, leading to lower attendance rates and fewer resources.

The problem is exacerbated by the city’s massive inequality. A recent UN report found that Colombia has the most unequal cities in Latin America, with Medellin being the chief culprit. UN-Habitat representative Eduardo Lopez told newspaper El Espectador in early October that in Medellin there is “an oligarchy that continues to dominate the economy, and so the wealth created since the mid-90’s still hasn’t reached the poor.”

The governments of Medellin and Bello categorize their neighborhoods into different estratos, or socio-economic strata. Regalo del Dios is located in the lowest social stratum, Estrato 1, and the way the education system is structured means that students have little chance to move up to a higher estrato. It is a vicious cycle: lack of funding leads to low-quality teachers and a complete lack of resources. As a result, students learn little and leave school early are then uninterested – or incapable – of demanding the change that would see the community’s situation improve and result in more funding for the schools.

While students in the lower estratos are barely able to pass the standardized test or the basic English exam that would allow them to study in the low-cost public universities; schools located in estrato 6 – in the ritzy, southern end of the city – offer year-long study abroad programs in the United States and England.

“I learned a few words of English in school, but I’ve had to learn in other ways,” said Jeison, a resident of Regalo del Dios. “Most of my English I’ve learned at the community center close to my house.” Jeison makes the muddy trek to the community center almost every day because he knows that he must learn more English to qualify for university.

“The quality of the schools here is low; they lack educated teachers and resources. Teachers here in the schools don’t know English but they still teach English classes,” he said.

Jeison dreams of becoming an electrician. As his English improves so will his chances of going to university, and with schools like Fe y Alegría to support him there is no reason why he cannot achieve his dream. But the dream must outshine the allure of the quick buck, and it must continue strong even when his friends drive by with the spoils of the drug trade – cars and women. Jeison’s dream is a humble one, but the fact that he dreams of honest work is hope enough – that is half the battle in Regalo del Dios.

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Displaced in Regalo del Dios

Regalo del Dios, displaced

Anna Tyor recently spent time in Regalo del Dios, Antioquia. Ana`s portrait of this “Forgotten Colombia” is being published on Colombia Politics over four articles here. This is the second in the series, on the displaced community in this “Paisa” community.

Ten year-old Jose has just arrived in Regalo del Dios. He walks tentatively down the main dirt road, dodging dusty coke cans and ragged dogs, and approaches the scattered groups of children, trying and failing to join their arguments about football.

“Do you support Nacional?” Jose said to one group, referring to a football team based in Medellin, the second-largest city in Colombia that lies in the valley below Regalo del Dios.

“No! Idiot.” They looked at him incredulously, as if he had just insulted their family. Most of the children in Regalo del Dios don’t support any teams from Medellin, they are fans of teams from other regions of Colombia- For these children are also recent arrivals, among the 4.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia.

Jose came to Regalo del Dios from the west of the same state, Antioquia – his family fleeing from violence and ending up here: living in shacks that threaten to disappear down the slope every time it rains, high up in the hills, a 20-minute bus ride from where the cable cars stop by Medellin’s brand-new ‘Spanish Library’.

The families in Regalo del Dios have fled their homes for many different reasons; gang warfare, sexual abuse, threats against their communities or forced recruitment from rebel groups and neo-paramilitaries or forced recruitment into bacrims (‘bandas criminales’ – the government’s term for criminal organizations). But all of those who have come to Regalo del Dios share the same central belief, that this town will be a safer place to raise their children.

The population of Regalo del Dios and the surrounding area has quadrupled in the last 7 years, from around 2,000 residents in 2006 to upwards of 12,000 today.

Most of Regalo del Dios’ newest residents are victims of intra-urban displacement- when residents are displaced to different parts of the same city. In 2012 alone, Medellin officially registered 9,322 victims of intra-urban displacement; but this figure only reflects those who came forward and revealed their situation, and does not include all of the hidden victims, too afraid to contact the government and apply for aid.

One of the main reasons why people are forced to flee their homes in the city is due to territorial disputes between rival combos, or street gangs. Various drug trafficking groups have been using the combos as pawns in their battle for control over major trafficking routes through Medellin. Chief among these groups is the Oficina de Envigado – the descendent of infamous drug baron Pablo Escobar’s old cartel Oficina de Medellin – and neo-paramilitary group the Urabeños, who are now estimated to have more fighters than Colombia’s second-largest rebel group ELN.

“It’s – I can displace you if you don’t support me,” said Fernando Quijano, director of the Corporation for Peace and Social Development, to analysis website Insight Crime in July. “It is an instrument of war.” Displacing residents is highly profitable for the combos as they are able to assert control over their territories, rule by fear, and obtain new real estate ready for the next down-and-out family that moves to the neighborhood.

Some of this violence spilled over into Regalo del Dios last year during a series of battles between combos fighting over lucrative routes leaving through the northern sector of the city to Guarne.

“The police came up here everyday wearing bullet-proof vests, armed with machine guns, because of the shootings between the gangs. It was real,” stated a source that wished to remain anonymous.

But it is true what the parents who brought their families here believe – that Regalo del Dios is a safer place for their children; if not a haven, then at least a place where they can sleep easier at night, without fearing that a stray bullet might pass through their wafer-thin walls.

“It is not a everyday occurrence for people to be murdered up here,” said Mark Kasemen, director of the only charitable foundation located in Regalo del Dios called Angeles de Medellin, “compared to other parts of the city, it’s safer here.”

