Our group arrived in Bogota, Colombia late Sunday night. We were a little travel weary but I was looking forward to the opportunity to get to know another country and to build lasting partnerships with a fascinating group of colleagues. For me, the most impactful time so far (we still have one more city—Cartagena—to visit as I’m writing this piece) has been in Medellin. Our guide in Bogota told me that I’d love Medellin, and she was absolutely right. I particularly enjoyed seeing the clear infusion of African culture. Our first day there, we went on the “Graffiti Tour”—a walking tour through a mountainous area that was once home to some of Colombia’s greatest violence, and to a community now actively working to raise itself above that dubious past and into a more prosperous future. As we were walking around, absorbing the art, music, dancing, and homemade popsicles one young man stopped and asked some of us if we were “Americans.” I paused. I am fairly well travelled, and this question is rarely followed by anything positive. I was expecting either a diatribe about American idiocy, or a sales pitch built on the observation that we were comparatively rich. But when we affirmed that we were “Americans” he simply responded, “So am I...South American.” Our young friend had no way of knowing that this is something that I have deliberately been trying to remove from my vernacular as I’ve grown increasingly familiar with how problematic the term is. The interaction resonated with me. It seemed to reflect a people’s desire to not only be included in a broader, more inclusive narrative of “American” history, but to ensure that this inclusion comes from a positive perspective.
Our second day in Medellin, we did a Pablo Escobar tour that ended with a visit to the Museo Casa de la Memoria. What I especially appreciated about the tour was that it did not in any way memorialize the former drug kingpin who terrorized the Medellin community. Instead, Colombians have made a point of interpreting this history through the lens of the people he bullied and killed. This felt amplified during our visit to the Universidad de Antioquia. This university is a public university, and therefore caters to a more racially diverse student constituency who come from the Colombia’s lower economic strata. One of the most obvious things about the university was that campus buildings were, almost refreshingly, littered with graffiti that reflected the students’ broad spectrum of political affiliations. I was heartened by the fact that this student body does not seem willing to accept the inequitable world they’ve been handed.
Colombia is a nation trying to remake itself in a post-conflict economy. And in Medellin, this rebirth is being partially defined by a youth-led cultural shift. As a student of the African American civil rights movement, I find this particularly hopeful. Youth-led social changes have the power to be transformative. I hope this means that not only will Medellin experience an economic rejuvenation, but also a sociocultural one that grants young men like the one we met on the Graffiti Tour and the students we met and observed at the Universidad de Antioquia the promise of a more equitable future.
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