Medellin is Colombia’s second largest city and, together with the surrounding Antioquia province, makes up 13.9% of the country’s economy.
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Archaeological evidence indicates that Medellin’s metropolitan area was colonized before 8,000BC amid a human expansion that took place throughout the Americas.
The oldest evidence of farming and the manufacturing of pottery indicates that at least some of the locals began adopting more sedimentary lifestyles around 3,000BC.
Artifacts that were found in the valley indicate that three distinct cultures inhabited the valley around Medellin between the first sediments and approximately 800AD.
Archeologists have not been able to determine when and how these cultures changed because of a lack of finds that would allow scientists to link the different cultures to specific time periods.
How life in the valley changed between 800 and 1541, when the first Europeans arrived, is also largely a mystery because much of what could have been archeological evidence was destroyed by colonialization and urbanization.
Arrival of the Europeans
The first written account about what is now Medellin’s metropolitan area is from Spanish chronicler Juan Bautista, who chronicled the first encounter between the locals and an armed unit led by colonel Jeronimo Luis Tejelo on August 24, 1541.
According to Bautista, the locals mobilized an army of approximately 1,000 archers and fighters armed with clubs as soon as they got wind of the Spaniards’ incursion, and attacked.
Before the end of the day, the indigenous army had allegedly grown to 3,000 fighters, but failed to defeat the 32 Spaniards, who were armed with muskets and attack dogs.
Tejelo warned his superior, Marshall Jorge Robledo, who was stationed in Popayan, a city in the southwest that had already been conquered.
Robledo joined his captain and, with the help of a translator, was able to convince the locals to allow them to stay for a few weeks.
According to Bautista, Tejelo and Robledo learned that the locals were mainly dedicated to agriculture and trade, which allowed them to maintain a thriving economy.
The Spaniards left the valley after two weeks and the locals wouldn’t see another white man for another 75 years.
Spanish colonization
The second recorded encounter between the native population and the Spaniards conquistadors took place in 1615 when a conquistador called Francisco Campuzano created the “San Lorenzo” indigenous settlement where “Parque Poblado” is now located.
The conquistador founded the indigenous village in compliance with an order by Madrid to subjugate the native population in the region around what is now Medellin, or whatever was left of it.
The historical records about the foundation of what would later become Medellin suggest that European diseases had all but exterminated the human population of what the Spanish called the “Aburra Valley.”
According to Spanish historical records, Campuzano forcibly resettled 500 “useful indians and people” from the region around what is now Medellin to the valley where the Spanish initially estimated that the locals’ army alone consisted of 3,000 able bodied men.
In 1639, the population of San Lorenzo had shrunk to 12 “useful indians” and their 48 family members.
Medellin’s whites-only origins
The first European settlement began forming after 1649 around what is now “Parque Berrio.”
This settlement would formally be called Villa de Nuestra Señora Candelaria de Medellin in 1675 and became the home of Governor Miguel Aguinaga, who banned all people of color from the city.
Survivors of the Indigenous extermination and the colored, extramarital offspring of Spanish colonists were forced to live outside the city’s initial border.
The first map of Medellin was produced in 1791 and showed no more than 50 homes.
First map of Medellin.
Republican Medellin
At the time, the village was of little interest to the Spanish authorities as it lacked gold deposits like the nearby town of Santa Fe de Antioquia.
In fact, Medellin wasn’t formally declared a city by Juan del Corral, who had been named dictator of the Free State of Antioquia after the regional elite declared their independence from Spain.
The town was made capital of Antioquia in 1826 after which Medellin gradually became a relevant trade hub in the region.
Medellin in 1849
In the second half of the 19th century, Medellin became a major cultural and intellectual center in the region, and local authorities began developing the town’s infrastructure.
Medellin’s municipal authorities coined their first development plan in 1890 and its first census in 1905 revealed that almost 60,000 people had settled in the grown.
It wasn’t until the 1930’s when urban development plans from Bogota really began growing the city.
