Talk:Medellín

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Contents

[edit] About the School

Columbus school is located in Envigado, not in Medellín, it should removed


[edit] Drugs and violence

We currently write about Medellín without even mentioning drugs or violence. This seems wrong to me. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:05, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

This is article is missing many important facts like Medellin is the "murder capital" and the Cartel de Medellin -- Elpaisa1 (5 Dec 2005)

Why we have to point out always the negative!! (Raniya 22:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC))

its the truth im from Medellin and don't tell me its wrong or not what to write this in an encyclopedia - Elpaisa1

Because we are an encyclopedia, not a travel brochure. Just like the article on Seattle, where I live, mentions its history of a boom-and-bust economy, and the fact that about 1.5% of its population is homeless. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The history part is really bad. It actually has nothing to do with the real history... There is not a word on its foundation (founder, dates, native tribes...). There isn't a mention on Medellin's developement and the facts that made it grew and snatched the capital from Santafé de Antioquia. The violence and drugs part is actually wrote with anger, not objective as an encyclopedia. It happened but it is not half the history of the city. It is a BIG lie Medellin has the biggest homicide rate. In 2004 the anual homicide rate was 60 per 100.000 habs, as compared to 133 of Caracas(Ven), 92 of Cali (Col) or 62 of Washington (USA). In 2005 the rate in Medellín has dropped other 34% but there isn't a comparison available yet --slayer 00:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)


Slayer, Medellin no longer has the highest recorded homicide rate and the article never said it did. However, you can't deny that it certainly holds the world record from the early 90's of any reasonably sized city. Around 300 murders per 100,000 of a city which then had just over 2 million people.

    • I was there from 1976 to 1998, I can say with property that many of the things described in the page are wrong. No mather who said or write this garbage or whomever magazine say it. I am a witness of the this decades and I am a survivor of that war. I saw my family getting murdered. I am not saying that is an open war for everyone, but there are many violent people in that country that makes the death and destruction a social business. Since the open war with the open cartels (And i mean by open cartels, those that show off their money to everyone) from 1980 to the present date, the country has changed for the better, but still is not the safe place that used to be. Many of the people that still living in that country deserves respect, and I agree that this article is an encyclopedia, and that is not a personal log, but it should also be a neutral writing of the facts, not the object of points of view or hersay from a North-American boy that read the information on a newspaper or magazine. So people stick to what you know FROM FIRST HAND, not to gosip or CNN garbage. Also, all homicides are not connected with the narcotrafic war, there are also mamy other reason such as gang violence, poverty (many will kill you for your close), family grudges, territorial disputes, etnic hate etc. It must also be considered the historical behaviour of the Colombian race, which is a violent and thristy for revenge society that considers that an eye for an eye is the law on rule to be follow.


That murder rate for Caracas is often quoted yet almost certainly false. The real rate is probably somewhere between 50 to 100 per 100,000 across a city of 4.6 million.

Again and not for the first time, Washington D.C.'s murder statistics and violence levels have been exaggerated. D.C.'s murder rate in 2004 was 37 per 100,000 - almost half of what you claimed, slayer. You also have to remember that Washington is a city of only half a million people so the murder rate is actually inflated anyway. Medellin's murder rate [apart from the last couple of years] is normally much higher and it's spread across a city that's several times the size.

If there is a big lie then it's Washington's WAY more widespread reputation as 'the murder capital of the world', and the severe underreporting of Medellin's far worse homicide epidemic. Just compare the two pages on this site. The D.C. page has a whole crime section which goes into detail about the cities' homicide levels. - Serbitar

Serbitar: I found the new version a little bit better but my main goal was to correct the false statements that appeared in the article, not to discuss the crime in Washington... The data that I got was published in newspapers. BTW: It sounds funny that you claim Washington has only half a million, but in this site the metropolitan area of Washington is 4'190.000 without Baltimore.

I won't go further in this thread but remember, the main hospitals are located in Medellin, and many deaths are critical patients sent from the whole metropolitan area. And I also don't know which is your basis to stablish homicide rate in Medellín is underreported and Caracas data is also wrong.

