Pasolini in Medellín: Notes for a visual ethnography about urban outskirts, four years of experience with young directors. Young people, violence and communication
Authors[1]: Jair Vega Casanova[2], Mónica Pérez Marín[3], Germán Arango Rendón[4] and Camilo Pérez Quintero[5]
Abstract:
Within the Project Youth Organizations: ¿Spaces of legitimization, resistance or alternativeness? , this text presents a reflection on the project “Passolini in Medellin. Notes for a visual ethnography about urban outskirts”, which aims at exploring the city with young people from outskirt neighborhoods from their own perspective and look. from “Media Transference”, the project has built a series of training in techniques and concepts (audiovisual and ethnographic) searching to transform them into a kind of native visual anthropologists, with the objective of returning into their own territory –the neighborhood-, to observe it in a new way and stop in what seems not to have any importance: the daily life, and so, to think in a critical way their neighborhood identities and city imaginaries, and in great extent the violence built on them. Besides the conceptual and methodological description of the project, the text includes a reflection by its directors through a Making- off –the look that looks the look- and an analysis on the characteristics of young people who accepted the call, participated in all project activities and continue tied to communication dynamics, in such a way that allows us understanding, from their memories, the motivations and expectations who moved them to participate and the demands that the project could satisfy.
All the participants in the project were summoned or affected at some time by the violent context of their locality, but they decided on pacific actions through the communication
Key words:
Young people, political identities, visual anthropology, urban outskirt, Media transference
So is my neighborhood, jo… they have told me about bad and good things, that has to be relative, the running about are many, at the edge of the eyes that look, warm streets walked on at sword crossing, admitted education, security has not value, smiles flow, talks, knowledge is a lot of cane, in hard time tangles, I’ve made a lot to see the guns keep silence, to shake our hands, finances are little, high the level of hope…rumor truth moves around, profile are forged, wealth that Sherazzi doesn’t show in her shows, how many things occur, how many things are told, there isn’t a photo, a video, ignorant news in the neighborhoods, the talent overpasses the media list… come on and know my neighborhood and tell me whether its odor aren’t sublime, aren’t sublime… So is my neighborhood, that is my neighborhood… So is my neighborhood, you come to the neighborhood!”
(Fragment of “So is my neighborhood”, a song by SOCIEDAD FB7, from the album “In the middle of the war”, Medellín, 2004)
Taken from Arango y Pérez, 2004.
1. Introduction
The Project Pasolini in Medellín: Notes for a visual ethnography about urban outskirts, originated from an undergraduate thesis by, in that moment, students of Anthropology at Universidad de Antioquia, aims at exploring the city with young people from outskirt neighbourhoods from their own perspective and look. Thus, from “Media Transference”, the project has built a series of training in techniques and concepts (audiovisual and ethnographic) searching to transform them into a kind of native visual anthropologists, with the objective of returning into their own territory –the neighbourhood-, to observe it in a new way and stop in what seems not to have any importance: daily life, and so, to think in a critical way their neighbourhood identities and city imaginaries, and in great extent the violence built on them.
The methodology has become strong because of the continuity of the Project with young people from other city zones, who have replicated their learning, becoming leaders in communication formation dynamics, proposing new ways for alternative communication process and media.
This new reflection about Pasolini in Medellín is carried out in the framework of the project Young Organizations: Spaces of legitimating, resistance or alternativeness, performed by the Universidad del Norte, the Universidad de Antioquia, the Colombian Colegiatura of Medellín and the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. This project aims at characterizing the political identities configured in young organizations and dynamics working on processes of Communication for the Social Change in Barranquilla, Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia. One of the innovative aspects of this experience is precisely to have been developed in marginal urban contexts, because in Colombia some cases have been studied in similar rural contexts, such as the Communication Collective Montes de Maria Line 21 (Vega J. y Bayuelo S., 2008).
The paper will be developed into two parts. Firstly, a video[6] (attached) that includes a sample of the productions of young people participating in the project –visualization of their senses and aesthetics-, a reflection by their directors through a Making Off -the look that looks the look- and an analysis on the characteristics of young people who accepted the call, participated in all project activities and continue linked to communication dynamics, in such a way that allows us understanding, from their memories, the motivations and expectations which moved them to participate and the demands that the project could satisfy.
Secondly, the paper includes a brief context of Medellin and the characteristics surrounding young people in last decades, a description of the project Pasolini in Medellin both methodological and from its conceptual approach, and finally the analysis of the characteristics of the young people described above.
Though the study aims at achieving an understanding of young people’s identity referents before, during and after the Project, this reflection presented deals with the before, with the investigation of the historical referents built along young people’s life, referents that, in some way and from the own young people’s look, have “taken” them or have contributed to their participation and permanence in a project like the one described here. Projects coming “from the outside” and that become property of participants, require a connection with social processes and dynamics which we pretend to understand.
Because of this, to carry out a participative research is not a methodological option but a compulsory condition for understanding. It aims at obtaining a joined reflection among intellectuals and participants in the process. In this sense, to activate memory and meaning reconstruction devices, the Workshop (Riaño, 2000) has been a basic tool as a research technique that has permitted the construction of individual biographies of participants in the project and mental maps that allow the visual projection of those biographies in such a way that they can be socialized, and so, a joined look about the individual and collective processes can be built.
