Will crime writers be the victims of the clean-up of Colombia’s second city?

After decades of murder, extortion, gang warfare and narco crime, the newly laundered image of Medellín is providing a set of fresh challenges for its writers

As anyone who watched the recent Netflix series Narcos will know, optimism can seem like a luxury in Colombia. In 1991, at the height of drug baron Pablo Escobar’s grip on Medellín, there were 6,349 killings in Colombia’s second city – roughly 38 times the UK rate. In the past five years, homicide has fallen by 80% there, due partly to a demobilisation agreement between the Colombian government and paramilitaries, partly to the breakup of the drug cartels and partly to a series of urban regeneration initiatives that helped Medellín win the Urban Land Institute’s title of world’s most innovative city in 2013. The city once famous for murder and dirty money is turning to culture to help launder its image. As a new agreement between the Colombian government and Farc guerrillas looks set to end the country’s 51-year conflict, will Colombia’s writers turn their backs on the country’s dark past? This autumn’s Medellín Negro crime fiction festival offered some clues.

Established in 2009 by academic and crime writer Gustavo Forero, Medellín Negro is one of dozens of new cultural and arts ventures springing up in a city that, as renowned Colombian writer Laura Restrepo puts it, “is eager to find a way to some kind of future”.

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