In 1951, when Colombia had descended in a civil war called “La Violencia,” a census revealed that the city had more than 358,000 inhabitants, allegedly as a consequence of the mass expulsion of farmers from the countryside.
In fact, the mass urbanization that turned Medellin into a city in the second half of the 20th century was almost entirely due to violence and armed conflict in the countryside, according to the Truth Commission.
Urbanization
Development of the mafia economy
Local authorities failed to respond to the mass urbanization, which led to unregulated expansions of the city’s neighborhoods in the north and the formation of a largely informal economy, particularly between 1965 and 1975.
In the late 1970’s, Medellin became the epicenter of Colombia’s drug trade as a consequence between alliances between local drug traffickers and regional elites that would form the Medellin Cartel in the 1980’s.
At the same time, escalating terrorism attacks by the cartel against the National Police and by the security forces against the residents of the city’s poor neighborhoods made Medellin one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Medellin’s homicide rate
The police terror spurred young people from the neglected neighborhoods in the north of the city to create neighborhood militias that sought to protect their communities from police attacks between 1988 and 1993.
‘Love for Medellin’: how state propaganda and terrorism instilled a culture of fear in Colombia’s 2nd largest city
After the cartel
The death of Medellin Cartel boss Pablo Escobar changed little as paramilitary groups formed by Escobar and his allies in the regional elite and the security forces continues their terrorism practices in an attempt to reduce the power of the militias and maintain the power of the Medellin Cartel dissidents over the local government.
This terror gradually subsided after 2003 when Escobar’s former lieutenant and successor, “Don Berna,” agreed to demobilize the cartel’s former enforcer army, the “Oficina de Envigado,” after a deal with President Alvaro Uribe, another former cartel associate.
Berna’s 2008 extradition to the United States and Uribe’s failure to stay in power in the 2010 elections gradually allowed local and national authorities to reduce violence and develop a legal economy in Colombia’s second largest city.
Medellin’s economy, particularly its construction and retail sectors, continues to largely rely on organized crime, particularly the laundering of money from the illegal trade in illicit drugs and gold.
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Reliable data on Medellin’s gross domestic product does not exist. National statistics agency DANE only publishes estimates about the gross domestic product of the surrounding Antioquia province and local authorities don’t seem to have the means to consistently estimate the behavior of the local economy.
Medellin Como Vamos, which publishes local statistics, does publish estimates about the income per capita for the entire Metropolitan area.
Income per capita
Unemployment
The 2020 unemployment rate of Medellin’s metropolitan area surged to more than 15% as a consequence of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The city showed problems with job creation in the years before that.
Medellin’s unemployment rate
Labor informality in Medellin
Inflation
Medellin’s inflation rate has been virtually the same as that of Colombia. Following the coronavirus crisis in 2020, the city’s inflation rate was considerably higher than those of Bogota and Cali.
Medellin’s Inflation rate
Poverty
Medellin’s poverty rate increased for the first time in 2018 after more than a decade of steady decline and surged as a consequence of the economic crisis causes by the coronavirus crisis.
By the end of 2020, more than 9% of the city lived in extreme poverty, meaning they had to survive of less than $45 a month.
Medellin’s poverty rate
Poverty distribution in Medellin
Medellin’s stratified social classes
Colombia’s government uses social stratification to determine citizens’ rights to government subsidies on public utilities. The system, however, is criticized as its traditional class system allows employers and banks to discriminate based on social class.
The social stratification in Medellin is not linked to income, but determined by the neighborhood you live in. Residents in lower-ranked sectors receive a subsidy on public utilities while those living in the higher-ranked neighborhoods pay extra.
Quality of life in Medellin
Despite having introduced social stratification in the 1990s already, Medellin’s 2017 report on the quality of life registered hardly an impact of residents’ quality of life.
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Get as far away from El Poblado as possible
Climb one of the many hills
The escalators of Comuna 13
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Take the downtown walking tour
Listen to 10″ records at Salon Malaga
(Image: Patrimonio Medellin)
Have a beer at the modern art museum
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