2. The Project Context
To understand and dimension the importance of the proposal Pasolini in Medellin it is necessary to precise some social-historical characteristics of the city.
Medellin, “City of the Eternal Spring”, is the second Colombian city and has around 3.500.000 inhabitants, including its metropolitan area. It is divided into 16 "comunas" which group 249 neighbourhoods (Alcaldia de Medellin). In the first fifty years of the 20th Century, great economical transformations began to appear in the city, based on the creation of a strong modern economical infrastructure, especially textile and industrial, complemented with a strong service industry. This characteristic deserves the recognition of “Medellin: industrial capital of Colombia. At the end of the 1950’s, the city excelled by its exemplary dynamic of maintaining the social and political order, that “although hierarchized, manifested an exemplary dynamic of transformation and strength of the institutional and political status quo which was an example to all the country” (Nordeña, 2007)
On the other hand, in this period, the population grew in great proportions, mainly due to the arrival of migrants of nearby villages who came to form the rising working class. The territory expanded with the formation of new neighbourhoods favoured by the local government and the render of some services such as electricity, telephone, iron aqueduct and tramway was initiated (Naranjo y Villa, 1997: 21). So, in 1951, the city had doubled its population in 13 years; from 168.000 inhabitants in 1938 to 350.000 (Colombia, 1993). This process was evident in the great number of emergent neighbourhoods characterized by illegal occupation of lands and urban transformation of zones with agriculturist vocation. At the end of this decade, the so called “tugurial focuses” or “pirate neighbourhoods”, characterized by the fractioning of land without any public service, began to appear (Herrera y Perez, 2007).
At the end of the 1960’s, the social and developmental model began to express its limitations and contradictions, showing fissures and signals of erosion, making evident a stagnation of the industrial activity, a reduction of job sources that produce a slow deterioration of working class life conditions. In this new context, the State began to loose its leadership position in the eyes of the city inhabitants; the perception of order, development and balance strongly fixed in antioqueños imaginary, as a powerful and enterpriser city goes into crisis and sharpens as the goods and services begin to concentrate in dominant classes (Schmitter, Giraldo y Patiño, August, 2006). The crisis faced by the city is evident in the 70’s and 80’s in a high concentration of the political power by the Central State, in an increase of the political exclusion level that enlarges the levels of common delinquency and violence.
In the late 80’s and the early 90’s “ the socio-economic stand still and the socio-cultural crisis of the city increased to uncontrollable levels and it was sped up by the power crisis generated by emerging new sectors, specially drug traffickers, who intended to claim spaces formerly exclusive of the traditional city elites” (Noreña, 2007). Power disputed through politics and armed and illegal ways opened the door to new marginal actors within the city, such as common delinquency, militias as a new urban form of guerrillas and paramilitary.
According to Herrera and Pérez (2006) the appearance of the “sicariato” (hired hit men) in the late 80’s and early 90’s along with the drug trafficking phenomenon, a new scenario was created in Colombia. “Youngsters gangs” and marginal settlements or "comunas" become the centre of social analysis.
According to Alonso Salazar (1990), we were witnessing a unique phenomenon: a scenario where youngsters were willing to die the same way as Islamic fundamentalists or Japanese kamikazes. The most important difference is that these suicides are not caused by an apparent political, ideological or religious idealism: “they are not only willing to die in spectacular actions, but they also live their day by day filled with death. When a young person joins the “sicariato” structure, he/she knows that his/her life will be short. Many of them give instructions for their funerals in advance. They are actually more scared of jail than of death.” (1990:148). This idea of “no future”, “we weren’t born to be seeds” has been reinforced by the film work of Victor Gaviria, where he insists on the idea of an “eternal present”, a “presentalism” and a routinization of vandalism and death.
In this same scenario and as a result of an ethnographic work with youngsters of the Antioquia neighbourhood, researcher Pilar Riaño Alcalá (2000) offers another interpretation: “even though terror and violence have been and still are the daily life for these young men and women, their memories acknowledge that these phenomena are perceived as extraordinary due to the pain and suffering they bring to their lives. Anthropologist Riaño objects the routinization of terror and the banalization of violence. “ more than a society that banalizes terror, we are in the presence of a society where daily life is woven around the dead and death, and this is not an act to banalize or routinize them, but only to represent the lived experiences of pain and suffering” (2000:33). Memorials, altars, songs, death story telling, mnemonic places and shared narratives in daily life are evidence of the efforts of these youngsters for establishing continuity and this renders useless all interpretations regarding the eternal present.
The danger of applying the logic of expanding violence and the armed actors to the human reality of the subjects, is on the one hand, leaving them without a place for locating themselves; that is, reducing the historical interpretations of observable phenomena and on the other hand, taking away their decision making ability, their abilities as “agents”, when reducing the analysis to dichotomised categories, such as victims/victimizers, dominated/dominant, masters/slaves. The worst part of these conceptualizations, says the author, is that these analysis hide the fact that all individual, in the sense of subject, is an active agent in the creation of historical and social reality.
