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June 18, 2009
Red Juvenil de Medellin
For the past couple of months, I have been in contact with a fellow Brown student who is studying youth crime in Latin America. She recently brought to my attention a group called Red Juvenil de Medellin, or Medellin Youth Network. I have always heard the name mentioned as if the group were a radical political organization. When I visited their website ( redjuvenil.org ) I realized that the group's public reputation was yet another example of how the Colombian politics tends to demonize groups who denounce paramilitarism.
The group's main goal is to prevent young people from becoming involved in crime. Unfortunately, this is a goal that, in Medellin, simply cannot be achieved through small-scale interventions alone. Therefore, Red Juvenil has also focused much of its energy on exposing the influence of criminal groups in the city and denouncing their use of young people as messengers, couriers and footsoldiers.
As I have said in recent blogs, in Medellin, complaining about crime in general is almost a daily routine, but exposing corruption and organized crime is taboo and very dangerous. Red Juvenil does just that. Its vast network of youths throughout the city constantly publish detailed and otherwise unknown and unreported information about paramilitary and criminal organizations. Most reports are anonymous and anectdotal, but remarkably well-written and detailed.
These anonymous reports present an image of Medellin that could not be more different from the one presented by Fajardo and Salazar: armed men representing Don Mario's organization came from Colombia's Caribbean to invade part of Comuna 13, the Los Paisas criminal organization competes with local gangs for control of Comuna 3, nearly every block in the nearby town of Bello pays protection money to hundreds of footsoldiers representing the Office of Envigado, etc, etc.
Given my current work on the mayor's social programs, perhaps the most interesting thing on the Red Juvenil website is complaints about Fajardo and Salazar's belief that getting kids to 'paint, jump, sing, and play instruments' is the solution to a neighborhood's problems. They may have a point. There are eepstructural issues behind poverty and violence. In my opinion, however, they are tough for a mayor's office to solve overnight and there are plenty of serious short-term and long-term poverty-reduction initiatives underway.
Even riskier are the Red's accusations of police indifference to organized crime. They claim that many local policemen and criminals are in fact personal friends and that, wihtout direct orders, most cops won't attack criminal groups. While there may not be broad, large-scale collaboration, there certainly is no policy to deal with organized crime in many Medellin neighborhoods.
Red Juvenil's claims simply confirm what I have heard from many people throughout Medellin. My friends in poor neighborhoods are surprised when I tell them that many prominent American newspapers have reported on the supposed 'end' of violence and organized crime in Medellin. People downtown readily acknowledge that they regularly pay protection money to paramilitary mafias. People in wealthy neighborhoods can readily point to nearby apartments that everyone knows are owned by mafiosos.
As a result of Red Juvenil's activities, their members have frequently been threatened by police and criminal groups. Sometimes, even political figures have accused them of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. Few organizations are braver, more honest and more nonviolent than Red Juvenil. I don't know enough about the organization to say for certain that members have been killed, but given deaths of hundreds of human rights defenders, labor activists and community leaders in Colombia, it would not surprise me.
It is clear that there are powerful people - politicians, criminal groups, the military, law enforcement organizations, corrupt officials at all levels - with a strong interest in maintaining an illusion of peace and lawfulness of Medellin and keeping organized crime out of the public eye. They have succeeded. While mainstream media outlets have in recent months reported on the Office of Envigado, they have only begun to expose a few branches of a vast criminal empire.
Outside of Colombia, few media outlets are reporting on the continued strength of paramilitarism. Indeed, they have been more likely to report on how social programs have ended organized crime in Medellin, or how President Uribe has defeated 'narcoterrorism' in the country. While they are quick to sensationalize the truly problematic violence and corruption plaguing Mexico, American newspapers say almost the opposite about Colombia.
Indeed, most foreign newspapers are almost entirely unaware of the existence of paramilitary groups in Colombia. After the peace process with paramlitary umbrella group AUC, the view from abroad is that the only criminal/terrorist/drug trafficking group in Colombia are the FARC guerrillas. Unfortunately, given the mediocrity of mainstream Colombian media, the view from Colombia is not very different.
Nothing could be further from the truth. While the FARC are quickly losing territory and soldiers, new paramilitary groups are quickly emerging in Colombia. Just to give an example of the gravity of the Colombian situation, in the 18 months prior to his recent capture, paramilitary Druglord Don Mario (who operated in the Northwest corner of Colombia but had plans to conquer Medellin) was responsible for 3,000 murders. Don Mario's organization is only one of at least six powerful drug gangs in the country. The Colombian justice system recently failed to effectively prosecute his number 2 and a prominent businessman accused of serving as Don Mario's link to the Medellin Attorney General. Both men are now free.
There are tremendous structural problems that preclude victory in the fight against organized crime: corruption, poverty, inequality, a flawed judicial system and robust demand for cocaine in the U.S., Europe and beyond. Of course, people who talk about structural problems are never popular in the political world. Far more popular are those who declare war and then declare victory. Many in Colombia and abroad have been talking about structural problems for years, but few people in power here and abroad (most importantly in the U.S.) seem to want to listen.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at June 18, 2009 09:54 AM