To whom I believe to be Slayer: Aaah....the old excuses come out for Medellin being so violent once again. The reality is that Medellin's murder rate would barely change if the patients were attacked right near the hospital. I've seen gunshot and stab victims in Medellin hospitals and it's incredible how many who come in that actually survive.

I forgot to mention the small matter that Medellin city proper is actually more violent than outer Medellin.

Yes, Medellin is underreported. How often do you see Medellin violence reported on the news?? I don't know what news channel you watch but let me know so I can see for myself. I've lost count of the news items and documentaries on Los Angeles gangs/American gun violence I've seen over the years.

It is funny that you point out that Washington's population is just under 5 million because the murder rate is taken from the 'city itself' which has a population of around half a million, man. You may be right about the Caracas statistics as they're possibly taken from the city proper which has a population of 1.8 million rather than the metro area. Then again I'm still not sure as Latin American murder rates normally are for the metropolitan region but I've heard it is for the city itself.

I took the word "unfortunately" out of the description since it violates Wikipedia's no-POV policy. Greenhalgh

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It´s really irrelevant to write about drug cartels, etc.. ; we should mention how Medellín is today and not 15 years ago. The history would be so terrible. Nowadays Medellín is the most progressive city in Colombia (Metro,...). It´s true that there was a high criminality rate, but this was around 1990 when Escobar was alive. Now the criminality rate is under the average of a latinamerican city. Many things changed, especially when Alvaro Uribe became president. Now you can move around entire Medellín without being afraid, even at night. As well as in the whole country. So it´s important to change your mind on 2006 and not on 1990. yussef90 13:24, June 04, 2006 (CET)

I'm a bit baffled by Yussef here. You can't ignore the history of the city dude, that's what Wikipedia's all about. Medellin still has a lot of murders (STILL more dangerous than the city of Los Angeles in it's worst years - fact!) but it has gone down enormously which I have pointed out. Medellin's worst time was 1991 to 1993 and the vast majority of murders Escobar had nothing to do with anyway. I'm slightly surprised you say you can move around the whole of Medellin and Colombia at night without feeling afraid, I find that hard to believe. And don't tell me - you can't do that in Los Angeles or any number of other American cities?! *rolls eyes* Things are a lot better though I agree. Serbitar 05:33, June 20, 2006

I think the real problem is that people here are taking rather extreme views. Many people here are basically trying to act like nothing happened and now that escobar is gone people can walk around at any time of day. I love Colombia and I love Medellin but I'm not gonna try and act like it's a safe place. In '91 the city recorded the highest EVER murder rate of a city outside of a warzone. Obviously 15 years later its no disney land. The statement that Medellin is under the latin american average seems highly unlikely not only by sheer statistics but also by the high rate of unreported crimes. The city has many people who aren't even registered or don't have colombian papers even though they're colombian, so many crimes go unreported, namely robbery and murder. The comment about going around the city at any time is ridiculous. I know many colombians who wouldn't dare go near any of the hoods in medellin. The last time i went to pereira i was informed that a week before i had gotten there a man was killed while he was sitting on the corner down the block during midday. NOTE-the place where he was killed is literally one block away from the police station.Like i said, i love colombia alot but to tell flat out lies about the cities (especially medellin or cali) being safe is ridiculous. No U.S city has ever come close to medellin.And to give you an idea of the uncertainty of murder statistics for medellin, the lowest estimate i have read for '91 is around 5,000 while the highest was around 8,500(and this was from a newspaper article).

I just read that the murder rate in 2005 for Medellin was 103 per 100,000 people. and we all know that rate is probably a lot lower than it should be. anyone know how accurate that figure is? 24.116.54.170 00:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Main industrial center

Someone recently removed the remark that Medellín is Colombia's "main industrial center". Does someone have a citation one way or the other? -- Jmabel | Talk July 6, 2005 04:13 (UTC)

Medellin is Colombia's 3th main industrial center after Bogota and Cali -- Elpaisa1 (5 Dec 2005)

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Wikipedia in Spanish states that Medellin is the second largest city, how come in English is the third largest? (Raniya 22:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC))

