Unravelling the « Medellín Model » : The Building of Paramilitary Peace

In 1991, the city of Medellín broke global records for violence in the war against Pablo Escobar's cartel. Twenty years later, headlines and academic articles praised the transformation of a post-conflict Medellín, which had gone "from the most violent city to the most innovative city." This change was attributed to "social urbanism," an ambitious development policy targeting marginalized neighborhoods, launched in 2004 following the election of a progressive mayor and amid the national demobilization of paramilitary groups.

However, despite this widely celebrated narrative, we will argue that this development policy ran parallel to the consolidation of territorial control by violent non-state actors. While violence levels did decrease after 2004, this pacification can be attributed to the growing hegemony of paramilitary groups over the entire urban area. The demobilization process they began at that time—now widely condemned as fraudulent—coincided with the rollout of social urbanism and the expansion of state interventions in popular neighborhoods. This convergence facilitated the shift of criminal economies toward capturing public resources and co-opting key sectors of the local economy.

By 2014, Medellín reached global recognition as it hosted the UN Habitat summit. The Moravia Gardens, developed following a major resettlement project, were inaugurated for the occasion. Today, informal constructions have reclaimed the space once occupied by the gardens. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the armed group that controls the neighborhood took over the space, selling plots at low prices. Many of today's residents are those disillusioned by the resettlement project, who have returned to their former neighborhood. Through an ethnographic study of this showcase neighborhood for social urbanism, we will examine the limitations of large-scale urban development projects (such as social housing and green infrastructure) in contexts where overt conflict may have subsided but where structural, diffuse armed violence remains deeply entrenched in society.