Alonso Salazar (2006) also summons that it is very simplistic to explain young people’s violence solely due to poverty factors. This could lead to mistakes in intervention models created to face the problem. Beyond poverty, “young people’s violence is present in contexts where the mirage of consumism mixes contrastively with material scarcity… and it requires for its development, of the existence of such phenomena as drug trafficking or other forms of criminality like guerrilla, which serve as high points (page 31). To these, we have to add the fact that the “youngster’s gangs” are used by other powers or they evolve themselves into other forms of delinquency with less age group characteristics and more expertise” (page 32).
3. The project
The project starts with the conception that images are everywhere and permeate daily life at all levels. They are linked to identities, narratives, readings and interpretations of the world of each collective. But, what do they reallyt mean? What is there beyond their sensible evidences? Captivated just by its content, the look of the Project Pasolini in Medellin has become contemplative putting aside all the investigation for the semantic charges, the relation built between the evidence and the eye. In this sense, there is no image in itself, neither the city; they acquire sense just through the eyes and heads of human beings who travel through them. In this way, they incarnate into a body, a multiple body as its meanings.
The project Pasolini in Medellin (Arango y Pérez, 2004) attempts to explore the multiplicity of urban imaginaries built facing the city and the outskirts, rescuing the look of young men and women who live in Medellin neighbourhoods. Through a methodology of awareness workshops articulated from an anthropological (ethnographic) axis and an audiovisual one, topics such as the urban, migratory processes, outskirts are discussed. At the same time, people involved in the project are trained in photograph and video techniques, storyboard, script writing, film edition, shooting and feed back with the community. All this in the context of a critical atmosphere which allows re-meaning the urban by contributing to the construction of a new knowledge that goes beyond audiovisual production context.
Though the call for participating in the project never took material form, 18 youngsters from different neighbourhoods of the city came to the workshops. This population came from two groups differentiated by their way of involving in the proposal and by their previous experience in audiovisual production area. The former, made up of young people from the community channels of the metropolitan area who had experience in audiovisual production, and the latter, made up of young people who came to the project on their own initiative and then became consolidated as independent, and finding in them a great echo regarding the ethnographic proposal that starts from a re-exploration of the neighbourhood based on the observation and the field diary.
The project is inspired and takes its name from the movie director Pasolini not only because of his film production focused on the look of marginal characters, delinquency and poverty of post-war Italy but also by his literary production in which his bets to recover and to regain possession of the local narrations of Roman neighbourhoods, starting from building stories about young people daring to live the city from logics, visions and aesthetics far from Roman bourgeoisie, building at the same time a popular identity with characteristics very similar to those found in Medellin, because Rome and Medellin share a common settlement history: rural migrations from which both cities were shaped and in which other ways of living in the city were proposed from the outskirt neighbourhoods.
On the other hand, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s aesthetic proposal, both in his literature and his films, was an important guide to build (re-build) reflections which permit to think, from other places, Medellin, a city that for 20 years has been beaten by armed conflicts produced by drug trafficking and violence generated by different armed actors.
However, methodologically, the project is built on the bases inherited from Jean Rouch who in his travels to Africa proposes media transference as a strategy allowing passing from the researchers’ eyes to those of the protagonists, trying to regain possession of the local narrations from native’s narrative logic and structure that offer a semantic, aesthetic and narrative richness to understand cultural contexts.
Another motivation to propose this study is the absence of academic proposals to rescue a look from the marginal and the young, beyond the statistical data of positive studies. This bias in the look took the authors of the Anthropology thesis above mentioned and directors of this project to review the more secular products such as argumentative films and literary production. In that search, works such as the legendary film by Victor Gaviria “Rodrigo D” appeared. This film shows how the drug trafficking phenomenon builds a Manichean relation with the "sicario" figure in outskirt neighbourhood. Another text found was “No nacimos pa’semilla” (We were not born for seed) by Alonso Salazar that more than a sociological text became the adventure book in which young people recognized their story as something mythical and with the same value as the national history.
In the last five years, the works dealing with the outskirt from Anthropology have been called to look at the displaced by violence and natural disasters; but they have put aside the look of the outskirt understood as a fragmented space where ways of living are produced which make complex subjects as these just can placed themselves in the transit between permanence and instability.
The project also discusses the traditional anthropological position –in some way sterilized by the attempts of validating its discourse as scientific and objective- focusing its look on the spectrum –that is, approaching exclusively to the visible content of images-, in which limited its encounters with image universe, and its only project consisted of translating the visual into words, understanding images as a simple datum[7]; and so, they can not more than illustrate their discourse in which only words are the mechanism to build “knowledge”.
From Rouch (1979), it is proposed a reflective approach to visual discourse as an alternative route for the so called visual Anthropology that points at not to translate neither to illustrate, but to explore the diverse opportunities offered by the images to build knowledge, both from their contexts of production and their contexts of observation. This exercise also states the decentralization of the look to approach other discourses, to other representations of reality, and to do this it questions their methodologies, their theoretical precepts which have to be reconfigured in order to approach the alterity, suggesting a route to be built.