Many young men in the troubled barrios of Medellin become involved in drug-running and violence at an early age. Jeison, an aspiring rapper in his early twenties, is searching for another path.

“All the crazy people round here wait in terrifying places, and I avoid them cos they might wanna compare me with hip-hops greatest rappers”

His words flow out without the venom that characterizes other Colombian hip-hop; Esteban’s is a quiet rejection of the gang lifestyle, hidden behind a self-depreciating humor. And his rhythm is draped in the beats of the Pacific, of western Choco, where Esteban was born.

Choco is the only state to touch both the Pacific and the Caribbean seas, and runs the full length of the jungle-ridden border with Panama. Its strategic position makes it prime real estate for Colombia’s bacrims and guerrilla groups therefore the region suffers from some of the highest numbers of IDPs.

Last year, some 230,000 people were displaced in Colombia according to The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), and indigenous and Afro-Colombians continue to make a considerable percentage of these IDPs.

The government’s response to the plight of IDPs was almost non-existent prior to 2011, when Juan Manuel Santos created the Victim’s Law, through which IDPs could register themselves and attempt to reclaim their land. This law has been met with controversy as to its level of success; In 2012 there were so many people trying to register that it caused a backlog in processing.

It may be sometime before Jose and many other community members of Regalo del Dios can return to the towns where they were born.

*Some names in the article have been changed to protect their identity.

Anna`s four part special will continue over the coming days. Please come back to continue reading.

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Forgotten Colombia; Regalo del Dios

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Anna Tyor recently spent time in Regalo del Dios, Antioquia. Ana`s portrait of this Forgotten Colombia will be published on Colombia Politics over four articles exploring education, the displaced, conflict and the lack of state presence in this “Paisa” community.

The vintage school bus winds up the dirt road as it heads for communities in the El Pinar district, perched at the top of a mountain over-looking the valley of Medellin. Shacks held in place by precarious pillars line the road, waiting for the next mudslide, while a pack of dogs and farm-animals run across the street causing the bus to lurch left and right.

We shudder to a stop at the end of a short muddy street and the bus driver nods towards it. We’ve arrived in the small town of Regalo del Dios (Gift from God).

“People come here because they believe it’s safer, and in relative terms, it is. But have things happened here? Absolutely” said New York state native Mark Kasemen, director of the foundation Angeles de Medellín, located in Regalo del Dios.

Although it sits above Colombia’s second-largest city Medellin, Regalo del Dios is actually a part of the neighboring city Bello. The town is mostly comprised of families who have been displaced during Colombia’s 49-year armed conflict, or as a result of gang warfare over valuable drug-trafficking routes. Men who grew up on the beaches of Choco, or the sloped fields of northern Antioquia now sit on broken stoops and talk of times free from drug violence.

One of the biggest problems facing the community is its rapidly growing population. Fifteen years ago the El Pinar district was just a handful of small ranches and farmland. But by the late 1990’s new families, fleeing their war-torn homelands, began to settle in the area. From 2006 to 2013 the population in the area surrounding Regalo del Dios tripled to around 12,000, almost all of them displaced persons.

In Colombia there are over 4.7 million internally displaced persons, which registers as the largest number of displaced in the world.

“There is a lot of violence in Baudo,” said 22-year old resident Jeison who was born on the Pacific coast in Choco but grew up in Medellin. “My mom moved here above all to look for better work opportunities and for a better education for me and my siblings, because there wasn’t any in Baudo.”

But not all those who have moved to Regalo del Dios have come from outside of the city. In 2012, Medellin registered 9,322 victims of intra-urban displacement – when residents are displaced to a different part of the same city – according to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES).

A mere 10-minute bus ride down the mountain and you’re back in Medellin. A bus whizzes by on the paved road just below the shiny black walls of the brand new Parque Biblioteca España (Spain Library Park) paid for in part by Spain. Colombia has the most unequal urban areas according to the United Nations and Medellin tops this list; the rich get richer and this cycle hinders revenue from entering poor communities.

Over the last 10 years, the Urban Development Business (la Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano) has undertaken several projects to improve the lives of the residents of Medellin’s poorest communities. The city now boasts of a state-of-the-art metro and cable car system, and joining the barrios that would otherwise have been disconnected.

But the government of Bello, of which Regalo del Dios is a part, has not been able to follow Medellin’s example. “There`s a high level of corruption in the city I work in,” Kasemen says about Bello. “I could tell you some horror stories.”

Residents have to travel over an hour on public transportation along dilapidated roads to reach the nearest hospital. They have to boil water before its safe to drink. Moreover, businesses are unwilling to make an investment in an area that offers so little return, so jobs are scarce.

“Infrastructure is the biggest problem,” local resident Don Miguel told Corporación Semiósfera. “Improve the apartments… there are still people who get soaked [in their houses] and have dirt floors, there are still homes made out of plastic.”

The final problem is the community’s thrown-together education system with little regulations forcing students to attend school and non-existent social programs to promote education. Jeison, who finished school a couple years ago, chuckled when asked about the school system. “The quality is very low. It lacks well-educated teachers, which means the students don’t get any better.”

While Medellin’s improvements are gaining recognition around the world, many of the communities that surround the area continue to be pictures of poverty and hardship. When asked about Medellin’s acclaimed advances, 16-year old El Pinar resident Luis replied, “Yeah, the improvements [in the city] are great, but here I just don’t know.”

*Some names in the article have been changed to protect their identities.

Anna`s four part special will continue over the coming days. Please come back to continue reading.

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