There seems to be a edit war between the wikipedians of Medellín against the other Colombian wikipedians on this, but it will be settled soon as there's a census going on in all Colombia. Sorry about my English.--Nicanor5 05:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey,there isn´t a war between the wikipedians of Medellín and the other Colombian wikipedians, it´s between the wikipedians from Medellín and Cali. I´m from Pereira and I support the truth that Medellín is the 2nd biggest! yussef90 14:17, 04 June 2006 (CET)

The truth is: Medellín as a municipality is the third after Bogotá and Cali, but as a metropolitan area is the 2nd because there are 10 cities in the same area totally united. Cali, on the other hand, has only Yumbo and Jamundí as metropolitan area. In terms of economics, Medellín has been known as an industrial city, mainly for the textile industry. --slayer 00:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I have added a homicide rate statistic, but looking at the talk page, it is obviously considerably underestimated, and I would welcome edits that suggested some more accurate statistics. Generally, I have tried to improve the tone in which the current assertions are written over part of the article, without greatly altering the assertions made.129.11.217.178 (talk) 22:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Population

According to DANE, the projected city population for 2005 is 2,093,624. Where is the 3.2 million figure for the city from? Also, adding up the 2005 population figures for the 10 municipalities in the official metropolitan area only results in about 3.2 million (see Valle de Aburra official website). I will change the figures unless someone has an official source for the 3.2/3.8 instead of 2.1/3.2. Polaron 02:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main Industrial Center 2

Please help me adding information about the economy of medellin!! if you discussed facts before maybe you should put them in the article, it will not do any good if it stays in the discussion page when they've been answered... I'm going to add what I know about Medellin's economy but correct me if I'm wrong.. --Don Quijote's Sancho 05:28, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] population and comparissons with other colombian urban centers

A city, also called a downtown is the core of a metropolitan area. in this respect you can quote Milan having just 1.5 Million inhabitants while the city you find to your eyes is around 5 million inhabitants. How's that possible? simple, a modern city is composed by downtown areas, other adjacent urban areas and even sub-urban areas. I'm using the same data you are providing and the downtown has a 2+ million inhabitants... however, if you know medellin, you just require physically one step to go from Medellin municipality to itagui municipality or to bello monucipality and so with other municipalities within the metropolitan area...

So while refering to cities dimmensions, metropolitan areas more than downtowns are the factors to take in consideration... if not, you'd say rome is bigger than milan just comparing the downtowns... (just comparing two cities that are known and not to make use of clasical comparissons with LA or NY)...

Using metro area figures for city populations is misleading. Why not just say 3rd largest city and 2nd largest metropolitan area? This way is is not ambiguous. If the article is about the entire metropolitan area then we could emphasize the metro area figure. Otherwise, we can mention it but emphasize the administrative area figure. Is the article about the city or the entire metropolitan area? Polaron 22:06, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I think, we can go as you say... the issue is ranking the cities according to the population.... we can do it as you say third city and second metropolitan area (in fact medellin is a bigger urban area than cali because of the metropolitan area).... Notice in every city article the metropolitan area is worth the mention.... please make the change yourself but over the current revision, not simply reverting...
wikipedias's definition of metropolitan area: "A metropolitan area is a large population center consisting of a large city and its adjacent zone of influence, or of several neighboring cities or towns and adjoining areas, with one or more large cities serving as its hub or hubs".
If this definition is truth then the Cali's metropolitan area should have cities like Buga, Palmira, Yumbo, Jamundi, Guacari, Pradera, etc., even Puerto Tejada and Santander de Quilichao in the Cauca department, because a lot of people in those cities travel everyday to Cali to work, study, etc. The sum of the population of those cities is bigger than 3.4 million so you can't keep saying that Medellin's metropolitan area is bigger than Cali's.

Everybody knows that Cali has a metropolitan area the problem is that it has not been officially defined.

