A Thread of Peace in Medellín

This post is from Jessica Sarriot, a two-year Seed worker, with MCC in Medellín Colombia.

A City Known for Food, Flowers, and Drug Cartels

Medellín, a bowl-shaped city known for its overabundant “Bandeja Paisa” [a local dish], August flower festival and Christmas lights, is nestled within the ever-proud region of Antioquia. The city is, of course, most known for the rule of Pablo Escobar and the Medellín drug Cartel in the 1980’s and 90’s, a reputation it is still struggling to rid itself of, and a legacy whose repercussions are still felt. Since then, the trend has shifted towards paramilitary, or the renamed “Criminal Bands” control.
The sheer amount of money coming from drug trafficking not only creates gang warfare, but also leads to “para-politics” in which would-be-political-leaders exchange turning a blind eye or staying out of certain sectors for major campaign donations. This in turn leads to common-practice extortion and gang-mandated “taxes” on local businesses or individuals within a given neighborhood and the continuation of drug trafficking activities. For the victims I’ve met, much of their security depends on a police force they cannot have complete confidence in, and laws that often seem to favor the victimizers more than the victims.

Conversations with Paisas*

I work with three distinct groups in this urban setting: 1) a network of 16 different Evangelical churches scattered around the Medellin metropolitan area, 2) an association of victims in La Ceja, a town an hour away, and 3) my home-church, Manantial de Paz, the only Mennonite church in Antioquia. My role within the network, known as the “ISP” (Sanctuary Peace Churches), is to help strengthen them as a group by building common identity and helping organize joint activities.

Although I have already facilitated a few workshops/meetings, mostly I have been getting to know everyone: visiting every member of the ISP, doing home visits with the victims in La Ceja, and chatting with church members. It is in these spaces that I have seen and heard of the devastating effects of the history of drug trafficking, turf wars and violence here in Medellín; countless tales of murdered sons, brothers, sisters, and friends, a constant preoccupation with keeping church youth, or one’s children, out of the gaping jaws of the gangs, and of course the more “typical” woes of poverty, unemployment, spouse abandonment, etc.

Yet I have heard all of these things over offered cups of coffee and tea, between laughter and invitations to someone’s home, stuffed between countless utterances of “Thanks be to God!”, “God is good!” and “May God bless you!” And so within the larger context of this huge city, the Medellín I have gotten to know has a different flavor.

A Peace-focused Minority

A peace march in la Ceja, a municipality close to  Medellín, with which the church Manantial de Paz has an accompaniment relationship.

The Medellín I have gotten to know most intimately is a peace-focused minority in an increasingly wealth and miracle-focused Protestant demographic. This sub-group is speaking a different language. It is preaching restoration to the victimizers, life to the youth set on a path of death, hope to the widows who were left without any, and a faith in peace that flies in the face of the continued promise of war.

More than anything I have been moved and impressed by who my partners in Medellín are: these are pastors being threatened, victims unsure the authorities will help or persecute them further, understaffed and over-worked followers of Jesus oftentimes donating their time to the pursuit of healing and hope.

We are but one thread in the social fabric of Medellín, which itself is but a patch within the whole of Colombia. I cannot display the whole fabric for you—what I hope to impart is a taste of what the churches and groups I am working with here are doing in the midst of that.

*Person from the Department of Antioguia, Colombia, of which Medellín is the capital city

This is a shortened version of Jessica’s original blog. View her original post here.