Walls of resistance: Underground memories and political violence in Colombia

ABSTRACT

In this article, I examine ‘underground memories’ to demonstrate how they serve as resources for resistance in the margins of Colombia. I focus on their relations with the urban fabric, looking at the ways the walls of Bogota and Medellin are used as canvases for spreading images and narratives about the conflict. I suggest that murals representing the violence serve as a repository for memories; they challenge hegemonic narratives and contribute to the recovery of public space. This analysis draws on three case studies. In the first one, I examine the impact of a mural in Bogota that denounced extrajudicial killings involving the Colombian army. The second case focuses on a community initiative aimed at collecting testimonies from residents in a marginalized district of Medellin. Finally, the last case study analyses the touristification of some of the many murals depicting the violence in Medellin. I argue that, to different degrees, all the memorial projects presented in this study challenge state narratives. Through representations of murdered teenagers, suspect military officers and even drug cartel bosses, they raise questions of social justice, impunity, illegality and the dramatic banalization of violence in the country. They broaden the narrative on the recent past, through histories and images that the Colombian state is still reluctant to unearth.

KEYWORDS:

• Political violence
• memory
• resistance
• murals and street art
• Colombia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘The vaccine’, referring to the extortion tax throughout Colombia.

2 Convites describe collective actions and the solidarity networks that residents use to build informally their neighbourhood.

3 The Casa Monaco was one of the residences of Pablo Escobar. It was also one of the main highlights of ‘Pablo narco-tours’, until it was destroyed by the public authorities in 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under Grant [PZ00P1_179904 (program Ambizione)].