Medellin (Colombia) (AFP) – Seven days without a single murder: August marked a security record for Colombia’s second city, Medellin, the former stronghold of infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.
“In Medellin, security is measured in lives” saved, said Mayor Daniel Quintero, welcoming this breakthrough.
Medellin has seen a staggering 97% drop in homicides in the 30 years since Escobar’s death, turning what was once one of the world’s most violent cities into a popular tourist destination.
The success is attributed in large part to an unofficial but mutually beneficial deal between narco gangs, paramilitaries and security services.
“Peace is good for business,” said Medellin drug trafficker “Joaquin” (not his real name) of the traffickers’ motivation to avoid violence.
Joaquin is 37 years old, two of whom have been behind bars. He wears an oversized baseball cap and dropped jeans.
A Beretta pistol sticks out from under his hoodie.
Joaquin is a “capo”, a lowly boss who oversees drug trafficking in the streets of “Comuna 6”, a poor neighborhood perched on the mountainside in the northwest of Medellin.
He belongs to a gang, which he declined to name, which follows rules imposed by an organized crime ‘federation’ known as the ‘Oficina de Envigado’ or ‘Office of Envigado’ after a nearby town. .
Joaquin claimed that the Oficina and its member gangs act “in solidarity with the community”.
This included applying “parallel justice” when the system fails them.
“Escobar? He was far too violent. Too many deaths for nothing,” Joaquin told AFP.
“The people with us”
“Everyone lives in peace on our territory,” said the capo, anxious to present himself as a good Samaritan.
“We don’t want to scare away traders and people. We need the population with us.”
Thirty years after Escobar was shot on a Medellin rooftop while trying to evade capture, drug trafficking still dominates many poor neighborhoods in the city of nearly three million people.
A stone’s throw from a soccer field where mothers watch their children play, heavy foot traffic in a nondescript little house indicates the presence of a drug den.
A black garbage bag covers the window where money is exchanged. The purchased goods fall from another floor into a tin can at the end of a string.
A variety of products can be found here: marijuana, cocaine, and “tucibi” or “basuco” — two cheap and particularly toxic new drugs related to unrefined “crack.”
“Everything is organized, it’s like a business. There are those who take care of sales, logistics, the military. The bosses pay our salaries, we do the work”, explained Joaquin.
He and his colleagues move with incredible ease and confidence through the maze of sloping alleyways and small, rickety brick houses. The neighborhood teenagers prowl around, acting as security.
Joaquin and his accomplices burst into shop after shop, shaking hands with acquaintances everywhere as they nonchalantly slip a gun into a bag here, deliver a package there.
For the most part, Medellin dealers can operate in peace thanks to an understanding between rival gangs as well as members of the security forces – many of whom are fugitives.
As long as they keep the streets peaceful, the gangs say the police turn a blind eye to their lucrative illegal activities.
Joaquin calls it a “gangster peace”.
“There is nothing better than peace,” added “Javier”, an associate who met Joaquin and another colleague in a squatted house.
They store their weapons on a table between religious trinkets in a grimy, lightless living room where posters of horses rival a crude rendition of the Last Supper hanging on the wall.
“Each group manages its territory as it sees fit… The bosses talk to each other. Everything works out calmly,” says Javier.
“City of Bandits”
After Escobar’s disappearance, the face of organized crime in Medellin changed. Long controlled by a single cartel, the drug trade is now shared among several gangs under the aegis of the Office.
The gangs had previously collaborated with paramilitary groups and security forces to help end Escobar’s Medellin Cartel and oust left-wing guerrilla groups that had tried to fill the power vacuum he left.
As things calmed down and each group found their place in the new reality, Medellin’s homicide rate fell from 350 per 100,000 in 1992 to 10.2 per 100,000 until now this year, nearly half the national average.
“Armed groups set the agenda for peace and war in the city,” said Luis Fernando Quijano, director of the Corporation for Peace and Social Development, an NGO.
Colombia’s new left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, has pledged to bring “total peace” to a Colombia ravaged by conflict and crime, including offering amnesty to gangsters willing to surrender and abandon trade.
“We are ready to listen. We will do what the bosses decide,” Pedro said of the plan.
But for Joaquin, “to think that everyone is going to surrender is a dream”.
“Never forget one thing: Medellin is and always will be the city of bandits,” he insisted.
© 2022 AFP