Debray (1994) suggests a possible route that reunites at the same time: a history of the art that deals with manufacturing techniques; a semiology dealing with the symbolic aspects; and a history of mentalities for thinking the role occupied by images in society. But this triad could not be approached in an independent way. The proposal would be then to recognize in these three analysis levels –technique, symbolic and political- the complexity of images, their polysemic nature, and then the necessity of establishing a methodological corpus which allows approaching to the unity of the figure, from the relations interwoven among its intervals. And in this sense, the technological developments, those of the filmic and photographic theory, could shed light to the potential of images as alternative of the anthropological discourse, and in the same way, an ethnographic approach to images could serve as support to their production and interpretation.
In conclusion, an anthropological proposal from what is called a visual ethnography, does not mean to keep the camera in the ethnographer’s kit, but the construction of a whole methodological corpus that enables those images to build knowledge from the very production and from further visualization contexts.
After working in the Project for more than six years with different young people from the city, it is possible to identify the following achievements in the participants:
The participants build a more critical look facing their social surrounding which goes beyond the neighbourhood in which they live.
Young people have been able to find “other” ways of telling their reality, meeting themselves and interacting with different situations and people. That is, young people have passed from the indicative and objectifying –what the narrator voice wants to be- to the pictorial, polysemic and interactive the image in many cases can be.
Violence and its stories were not a generalized discourse in the narration of any of the participants. Though the works carried out start from the events occurred during urban conflicts, their search transcends the individuals and how they make use of their insight facing the situations brought by the armed conflict: fight by power and prestige, confinements, impositions, temporalities.
4. Reflections on the youngsters participating in the project
From the memory workshops it was possible to create a collective reflection regarding the characteristics of the youngsters participating in the project, which could have influenced their decision of joining it.
Firstly, it is important to say that the youngsters participating in the research and who are part of those giving continuity to the process, all come from the group that, at the moment of their incorporation to the project were not linked to any channel and had no experience with media production. This is interesting because the relation with the medium is not the purpose of his/her job, but the challenge of creating new points of view and stories about their neighbourhood.
One of the main common characteristics of the participants in the project, including one of its sponsors, is that they come from the city marginal areas and in the majority of cases have received the pressure of some of the different kinds of violence present in their contexts, which are not always the same. Nevertheless, although they have all been activists in changing processes in their localities, they never chose illegal ways, but on the contrary, they chose looking for expression channels which would enable them to visualize their bets.
“one realizes that we all come from popular sectors of the cities or rural areas stricken by violence… and this is precisely the reason that makes possible the appearance of the need to resist and express”. (Sandra Benítez, a young participant in the project Life History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the Pasolini group in Medellín, May 22nd, 2008)
Nevertheless, the need of expression of this young people is not possible to be canalized through the political parties on the one hand[8] because their agendas, in the case of Colombia, are far apart from the problems of the population, as they are more concerned with their own survival. On the other hand, young people’s participation channels are usually formal spaces that do not promote effective participation leading to solving needs. It is for this reason that these youngsters look for other non-institutionalized ways of expression where they express themselves, in many cases, against excluding institutionalization.
But, where does this search for ways and spaces for expression of these youngsters from Medellín come from?
It is outstanding at first instance the presence of the feminine figure more than the family as a socialization referent in the participants of the project. In most cases the grandmother, the aunt or the mother were a motivating and orienting stimulus towards working with others, persistence and the search of their own dreams and as the person reassuring confidence in themselves as subjects. The paternal figure was seen in some cases even as an obstacle and hinder for assuming their own challenges.
Another common element has been sensibilization to creation processes and artistic expression. Most of these young people had joined theatre groups and in some cases they had developed a great fondness for writing and the narrative
“I can see two things that often come out when we are doing presentations and that have signed some of the interviews. These are theatre and community service. It seems it all starts there” (Eric Baniz, youngster participating in the project Life History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the Pasolini Group in Medellín, May 22nd, 2008)
In accordance with the former declaration, previous to joining the Pasolini project, all youngsters were involved in community service, in working “with others”, as it is expressed by Carlos Santos, another participant. It is then shown that there is a need of influencing the surroundings and the participation in any of the organization expressions with the aim of solving difficult situations at the local level.
Processes like the ones described above have enabled them on the one hand, to progressively acquire a political formation oriented in the first place, towards the construction of critical readings of reality and the strengthening of their autonomy, and on the other, to be open to learning and to changes. At the same time, this makes it possible for them to be willing to engage in experiences and processes which will enable them to accept challenges and find channels to express their bets.
In conclusion, they all have the need to express themselves although in a given moment they did not have the ability, nor the necessary tools to communicate as a project of a society. This is to say, to make it a reality they were looking for a different language to do it. They were looking for scenarios like the ones offered by Pasolini in Medellín, that would enable them to construct a new reality, a new world, with a new perspective, with other meanings. It was a search for new languages and aesthetics that would allow them not only to question the dominating discourses and logic for interpreting the world[9], but also to propose new worlds starting with the new discourses and interpretations that would be created in the process.
