Pablo, Who? The Medellín tour that shows the B-side of Colombia’s “Narcos” story

“Colombia’s a paradox,” my guide Rubén Darío Gómez, a Medellín native tells me. I’d asked why Colombians are so welcoming—a characteristic at odds with a 59-year armed conflict that saw up to 450,000 dead, over 120,000 ‘disappeared,’ and nine million victims from related issues such as forced displacement. In Medellín, few escaped watching loved ones become collateral damage in the fight between notorious drug lord, Pablo Escobar, the military, and armed revolutionaries.

“We learned that life isn’t guaranteed,” he continues. “If you went out onto the street, you could be murdered. It’s why we now dance and play and are passionate. No one wants to miss the present moment; there might be no future.”

In 1988, when it became ground zero for Escobar’s drug wars, Time magazine famously dubbed Medellín the ‘world’s most dangerous city.’ Escobar tours have become a dime a dozen since they first launched in 2011, taking foreign tourists on a dark pilgrimage to his grave and the rooftop where he was gunned down. Netflix’s 2015 series Narcos has further bolstered Medellín’s notoriety, controversially describing itself as “the true story of Colombia’s infamously violent and powerful drug cartels.”

But it’s a claim that many in Medellín contest.

“What’s sad is that Narcos portrays Pablo Escobar almost as a hero,” Rubén tells me, as we negotiate the city’s slick metro system, heading east to the working-class neighborhood of Miraflores. Until a few years back, this part of the city was a no-go for tourists and locals alike. “A lot of people came to Medellín asking for the hero,” he says. “And since we’re so fucking commercial—sorry for my French—we acknowledged it, and we sold it.”

Rubén talks about how urban acupuncture—a school of thought that believes inexpensive, hyper-targeted urban regeneration can have profound effects—has been central to Medellín’s metamorphosis.

But Impulse Travel’s ‘We don’t talk about Pablo’ tour proposes a different story. Alongside a local guide, it takes you around the city to learn the truth about that dark period in history—but also how Medellín has been transformed.

The previous day, Carolina Diaz, the mastermind behind the tour, told me how during a decade of guiding, she’d seen countless foreign tourists arriving in the city “expecting Narcos.” She’d wagged her finger emphatically. “Then they come and it’s like, nu-uh, you’re wrong.”

I’m keen to find out why. Rubén takes me to our first stop, Parque Alejandro Echavarria, where we’re greeted by the shouts of a football match on an astroturf pitch. A path leads us around the park as Rubén talks about how urban acupuncture—a school of thought that believes inexpensive, hyper-targeted urban regeneration can have profound effects—has been central to Medellín’s metamorphosis.

One of the lasting legacies of the violence was how it “deteriorated social tissue,” Rubén explains. “And, if you want to transform a city, you need to reconnect all that social tissue.” Projects by INDER, the Institute for Sports and Recreation, created safe community spaces in neighborhoods formerly run by or suffering the violence of the cartels; upgrading football fields and basketball courts gave sports to these communities.

This helped “bring people together and create an identity, an ownership,” he says, nodding towards the young footballers as the ball flies above the goal to a medley of roars and disappointed shouts.

Our next destination is Comuna 8, one of many working-class neighborhoods that have crawled chaotically up the steep sides of Medellín’s bowl-shaped Aburrá Valley. To get there, we hop on the metrocable.

Despite being dismissed as fantasy at its conception, it was the first urban cable car project in the world and cemented Medellín’s reputation as a city of innovation. Beneath our feet, roads surrender to narrow, pedestrian-only passages and thigh-burningly steep concrete steps, a sign that the demand for housing has outpaced urban planning.

William Fernando Tamayo Agudelo, a professor of clinical psychology at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, thinks Colombians are experiencing a “collective forgetting”.

Prior to the arrival of the metrocable, neighborhoods such as this were disconnected from the city; commutes could take hours. Now, it’s a few minutes from metrocable to metro—and costs just $2,000 pesos (50 cents). Rubén sees the metro system as integral to rebuilding Medellín’s sense of community.

“It not only allowed people to get to different places but also created this culture of ownership, cleanliness, and respect,” he says, as we exit El Pinal station. But its purpose isn’t solely for transportation. Within this station’s foundations, we find the bibliometro, one of six libraries and social hubs within the metro network. Since 2006, they’ve collectively been used by over half a million people.

Back on the flat land of central Medellín, we head to our final stop. I’ve spent the afternoon understanding the geographical and political contexts that made Medellín fertile ground for the cartels_—and hearing Rubén’s harrowing memories of that time. The Museo Casa de la Memoria (House of Memory Museum), with its multimedia exhibits memorializing the victims of the conflict, feels an apt place to finish.

But memories are a complicated subject in Medellín. William Fernando Tamayo Agudelo, a professor of clinical psychology at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, thinks Colombians are experiencing a “collective forgetting”. In his studies of collective memories, he’s “learned that places contribute to their construction.” Because the physical appearance of Medellín has changed so significantly and people no longer associate certain neighborhoods with Escobar, this act of transformation has almost erased the past—for better or for worse.

It’s one of the reasons, Caro had told me, why she felt a compulsion to design this tour. Her uncle was kidnapped and murdered when she was a child; her father still refuses to talk about that time.

She views it as a prevailing issue among “older generations who do remember the conflict, but don’t want to speak about it.” As a result, people like her, those in their 30s and who witnessed the period, must be the ones to break the silence.

Outside the museum, Rubén and I stand beneath the bold Árbol de la Vida (Tree of Life) statue. It offers an unflinching representation of the city’s dark history: A cluster of naked, metallic bodies form the trunk, their limbs entwined. From their shoulders, others—many missing heads or limbs—spiral upwards, their arms reaching toward the sky. A city-wide armistice collected the 27,398 weapons used to create the statue. “Some even had blood on them still,” Rubén adds. The outlines of partially melted blades glint in the sunlight.

It’s another Colombian paradox; unapologetically reflecting on the brutalities of the conflict while simultaneously offering hope and life. As we gaze upwards, Rubén recites a Medellín saying that encapsulates everything I’ve learned about this city: “They said they wanted to bring us down. They stepped on us. They pushed us into the ground. But they didn’t hear that we were seeds. And now, we’re blooming.”

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