For the first time in the history of Colombia, the national government includes the discussion of urban violence as a constituent part of a peace process that seeks to overcome the armed conflict in the country. The central purpose of this essay is to point out the historical and cultural significance that the current administration’s “Total Peace” policy can infuse into the formulation of a project for contemporary citizen life—“the City Project”—in Medellín. From this perspective, the text shows the decisive impact that the countless conflagrations that have accompanied our development since the nineteenth century have had on both the characterization of the urbanization process as a whole and on the territorial and living constitution of our urban centers. Thereby overcoming the double narrative that in the Aburrá Valley it is only about the drug trafficking violence, and that this one would only affect the capital of Antioquia. Instead, it points to the inability of Colombian leaders to, on the one hand, construct a State capable of exercising sovereignty over the entire national territory, and on the other, to imagine the complex constitution of the urban phenomenon, which is why they have not been able to generate a form of government that guarantees territorial control in the cities that national development has built. Therefore at the confluence of the two deficiencies, the metropolises appear, to a large extent, subjected to the criminal expressions of the actors in the conflicts. Against this backdrop, the article illustrates the programmatic consistency of the urban culture and the vision of a future society that, against the aggressiveness of violence, urban crowds have formed while physically raising the layouts and architectures of the cities that today characterize Colombia as an urban country and which was evidenced in the uprisings that occurred in 2020 and 2021, which have been simplified by the media under the name of the “social outbreak” (“Estallido Social”, in Spanish). Finally, supporting the urgency of applying the “Total Peace” policy to the specific case of the Aburrá Valley, the document points out the political affinity between the government proposal and the titanic construction of diverse, and tolerant processes, and languages, that characterize today the daily existence of the population of the communes on both sides of the Medellín River. As it is only logical, given the incipience of all the components of the bet, in addition to the political reaction that, barely having begun the process of conversations, has begun to generate in some sectors of the traditional regional leadership, the writing does not pretend to be conclusive, but it does hope to have established the elements with support in which the possibility of configuring in the Aburrá Valley the project of citizen life,—“the City Project”—that in Colombia still has not found a place, can be shown.

Medellín, Through “Total Peace” to “The City Project”

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发表日期：

2025年

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Fernando Viviescas Monsalve

摘要

For the first time in the history of Colombia, the national government includes the discussion of urban violence as a constituent part of a peace process that seeks to overcome the armed conflict in the country. The central purpose of this essay is to point out the historical and cultural significance that the current administration’s “Total Peace” policy can infuse into the formulation of a project for contemporary citizen life—“the City Project”—in Medellín. From this perspective, the text shows the decisive impact that the countless conflagrations that have accompanied our development since the nineteenth century have had on both the characterization of the urbanization process as a whole and on the territorial and living constitution of our urban centers. Thereby overcoming the double narrative that in the Aburrá Valley it is only about the drug trafficking violence, and that this one would only affect the capital of Antioquia. Instead, it points to the inability of Colombian leaders to, on the one hand, construct a State capable of exercising sovereignty over the entire national territory, and on the other, to imagine the complex constitution of the urban phenomenon, which is why they have not been able to generate a form of government that guarantees territorial control in the cities that national development has built. Therefore at the confluence of the two deficiencies, the metropolises appear, to a large extent, subjected to the criminal expressions of the actors in the conflicts. Against this backdrop, the article illustrates the programmatic consistency of the urban culture and the vision of a future society that, against the aggressiveness of violence, urban crowds have formed while physically raising the layouts and architectures of the cities that today characterize Colombia as an urban country and which was evidenced in the uprisings that occurred in 2020 and 2021, which have been simplified by the media under the name of the “social outbreak” (“Estallido Social”, in Spanish). Finally, supporting the urgency of applying the “Total Peace” policy to the specific case of the Aburrá Valley, the document points out the political affinity between the government proposal and the titanic construction of diverse, and tolerant processes, and languages, that characterize today the daily existence of the population of the communes on both sides of the Medellín River. As it is only logical, given the incipience of all the components of the bet, in addition to the political reaction that, barely having begun the process of conversations, has begun to generate in some sectors of the traditional regional leadership, the writing does not pretend to be conclusive, but it does hope to have established the elements with support in which the possibility of configuring in the Aburrá Valley the project of citizen life,—“the City Project”—that in Colombia still has not found a place, can be shown.