Another knowledge acquired during the development of this research has to do with the pertinence and opportunity of the projects. It is impossible to think that a project like Pasolini in Medellín can be designed with the aim of getting to any kind of young people without discrimination. It will surely get to those youngsters who have been building up an increasing need of expression and that will find in this project the possibility to do it. It is not only the means; it is also the senses, eyes and heads to take another look to the neighbourhood and its surroundings. It is maybe for this reason that those who had experience in media were involved likewise in the project, because for them, the relationship with the surroundings had already been constructing an experience centred in the environment itself and not in the view being formed in the process.
5. Final Reflections
One of the key features common to the project participants, including one of its drivers, is coming from the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city and in most cases have received pressure from some of the violence in their contexts, which is not equal for all cases.
“Then the matter of experience for my neighborhood was quite particular because I witnessed all the violence in neighborhoods and throughout the armed conflict that was committed throughout the 90's ... and I began to live this whole affair and that began to mark my life as I was growing up ... the issue was even more complicated ... When members of my family were part of the gangs in neighborhoods and began to fight the issue of territoriality ... who commanded, and that process started in the city to position itself as in the case of paramilitary, but it was also the matter of militias and gangs which had influence in everyone, and that was me again in the middle of a conflict because the question when I still was in college was, well, what is my place within this entire violence?, but I was also asked from outside, for example. when a paramilitary group began to control my neighborhood, again the question was, which is my place?, what about me? And my answer was "I do not have anything to do with this ," then there was a really tough time which marked two of my cousins and I asked myself again “What about you buddy” Then I decided to move voluntarily and left my neighbourhood” (Young participant in the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
It should be noted that although all of them have been activists in processes of change in their localities, they never chose politically by non-statutory but rather from the search for channels of expression that would enable them to make visible their choices of life.
This need for expression of these youngsters, on one hand, it is not possible to be channeled by the parties Politically[10], because their agendas in the Colombian case are growing more distant from the population´s own problems and deal more with their own survival, and on the other hand the instances of young participation are spaces that mostly do not allow a formal effective participation which leads to the resolution of their main needs. It is for this reason that these youngsters seek other ways to enable them to express themselves, which are not institutionalized, and many of the cases are precisely against an institutional which excludes them.
Before these young people did not have either the capacity or the tools they needed to communicate as a project of society, what is to say to build it, that is why they were looking to find a different language to do so. These are the scenarios that offers them the project Pasolini in Medellin that allows them to find language and aesthetics not just for interpellating the dominant discourses and logical interpretation of the world but also for proposing new worlds from speeches and new interpretations that would be built into the process.
“And then is when we say “OK, we are ready,” in the middle of this context actions of resistance must be created because we are not going to leave this neighborhood because this is the neighborhood of ours, then we started to think more about the story of the image we wanted to tell as stories, and that is when Pasolini comes to our lives , and starts all this wonderful creation process, the things that I remember the most of the process, say, most importantly, on the one hand that when we talked about telling stories the priest was a hard landmark because he was very concerned with fear, we also feared by the pressure exerted on the community and at the same time that resistance that we wanted to achieve from the stories that we were going to tell with Pasolini...when the boys were threaten the , when the priest began with all his pressure, the only thing we could do was what we did, go and get the newspaper and tell him that we were looking to meet in the evening because we worked and studied during the day, then give explanations was like the only thing that had to be done at that time because we felt hopeless , the other thing was to start telling the people what we were doing for people to give any feedback and overcome all doubts, was the only tool we had when we got the opportunity to tell stories, even the same day as the broadcast of videos lots of people came to watch. And we were given new reasons to resist and to show that there are other possibilities in the middle of this conflict"(Young participant in the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
Finally, as a way of countersigning the dynamics that are consolidated with the generation of these processes of appropriation of not only communication skills but the sense of anthropological reflection from the visual ethnography, stands out as once generated spaces, processes are developed Parallel to the sense of empowerment about the possibility of action as communication and social interaction.
"We have made other jobs of video, also at 13th commune, and now we build a strong group in audiovisual which is going to have a political index and might as well argue that some things like from the popular academy ..." (Young participant of the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
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Salazar, Alonso. (1990). No nacimos pa´semilla. Planeta: Bogotá.
Salazar A. (2006) Violencia Juvenil. Caso Medellín. BID, disponible en http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=821497, recuperado: 24 de julio de 2008.
Schmitter, P., Giraldo, M.I., Patiño, J.M. (2006, agosto), La ocupación del territorio en el proceso de urbanización del área metropolitana del valle de Aburrá, en Scripta Nova, Revista electrónica de geografía y ciencias sociales [en línea], vol. X, núm. 218 (83), disponible en http://www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-218-83.htm, recuperado: 26 de octubre de 2006.
Vega, J. y Escalante, K. (2007) Organizaciones Juveniles: ¿Espacios de formación ciudadana? En: Signo y Pensamiento. Volumen XXVI julio – diciembre. Universidad Javeriana.
