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July 27, 2009
Seeing Moravia as a safe haven
In previous blog posts, I have talked about how difficult it is to effect true cultural and behavioral change in poor neighborhoods like Moravia. Indeed, violent crime and general social decay remain huge problems there. Nevertheless, I want to correct myself. Yesterday I visited some middle- and lower middle-class Medellin neighborhoods that were far more hostile and scary than Moravia.
I only have a couple of weeks left in Medellin, so I wanted to get some pictures of Moravia from a different angle as well as some pictures of San Lorenzo, a neighborhood near my house with cool wall art and a traditional Colombian cemetery.
I was a little hesitant from the start. I was driving with my grandmother in the passenger seat. I am just learning to drive stick shift and am not entirely familiar with certain areas of Medellin, so it was important to avoid sticky situations.
The angle I wanted of Moravia was from an avenue by the Medellin river, which was surprisingly hard to get to. Although the city has clearer road signs than most places in Colombia, getting around can still be very difficult. We ended up getting lost in Aranjuez and Manrique , lower-middle class neighborhoods with histories of violence. Admittedly, we did not go very far into either neighborhood and quickly found our way back onto familiar roads.
Nevertheless, my time in Aranjuez and Manrique was quite tense. People there are not used to seeing anyone from outside their neighborhood. We got hostile stares everywhere we went. Our aged Volkswagen Golf was by far the nicest car in the area. The streets were all narrow, one-way, and extremely steep. Somehow, I managed not to make any serious driving mistakes and weave through the area somewhat smoothly. Interestingly, the whole time I was in Aranjuez and Manrique, I was dying to get back to Moravia.
When we got back downtown, it was about noon. I thought I'd make a quick trip to San Lorenzo to take a few pictures. This time, I had to park in the neighborhood itself, which only made me more nervous. San Lorenzo is far more central and somewhat wealthier than Manrique , where I never would have thought of parking. I got off and started walking in and around the main park and cemetery, immediately across the street from a brand new library.
On my way out of the cemetery, the guard in charge of watching over it told me that I was making a mistake taking pictures there. Despite the fact that he was armed with a shotgun and I never wandered farther than 10 feet from his booth, he strongly advised me to leave as soon as possible because, sooner or later, someone would take my camera and he might not be able to do anything about it. I had left my grandmother watching over the car, so I was alone and, as the guard correctly pointed out, nearly everyone around me stared at my camera everywhere I went.
Elsewhere, the culture is far more territorial. When you wander into an unfamiliar neighborhood, you immediately feel unwanted. The city is composed of scores of individual neighborhoods where everybody knows each other and everyone can immediately identify strangers. Medellin is still a very divided city, and there is still a culture that treats strangers in the neighborhood either as threats or as targets for crime.
Moravia may be poor and crime-ridden, but its integration into the city as a whole has made it a far more inviting neighborhood than many others. The constant presence of city officials and visitors has truly transformed the local culture.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at July 27, 2009 05:10 PM
