COMMUNICATION-COLOMBIA: Newsletter Keeps Tabs on Urban Conflict

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, Jul 18 2000 (IPS) - The ‘Observatorio del Conflicto Urbano’ newsletter, published in the Colombian city of Medellin, is an effort spearheaded by a group of social organisations to differentiate the ongoing armed conflict occurring in rural areas from the violence of the country’s major urban centres, and to seek solutions for it.

The publication is distributed free of charge at universities and non-governmental organisations and is “fruit of the social action in favour of peaceful coexistence” taken in Medellin by social researchers and activists, says editor Jesús Torres.

With a circulation of one thousand, ‘Observatorio’ is published by the Colombian Inter-regional Movement (MIR), former urban guerrillas who signed a peace treaty in 1998, and by the non- governmental Peace and Social Development Corporation (CORPADES), with the support of the Interior Ministry, the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace and the Procurator’s Office of Medellin.

Its goal is clearly set forth in the editorial of its first issue, which appeared last November. The former guerrillas stress that when they laid down their weapons on July 28, 1998, they promised to direct all their efforts “toward building a more just and balanced society.”

Alexander Reina, head of the CORPADES Centre for Urban Research, told IPS the newsletter is intended “to reflect on the urban conflict as a whole,” with an interpretation that goes beyond the crime and drug-ridden image that has befallen Medellin.

The city, capital of the northwestern department of Antioquia, was home to the Medellin drug cartel that in the early 1990s armed dozens of young gang members who unleashed a wave of violence that sparked an international outcry.

The Ombudsman’s Office reported that following the period of “narco-terrorism,” in the mid-1990s, Medellin turned into the principal destination of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the decades-long armed conflict between guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces, who then extended the war into the cities.

Right-wing paramilitary groups and guerrillas are blamed for nearly 400 massacres (assassination of more than four people at the same time and location) reported in 1999, according to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement.

Of those killings, 109 occurred in Antioquia, 31 in Valle del Cauca department in the west, and approximately 60 in Bolívar and Cesar departments in the north.

In the editorial of issue number one, ‘Observatorio’ describes Medellin as “a city criss-crossed by complicated phenomena of violence at all levels, in which armed groups of all stripes participate.”

To handle the conflict, the newsletter proposes a public policy that surpasses the logic of a merely repressive and legalist approach, instead confronting violence with development strategies that make “cities more competitive in the new scenario of globalisation.”

‘Observatorio del Conflicto Urbano’ underscores the difference between the armed conflict in the rural areas and the violence affecting Colombia’s major cities, which concentrate 70 percent of the nation’s 42 million people and where “the actors and the causes of violence are numerous,” Reina said.

In the issues of the newsletter published to date, the authors describe and analyse urban and social problems with a combined academic and journalistic approach.

The publication has democratic and pluralist foundations that are evident in the makeup of its editorial board. Members include representatives from social organisations, the Roman Catholic Church and CORPADES researchers, and soon will extend to members of the business community and the government, said Reina.

The newsletter’s leaders plan to increase circulation and consolidate an advertising framework in order to publish on a monthly basis and present more current treatment of the problems it covers.