Vega, J. y Bayuelo, S. (2008) Ganándole terreno al miedo: Cine y comunicación en Montes de María. En: Rodríguez, C. (2008) Lo que le vamos quitando a la guerra. Medios ciudadanos en contextos de conflicto armado en Colombia. Documento No 5 Friederich Ebert Stiftung. Bogotá
7. Audiovisual productions about young people in Medellín
Dalton, Scott y Martínez, Margarita. (2004). La sierra. Documental
Gaviria, Victor (1989). Rodrigo D: no futuro. Largometraje.
Gaviria, Victor (1998). La vendedora de rosas. Largometraje.
Gaviria, Victor. (2004) Sumas y restas. Drama.
Maillé Emilio. (2005). Rosario tijeras. Drama.
Schroeder, Barbet (2000). La virgen de los sicarios. Drama.
[1] Other participants in the research Project are Erik Baniz León, Sandra Benítez, Duvan Londoño and Carlos Nicolás Santos, members of the Project Pasolini in Medellín, Edgar Gómez and Akemis Sánches –students of the Universidad del Norte-, Kelly Pozo – Young Researcher Colciencias/Universidad del Norte, Juan Sebastián Salazar – student of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and Alejandro Yépez –student of the Universidad de Antioquia- as research assistants.
[2] Sociologist and Magister in Political-economical Studies, professor and researcher of the Research Group in Communication and Culture PBX of the Universidad del Norte. jvega@uninorte.edu.co
[3] Philosopher and Magister in Communication, professor of the Universidad de Antioquia. Perezmoni2000@yahoo.com
[4] Anthropologist, co-director of the Project Pasolini in Medellin. Notes for a visual etnography
about urban outskirts. elinstantaneo@yahoo.com
[5] Anthropologist, co-director of the Project Pasolini in Medellin. Notes for a visual etnography
about urban outskirts. camiloperezquintero@yahoo.com.ar
[6] You can find the paper in English and in Espanish, and the video on the blog http://www.pasolinienmedellin.blogspot.com/.
[7] “Images may become ‘the basis for systematic knowledge’. However images can only ever be ‘primary evidence’ that has an ‘independent authority’ and ‘authenticity’, but that ‘may often have no place in the final product of the research, except as occasional illustrations” (Collier & Collier, en Pink, 2001: 96)
[8] Even though political parties are not participation, not representation instances for youngsters coming from this part of the city, it is also true that during election campaigns the parties get a high voting from these sectors through the use of promises and gifts.
[9] With this respect, it is important to highlight that there is a previous study of juvenile organizations developed in the Atlantico Department, were it is revealed how identities produced in juvenile organizations with a certain degree of structure are constructed mainly as legitimating identities of adult logics and less as resistance identities or identities coming from the young people. Vega, J. and Escalante, K. (2007) Juvenile organizations: Spaces for Citizenship Construction? In Signo y Pensamiento: Volume XXVI, July-December. Universidad Javeriana.
[10] Although the parties Politically not constitute instances of participation or representation to the young people in these sectors of the city, the electoral junctures of these parties grow extensively on the votes ranging from those sectors, convening them with short-term perks.
Key words:
Young people, political identities, visual anthropology, urban outskirt, Media transference
So is my neighborhood, jo… they have told me about bad and good things, that has to be relative, the running about are many, at the edge of the eyes that look, warm streets walked on at sword crossing, admitted education, security has not value, smiles flow, talks, knowledge is a lot of cane, in hard time tangles, I’ve made a lot to see the guns keep silence, to shake our hands, finances are little, high the level of hope…rumor truth moves around, profile are forged, wealth that Sherazzi doesn’t show in her shows, how many things occur, how many things are told, there isn’t a photo, a video, ignorant news in the neighborhoods, the talent overpasses the media list… come on and know my neighborhood and tell me whether its odor aren’t sublime, aren’t sublime… So is my neighborhood, that is my neighborhood… So is my neighborhood, you come to the neighborhood!”
(Fragment of “So is my neighborhood”, a song by SOCIEDAD FB7, from the album “In the middle of the war”, Medellín, 2004)
Taken from Arango y Pérez, 2004.
1. Introduction
The Project Pasolini in Medellín: Notes for a visual ethnography about urban outskirts, originated from an undergraduate thesis by, in that moment, students of Anthropology at Universidad de Antioquia, aims at exploring the city with young people from outskirt neighbourhoods from their own perspective and look. Thus, from “Media Transference”, the project has built a series of training in techniques and concepts (audiovisual and ethnographic) searching to transform them into a kind of native visual anthropologists, with the objective of returning into their own territory –the neighbourhood-, to observe it in a new way and stop in what seems not to have any importance: daily life, and so, to think in a critical way their neighbourhood identities and city imaginaries, and in great extent the violence built on them.
The methodology has become strong because of the continuity of the Project with young people from other city zones, who have replicated their learning, becoming leaders in communication formation dynamics, proposing new ways for alternative communication process and media.
