Chapter Two

First of all, I can’t tell you what Medellin looks like from above because I didn’t arrive at Medellin’s airport until midnight.The map below will provide you with a general idea about what I would have seen had I arrived during the day. The center of the city lies in a valley between two mountain ranges with its poorer neighborhoods climbing up the steep slopes on both sides. A river runs through the center of town.                           Click image to enlarge I don’t like to arrive at a foreign airport in the middle of the night because the money exchange booths are often closed, and public transportation into town is often scarce. No problem this time. I take a taxi, and the driver takes U.S. dollars.He takes me to a Day’s Inn located in the Poblado district of the city.This is the part of Medellin that most American tourists see if they come here at all. Poblado offers up its various treats at the city’s glitziest hotels, restaurants, and clubs. Its streets overflow with various forms of conspicuous consumption both day and night. Since I believe that Medellin offers more substantial experiences than those found here, I move to the apartment I am renting in the Laurales district the next morning. Laurales is by no means a poor neighborhood.It is the home for many of Medellin’s middle class. It contains its share of restaurants, clubs, and coffee shops, but they are no where near expensive as those found in Poblado, yet the food, drinks, and coffee taste just as good, perhaps better since this neighborhood’s businesses rely on the return traffic of locals for their survival. The city has officially designated Poblado as a six star neighborhood. “Six Stars”is the highest rating possible. (Poblado is located under the blue circle on the map above). The more broken a neighborhood’s sidewalks, the older its buildings, and the fewer retail stores and businesses it harbors, the fewer stars the city will assign to it. Laurales, the neighborhood where I live is assigned five stars. ( The Laurales neighborhood surrounds the red circle on the above map). The wretched favelas on the sides of the hills overlooking the city are rated one or at best two stars. You may think it quite rude and provocative for the city to officially label one neighborhood as not being as nice as the one next door, but this rating system seems to be accepted by everyone, rich, poor, and middle class alike. This equanimity results from a well thought out social engineering plan that tries to level out the economic viability of the city’s various social classes. The residents of six star neighborhoods like Poblado have to pay more for their electric, water, and sewage services than any of the lower rated neighborhoods. Those in the favelas pay the least. My neighbors pay pays less than those in Poblado but more than those living on the hillsides. Distributing the cost of these utilities in this way ensures that those who can afford to pay more for these services are charged more, and guarantees that those who most need water and electricity services for their basic survival can afford to receive it. (Heat is not a necessity in Medellin). I can hear some of my more conservative friends complaining that this system unfairly limits the utility companies’ profits. They are probably saying, “Why should the shareholders suffer just because the favela residents are too lazy to get good paying jobs so they can afford to spruce up their homes and neighborhoods, and pay their fair share towards the utility company’s profits.” Never fear, oh ye conservative ones, the system works in reverse for telephone and internet billing. The poorest neighborhoods pay the most for these services with the higher rated ones pay less and less as their ratings get higher and higher. The residents of Poblado pay the least of all for these services. Since most businesses and offices reside in the higher rated areas, and since businesses and offices need need these services more than the residents of the favelas to survive, this sliding scale of charges is also considered fair by nearly everyone. Medellin”s mass transit system is also an example of  innovative social engineering as well as an example of highly modern mechanical engineering. The Metro, a mostly elevated electric train system forms the core of Medellin’s mass transit. It is cleaner, more reliable, safer, and cheaper than the systems found in most U.S. cities. If a relatively poor country like Columbia can construct such a marvel, just imagine what we could build in our cities if we really wanted to put our money there. Medellin integrates its bus lines, a trolley, and most importantly five cable car systems with the Metro so that people can easily travel to all parts of the city. I want to stress the importance of the cable cars here because they improve the life of the city’s poor a great deal. As I’ve indicated above, most of the poorest neighborhoods sit on the slopes above the city. Some of these neighborhoods are so high on the hillsides that before the cable cars were built it could take up to two hours for residents to walk down from their houses to the stores and employment in the city below. Escalators have also been installed to connect one of the lower favelas with the city. This favela is Communa 13 which was at one time one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on earth. The police would enter it during the day only in teams, and would not set foot there at night. The escalators allowed residents, and police to enter and leave more freely and this, in turn, led to small business development in the area. Today tourists troop up the escalators to photograph the murals and other street art of Commune 13, and to eat in its restaurants. The success of the escalators and the first cable car systems have led to plans for the construction of more cable cars to the higher favelas. Yes, Medellin has done more than any other city in Columbia, (and possibly more than any other city in the Americas) to integrate its poor into the normal life of the city. This is what makes Medellin special. Personal Postscript: Despite how much I admire what Medellin is doing to make life easier for its poor, I’m not yet sure how much I like living here. On the downside, my neighborhood has a lot more vehicle traffic than I expected. Exchanging money is very expensive – I’m giving up 7 to 8 percent of the value of my cash every time I make an exchange into Pesos. It’s also a lot warmer and humid than I like, (I had been warned about that though). On the upside, I like my apartment. It’s clean and modern. My internet connection is five times faster than the one at home on the farm, and the clerks in the stores think my attempts at Spanish are hilarious. There are also a lot of good examples of community pride.The local folks love their dogs and they can be seen out walking their best friends night and day, yet there is no dog poop on the side walks. This differs greatly from the city of Buenos Aires where I remember having to hop scotch down the side walk whenever I had to go someplace. Finally, I’m becoming fonder of Medellin because it is trying to out do Clark Griswold with its Christmas decorations. The photos below provide just a small sample of what you might see here. (To see them better, click to enlarge). I was planning to travel to Cali where they have a massive city wide Christmas celebration from December 25th to the 28th. After reading other bloggers comments, I think I’ll pass on it. Apparently if you stay in a hotel there will be party animals celebrating up and down the hallways all night long, while people are setting off fireworks in the streets. It’s not exactly a “Silent Night” type Christmas. Instead, it’s more like the Roman Saturnalia that Christmas was supposed to replace. I think I’ll stay right here in Medellin and write another chapter about Medellin’s art scene instead.