There is an official urban area definition which includes just the municipalities of Cali, Yumbo and Jamundi. There is some intervening rural territory between this area and some of the other areas you mentioned. The Medellin urban area is definitely larger than Cali's. Polaron 23:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Well Polaron could you please give us a link with an official definition of the METROPOLITAN (not urban) AREA of Cali with it's cities? because wikipedia can not be based upon what you guess but on real facts and as far a I know there is not an official definition yet. Meanwhile you can not say that Medellin's metropolitan area is bigger than Cali's.
According to the sources cited in the article [1]

for medellin population, [2] for Cali's population, and having taking in consideration that a metropolitan area is an administrative area Clearly and legally defined (the description of the municipalities that are part of each metropolitan area can be found in [3])

we have:

Municipalities (Medellin's area) Inhabitants Municipalities (Cali's area) Inhabitants
Medellín 2.093.624 Cali 2.369.696
Barbosa 39.066 Jamundí 64.149
Bello 400.291 Yumbo 79.121
Caldas 74.208
Envigado 175.085
La Estrella 57.269
Girardota 40.404
Itagüi 288.207
Sabaneta 41.298
3.209.452 2.512.966


this clearly shows the urban center defined by Valle de Aburra's Metropolitan area (Medellin's metropolitan area) is bigger than that from Cali.

The most authoritative sources I could find are this bulletin from the Cali goverment and this note regarding the jurisdiction of the Cali Metropolitan Police. DANE has a Cali-Yumbo metropolitan area but I couldn't find what municipalities they include. So it looks like the included municipalities are: Cali, Candelaria, Jamundí, La Cumbre, Vijes, Yumbo. The 2005 DANE estimate of the total population from here is 2,645,332. This is still definitely smaller than the official Valle De Aburra metropolitan area. Polaron 17:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

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Medellín is the second biggest in everything , very easy! yussef90 13:31, June 04, 2006 (CET)

[edit] "Dominant" ethnicities

In the section on ethnicities we had:

The ethnicities in Medellín are made up of Europeans, Amerindians, and some African slave descendants, with some influence of people from the Middle Eastern countries, that came in different migration waves and mixed with each other to form a very ethnically diverse society. The most dominant being Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

I had asked for citation on this, commenting "What I'm asking for here is citation on these three nationalities; for example, I really doubt there is a "dominant" Israeli presence in Medellín." A response came "There is no 'dominant presence', but there are Isrealy communities that join with Romanian and german jews that settled in medellin more than 60 years ago." I'm assuming "Isrealy" means to say "Israeli". German and Romanian Jews are not Middle Eastern (except in the sense of where their ancestors presumably came from 2,000 years ago; that sort of standard would make Germans and Hungarians Asian) or Israeli (in any sense). And "dominant" here is a very loaded wordThe current wording suggests (to me, at least) that the Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese somehow "dominate" the Europeans, Amerindians, and Africans; I doubt this is true, and it is a very odd thing to say without citation.

Barring citation to the contrary, I am changing this to:

The ethnicities in Medellín are made up of Europeans, Amerindians, and some African slave descendants, with some influence of people from the Middle Eastern countries such as Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Descendants of a series of waves of immigration have mixed with each other to form a very ethnically diverse society.

Jmabel | Talk 05:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

    • There is not such thing as a Dominat ethnicity in the country. The settlers that have come on waves to the country during the last 5 centuries of colonialism of the continent, had blended with the race in an almost intraceble way. Germans, British, French, Turqs, Italians, Chinese, Spanions and many others races had blended with South-American Natives, without continue the languaje chain and adopting Spanish has their tonge. I am from this area of the country and I descendant of Spanish (Grandfather), Natives(Grandmother), French (Grandfmother) and Italian (Grandfather)sides. Then you can say that there is a dominat race in my country and that Mestizos which means a misture. Unless you consider dominant race the physiological characteristics that differenciates the habitants of an area of the country compared with the habitants of another area. As an example, you can compare the peoples from Bogota and Medelin, that looks, talks and behave in a different way, and this is due the different races that mixed with the natives of those territories centuries ago.

The article has misleading information on the ethnicities, it fails to mention any mixture with amerindians.

[edit] Numbers

I recently did some cleanup here.

I don't see how Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño on www.suleasing-intl.com is an adequate citation for the total numbers US$ 7 Billion dollars annually and more than 80,000 Colombian employees. - Jmabel | Talk 21:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foundation

I corrected the name of the Spanish conqueror that founded Medellin to Francisco Herrera y Campuzano, my source is the municipality's official website, www.medellin.gov.co. Prietojuane 02:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)prietojuane

Also, it says that the valley was 'discovered', how can it be discovered when there were already people living there?