This new reflection about Pasolini in Medellín is carried out in the framework of the project Young Organizations: Spaces of legitimating, resistance or alternativeness, performed by the Universidad del Norte, the Universidad de Antioquia, the Colombian Colegiatura of Medellín and the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. This project aims at characterizing the political identities configured in young organizations and dynamics working on processes of Communication for the Social Change in Barranquilla, Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia. One of the innovative aspects of this experience is precisely to have been developed in marginal urban contexts, because in Colombia some cases have been studied in similar rural contexts, such as the Communication Collective Montes de Maria Line 21 (Vega J. y Bayuelo S., 2008).
The paper will be developed into two parts. Firstly, a video[6] (attached) that includes a sample of the productions of young people participating in the project –visualization of their senses and aesthetics-, a reflection by their directors through a Making Off -the look that looks the look- and an analysis on the characteristics of young people who accepted the call, participated in all project activities and continue linked to communication dynamics, in such a way that allows us understanding, from their memories, the motivations and expectations which moved them to participate and the demands that the project could satisfy.
Secondly, the paper includes a brief context of Medellin and the characteristics surrounding young people in last decades, a description of the project Pasolini in Medellin both methodological and from its conceptual approach, and finally the analysis of the characteristics of the young people described above.
Though the study aims at achieving an understanding of young people’s identity referents before, during and after the Project, this reflection presented deals with the before, with the investigation of the historical referents built along young people’s life, referents that, in some way and from the own young people’s look, have “taken” them or have contributed to their participation and permanence in a project like the one described here. Projects coming “from the outside” and that become property of participants, require a connection with social processes and dynamics which we pretend to understand.
Because of this, to carry out a participative research is not a methodological option but a compulsory condition for understanding. It aims at obtaining a joined reflection among intellectuals and participants in the process. In this sense, to activate memory and meaning reconstruction devices, the Workshop (Riaño, 2000) has been a basic tool as a research technique that has permitted the construction of individual biographies of participants in the project and mental maps that allow the visual projection of those biographies in such a way that they can be socialized, and so, a joined look about the individual and collective processes can be built.
2. The Project Context
To understand and dimension the importance of the proposal Pasolini in Medellin it is necessary to precise some social-historical characteristics of the city.
Medellin, “City of the Eternal Spring”, is the second Colombian city and has around 3.500.000 inhabitants, including its metropolitan area. It is divided into 16 "comunas" which group 249 neighbourhoods (Alcaldia de Medellin). In the first fifty years of the 20th Century, great economical transformations began to appear in the city, based on the creation of a strong modern economical infrastructure, especially textile and industrial, complemented with a strong service industry. This characteristic deserves the recognition of “Medellin: industrial capital of Colombia. At the end of the 1950’s, the city excelled by its exemplary dynamic of maintaining the social and political order, that “although hierarchized, manifested an exemplary dynamic of transformation and strength of the institutional and political status quo which was an example to all the country” (Nordeña, 2007)
On the other hand, in this period, the population grew in great proportions, mainly due to the arrival of migrants of nearby villages who came to form the rising working class. The territory expanded with the formation of new neighbourhoods favoured by the local government and the render of some services such as electricity, telephone, iron aqueduct and tramway was initiated (Naranjo y Villa, 1997: 21). So, in 1951, the city had doubled its population in 13 years; from 168.000 inhabitants in 1938 to 350.000 (Colombia, 1993). This process was evident in the great number of emergent neighbourhoods characterized by illegal occupation of lands and urban transformation of zones with agriculturist vocation. At the end of this decade, the so called “tugurial focuses” or “pirate neighbourhoods”, characterized by the fractioning of land without any public service, began to appear (Herrera y Perez, 2007).
At the end of the 1960’s, the social and developmental model began to express its limitations and contradictions, showing fissures and signals of erosion, making evident a stagnation of the industrial activity, a reduction of job sources that produce a slow deterioration of working class life conditions. In this new context, the State began to loose its leadership position in the eyes of the city inhabitants; the perception of order, development and balance strongly fixed in antioqueños imaginary, as a powerful and enterpriser city goes into crisis and sharpens as the goods and services begin to concentrate in dominant classes (Schmitter, Giraldo y Patiño, August, 2006). The crisis faced by the city is evident in the 70’s and 80’s in a high concentration of the political power by the Central State, in an increase of the political exclusion level that enlarges the levels of common delinquency and violence.
In the late 80’s and the early 90’s “ the socio-economic stand still and the socio-cultural crisis of the city increased to uncontrollable levels and it was sped up by the power crisis generated by emerging new sectors, specially drug traffickers, who intended to claim spaces formerly exclusive of the traditional city elites” (Noreña, 2007). Power disputed through politics and armed and illegal ways opened the door to new marginal actors within the city, such as common delinquency, militias as a new urban form of guerrillas and paramilitary.
According to Herrera and Pérez (2006) the appearance of the “sicariato” (hired hit men) in the late 80’s and early 90’s along with the drug trafficking phenomenon, a new scenario was created in Colombia. “Youngsters gangs” and marginal settlements or "comunas" become the centre of social analysis.
