Medellification or the art of reading the city » Al Poniente

“Perhaps the phrase that I like the most in the song, and the one that I consider most appropriately condenses the message, is that of ‘there are no inhabitants here, only clients’, as it represents very well the way in which those of us who live in the Valley feel It has been stripping us of our citizenship to relegate us to the role of consumers; generating, as a consequence, that those who do not have the capacity to consume are despised and relegated.”

Few artists manage to transform an acidic social critique into a catchy, well-produced song the way the artists do. Alcolirykozthose rappers who began their career on the slopes of the city of Medellín (those where “everywhere you look you have to go up”) and have managed to take their talent even outside the national geography. Medellification, his most recent production, which takes its name from the phenomenon of urban displacement that afflicts the city and worries its inhabitants, is no exception to the rule, because in just three minutes and fifty-two seconds he manages to put some of the main problems that plague the city today. Let’s look at some.

The rappers begin their song by mentioning the problem of irregular employment and labor exploitation that reaches its limits with those companies that have made the benefits of their workers as flexible as possible, hiding behind an apparent “partnership” that they establish with them. This is the case of Rappi (a company that explicitly appears in the topic), but also of Uber and other messaging and passenger transportation tools.

It continues to problematize the relationship between city dwellers and foreigners and how it changes according to their purchasing power and economic capital. It is, in literal words, a “selective xenophobia” that praises the tourist who consumes excessively ―even when that consumption includes the complex market of prostitution and illicit substances― and condemns the foreigner (generally a migrant) who arrives at the city ​​out of necessity, either to work at whatever works for them, or to beg to survive.

We have, then, two problems of considerable importance that those of us who live in the city constantly encounter. But the artists go much further and, in a reading of the city worthy of those who call themselves “asphaltnauts”, they expose the phenomena of gentrification and conurbation with a clarity and forcefulness that is difficult to compare on the local scene.

The first phenomenon is represented by the trend of the moment: evicting those who rent housing to convert them into daily rental spaces for foreigners (the popular Airbnb), a situation that forces traditional inhabitants to move from their neighborhoods, breaking with relationships of roots, neighborhood association and even participatory citizenship.

The second appears in the formula: “They were born rich and flee to rural areas. To be far from us and to be super spiritual”, since the conurbation is, precisely, the process by which the city expands towards rural and neighboring areas, to the point that practically indissoluble relationships are established. Of course, this last phenomenon also has consequences on the lives of the locals who, with the arrival of new inhabitants with greater resources, repeat the cycle of displacement that takes place in the city.

Perhaps the phrase that I like the most in the song, and the one that I consider most appropriately condenses the message, is that of “there are no inhabitants here, only clients”, as it represents very well the way in which those of us who live in the Valley are has been stripping away our citizenship to relegate us to the role of consumers; generating, as a consequence, that those who do not have the capacity to consume are despised and relegated.

With the imminent arrival of some (not so) new local and departmental governments, we can only hope that our leaders have as good a capacity to read and understand the city as the Alcolirykoz.