Narratives of citizenship in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

This article makes sense of the seeming contradiction between citizenship and violence at two historical junctures in the Colombian department of Antioquia and its capital Medellín. It shows how governmental interventions aimed at moral and physical improvement during La Violencia (1948–1958) were embedded in narratives of a racialized and spatialized regional identity of antioqueñidad. Residents of Antioquia saw themselves as sharing a racial unity that emphasized whiteness, capitalism, hard work, and civilization, while they saw residents of outlying areas as deviant, lazy, and uncivilizable. Violence was the result. It then explores the relationship between contemporary (1990s–2000s) social programs to promote citizenship in Medellín and their coexistence with violent paramilitary control of the city. Marked declines in the city's homicide rates were the result of control through violent protection by paramilitary forces. In looking at the relationship between violence and urban social programs at two historical moments, the article shows the complicated links between liberal projects of governance, citizenship, and violence.

Keywords::

• citizenship
• violence
• Medellín
• Antioquia
• Colombia

Acknowledgement

The Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council provided financial support for this research.

Notes

^1. Except for public figures, first names are pseudonyms.

^2. In 2006, the paramilitary helped elect a third of the Colombian Congress Archila (2007).

^3. Colombia has 32 administrative regions called departments.

^4. For an overview of homicide statistics in Medellín, see Bedoya (2010, p. 96).

^5. Appelbaum (2003) deepens Roldán's work by historicizing the understandings of race and region in Colombia. She focuses on the ‘core’ region of Rionegro in the Antioquian coffee zone, tracing the shifts in understanding of this area between Antioquia and Cauca. Although nineteenth-century Colombian writers glossed region and racial types as part of conversations that served to reinforce hierarchies of class and culture, she shows people's contestation and muddies the myth of a clean, white, Antioquian settlement (2003, p. 210).

^6. Londoño-Vega (2002) details the role in developing a unified regional identity played by Catholicism, the Catholic Church and the devotional, civic, and voluntary organizations that multiplied in Medellín and provincial towns from the 1850s to 1930s. Although LeGrand (2004) notes Londoño-Vega does not stress the importance of ‘the other’ in developing a perceived social and ethnic homogeneity, she provides a longer, richer historical discussion.

^7. For example, the ‘flannel shirt cut’ required one person holding the head of the victim and another delivering a swift blow to the base of the neck with a sharpened machete. The ‘necktie cut’ meant a gash made below the lower jaw in the victim's neck to leave the tongue hanging put. Beheading involved the murderers placing the severed head in the hands of the corpse (see Guzmán Campos et al.2005).

^8. Mockus was Mayor of Bogotá for two terms: 1995–1997 and 2001–2003. The municipal politicians mentioned from the 1990s and 2000s had no relationship with the Liberal or Conservative parties.