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.