[edit] Crime, again

Someone cut the following:

Like other large Colombian urban centers, Medellín remained quite small until recent times, namely the postwar period up until the 1970s, when it developed into one of the nation's industrial powerhouses and attracted many rural people seeking work or safety from political and social turmoil. In the 1980s it gained notoriety as the infamous druglord Pablo Escobar's base of operations; the presence of Escobar's cartel brought a wave of major violence stemming from intercartel rivalries and intimidation; the city's international reputation suffered horribly as a result and it was known mainly for its seemingly uncontrollable crime rate and drug trade. Though it must be said that the vast majority of homicides in the city were committed by drug-dealing delinquent street gangs and bandits rather than organized crime. Following Escobar's assassination in 1993, the violence had decreased notably though it has positively plummeted in just the last 3 years, and the city is currently enjoying a period of relative prosperity and peace, despite the high unemployment rates and the increasing problem of displaced people from rural areas, fleeing the ongoing war among guerrillas, paramilitaries and the regular army. Medellín had in the 1990s the highest ever recorded homicide rates of any city outside a war zone.

This may not have been perfect, but it was essentially accurate. Something like this belongs in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 05:13, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your paragraph but it's missing references. Could you please find them and introduce them into the article? Perhaps you can also help introduce this recent article by Revista Semana were they are reporting on the resurgence of violence in many areas of the city [4]. --F3rn4nd0 BLA BLA BLA 21:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
It wasn't my paragraph. I merely noted that it was cut. And if you want to cut everything unreferenced from this article, there will be very little left. - Jmabel | Talk 06:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed the crime section is that okay? It looks fine I reckon though I don't know about anyone else, and I chose cities from a similar population group. Sarcastic Sid 23:34, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimapia

I added the link of Medellin in Wikimapia as an external link. Enjoy the satellital photographs. {{subst:190.24.119.246|19 November 2006}}

[edit] Incoherent phrase?

"Most people of Medellín are mostly made up of..."? - Jmabel | Talk 07:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

  • We are made of a lot of anger, a wide pool of genetic material from around the world with a toping of short patience. I really hope this answer your stupid question (posting).....
  • Excuse me, my "stupid question" was simply a quotation of an incoherent passage in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 18:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Second main city?"

The opening paragraph contains the statement:

"It is the second main city of the country, after Bogotá."

I am not sure what this means. Does it mean the second largest city? Or does it mean that it's a second capital of the country? Many languages identify a nation's capital city as a main city so maybe it was just translated literally. This should be fixed because it can be confusing in it's current description. SWik78 13:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV?

I hope this is a work in progress because some of the revamp looks suspect to me, like a tourist brochure.

"The city is today a very safe place"

Hmm....I personally have a problem calling a city with a +30 per 100,000 murder rate safe. Would Chicago or Los Angeles be called "very safe"? Their murder rates are far lower than Medellín's. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's my understanding that most of Medellín's murders are inflicted by the urban poor on one another instead of the highly structured cartel violence, even going back to the early 90's. Please forgive me if I have your intentions mixed up. Thank you very much.

"The city is today a very safe place": Of course this idea has to be read in context. "Safe place" means that you can visit it safely. Almost all modern cities have urban violence and 30 per 100,000 is considered "normal" under modern standards. Anyway, the sentence can be removed, since statistics speak alone. Thanks. --AL (talk) 07:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Referring to the crime section, is it right there's no mention of the paramilitaries and how they've had a major effect on reducing the cities' murder rate? Sarcastic Sid (talk) 14:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

if you have such an information with sources, you are welcome to edit the article accordingly. --AL (talk) 07:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree, the tone used in this article is not encyclopedic and violates WP:NPOV. It will need clean up or a complete rewrite. --Zer0~Gravity (Roger - Out) 12:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What is such an "encyclopedic tone'" and where the current version is violating" the NPOV? Welcome to clean up, but the article has enough references to prove it is not violating the NPOV, at least since my point of view. Therefore, I will put attention to your clean since it should be according to the NPOV and respecting the current references. I am more concern for the English redaction. Most of the references have been translated from the Spanish version where it is a featured article and references have been proven real. --AL (talk) 07:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)