Exploring Colombia’s Famous Hood 🇨🇴

The closing video of the Colombia cluster, and the one that makes the cluster’s argument explicitly. Harry is guided round Comuna 13 in Medellín — a district he describes as having been one of the most dangerous places in the world ten to twenty years ago and now a tourist hotspot — and says on camera that it is a perfect example of somewhere you shouldn’t stereotype, and that it sums up Colombia.

The video also supplies its own qualification, which is what makes it worth having. The description says the district is safe with a tour guide. The guide steers him away from parts of it, explaining that people there don’t want to be filmed. An arrest happens in front of them, a helicopter circles, and the guide’s own story is of a shooting near the escalators three years earlier that terrified a group of American visitors. None of that contradicts the transformation; all of it bounds it.

The other half is the neighbourhood’s own account of itself, from the guide: families displaced from elsewhere, a lot of self-built housing on land nobody held title to, and — before the tourists — nothing here but graffiti and escalators.

It ends somewhere else entirely, on a lookout swing over the city at $4 a go, which Harry says he wasn’t going to film.

Key moments

• [00:00] An Uber across Medellín, 11,000 pesos for 10–15 minutes — about £2 — and a note that public transport is cheaper still.
• [01:01] Meets his guide, who was born here and raised in Los Angeles.
• [01:31] The plan: the tourist part, and then off it.
• [02:02] Houses stacked up the hillside; he compares it to a Brazilian favela.
• [02:33] An informal parking attendant who finds a space and watches the car for 5,000–6,000 pesos.
• [03:03] Graffiti, colour, stalls and a lot of tourists.
• [03:34] Local football talk — and the local club with few titles and, the guide says, the most loyal fans in the country.
• [04:39] Street rappers who ask before being filmed; 2,000 pesos is the going rate.
• [07:27] They freestyle about each listener’s home city in turn, at speed.
• [08:34] The guide on being welcomed in: not just anyone can walk into a neighbourhood that isn’t theirs.
• [08:34] The significance of the place, stated: one of the most dangerous areas in the world, now a tourist spot, and an argument against stereotyping.
• [09:38] Who lives here — Afro-Colombian families displaced from their towns and by guerrillas, drawn by cheap rent and space to build.
• [10:08] Roughly half the housing is on land the occupiers don’t own, and the proportion rises with the hill.
• [10:40] The outdoor escalators, described as the only ones of their kind.
• [11:10] Free public wi-fi in the neighbourhood.
• [12:00] The view back over the city from the upper levels.
• [13:34] Some households pay no taxes or water charges.
• [14:42] Police and army stopping people and running ID numbers on a handheld device; an arrest happens in front of them.
• [15:12] The guide’s own account of a shooting near the escalators about three years ago, with six American visitors present.
• [16:14] A new park at the top — recently built, clean, planted, and full of local families.
• [17:16] Off the tourist route, and the guide explaining who doesn’t want to be filmed here.
• [17:48] A helicopter circling.
• [19:58] A clothes shop run by friends of the guide; Harry buys an Escobar-branded shirt for 25,000 pesos and calls the purchase interesting.
• [20:58] The house of the artist behind most of the district’s graffiti, which is also a shop for original paintings.
• [22:08] Iced coffee with Baileys, whipped cream and caramel, from a café the guide says grew out of a shack. Beans from Santa Bárbara, Antioquia.
• [23:09] Colombia’s 32 departments, and what they correspond to.
• [24:15] Verdict on the coffee: he says he can’t go back to the chains.
• [24:45] Elsewhere in the city, a lookout swing over the valley at 15,000 pesos — about $4 — which he wasn’t going to film.
• [26:53] The operator’s joke about a 50% survival rate, delivered too straight to read.
• [29:09] His verdict: the best three dollars he has spent.

Extracted pages

• Colombia
• Comuna 13
• Medellín
• Judge a place for yourself

Obs: the guide’s phone number and a clothes shop’s contact are published in the description and plugged on camera. Neither is named in the bundle; the tour and the shops are described in full.