According to Alonso Salazar (1990), we were witnessing a unique phenomenon: a scenario where youngsters were willing to die the same way as Islamic fundamentalists or Japanese kamikazes. The most important difference is that these suicides are not caused by an apparent political, ideological or religious idealism: “they are not only willing to die in spectacular actions, but they also live their day by day filled with death. When a young person joins the “sicariato” structure, he/she knows that his/her life will be short. Many of them give instructions for their funerals in advance. They are actually more scared of jail than of death.” (1990:148). This idea of “no future”, “we weren’t born to be seeds” has been reinforced by the film work of Victor Gaviria, where he insists on the idea of an “eternal present”, a “presentalism” and a routinization of vandalism and death.
In this same scenario and as a result of an ethnographic work with youngsters of the Antioquia neighbourhood, researcher Pilar Riaño Alcalá (2000) offers another interpretation: “even though terror and violence have been and still are the daily life for these young men and women, their memories acknowledge that these phenomena are perceived as extraordinary due to the pain and suffering they bring to their lives. Anthropologist Riaño objects the routinization of terror and the banalization of violence. “ more than a society that banalizes terror, we are in the presence of a society where daily life is woven around the dead and death, and this is not an act to banalize or routinize them, but only to represent the lived experiences of pain and suffering” (2000:33). Memorials, altars, songs, death story telling, mnemonic places and shared narratives in daily life are evidence of the efforts of these youngsters for establishing continuity and this renders useless all interpretations regarding the eternal present.
The danger of applying the logic of expanding violence and the armed actors to the human reality of the subjects, is on the one hand, leaving them without a place for locating themselves; that is, reducing the historical interpretations of observable phenomena and on the other hand, taking away their decision making ability, their abilities as “agents”, when reducing the analysis to dichotomised categories, such as victims/victimizers, dominated/dominant, masters/slaves. The worst part of these conceptualizations, says the author, is that these analysis hide the fact that all individual, in the sense of subject, is an active agent in the creation of historical and social reality.
Alonso Salazar (2006) also summons that it is very simplistic to explain young people’s violence solely due to poverty factors. This could lead to mistakes in intervention models created to face the problem. Beyond poverty, “young people’s violence is present in contexts where the mirage of consumism mixes contrastively with material scarcity… and it requires for its development, of the existence of such phenomena as drug trafficking or other forms of criminality like guerrilla, which serve as high points (page 31). To these, we have to add the fact that the “youngster’s gangs” are used by other powers or they evolve themselves into other forms of delinquency with less age group characteristics and more expertise” (page 32).
3. The project
The project starts with the conception that images are everywhere and permeate daily life at all levels. They are linked to identities, narratives, readings and interpretations of the world of each collective. But, what do they reallyt mean? What is there beyond their sensible evidences? Captivated just by its content, the look of the Project Pasolini in Medellin has become contemplative putting aside all the investigation for the semantic charges, the relation built between the evidence and the eye. In this sense, there is no image in itself, neither the city; they acquire sense just through the eyes and heads of human beings who travel through them. In this way, they incarnate into a body, a multiple body as its meanings.
The project Pasolini in Medellin (Arango y Pérez, 2004) attempts to explore the multiplicity of urban imaginaries built facing the city and the outskirts, rescuing the look of young men and women who live in Medellin neighbourhoods. Through a methodology of awareness workshops articulated from an anthropological (ethnographic) axis and an audiovisual one, topics such as the urban, migratory processes, outskirts are discussed. At the same time, people involved in the project are trained in photograph and video techniques, storyboard, script writing, film edition, shooting and feed back with the community. All this in the context of a critical atmosphere which allows re-meaning the urban by contributing to the construction of a new knowledge that goes beyond audiovisual production context.
Though the call for participating in the project never took material form, 18 youngsters from different neighbourhoods of the city came to the workshops. This population came from two groups differentiated by their way of involving in the proposal and by their previous experience in audiovisual production area. The former, made up of young people from the community channels of the metropolitan area who had experience in audiovisual production, and the latter, made up of young people who came to the project on their own initiative and then became consolidated as independent, and finding in them a great echo regarding the ethnographic proposal that starts from a re-exploration of the neighbourhood based on the observation and the field diary.
The project is inspired and takes its name from the movie director Pasolini not only because of his film production focused on the look of marginal characters, delinquency and poverty of post-war Italy but also by his literary production in which his bets to recover and to regain possession of the local narrations of Roman neighbourhoods, starting from building stories about young people daring to live the city from logics, visions and aesthetics far from Roman bourgeoisie, building at the same time a popular identity with characteristics very similar to those found in Medellin, because Rome and Medellin share a common settlement history: rural migrations from which both cities were shaped and in which other ways of living in the city were proposed from the outskirt neighbourhoods.
On the other hand, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s aesthetic proposal, both in his literature and his films, was an important guide to build (re-build) reflections which permit to think, from other places, Medellin, a city that for 20 years has been beaten by armed conflicts produced by drug trafficking and violence generated by different armed actors.
However, methodologically, the project is built on the bases inherited from Jean Rouch who in his travels to Africa proposes media transference as a strategy allowing passing from the researchers’ eyes to those of the protagonists, trying to regain possession of the local narrations from native’s narrative logic and structure that offer a semantic, aesthetic and narrative richness to understand cultural contexts.
Another motivation to propose this study is the absence of academic proposals to rescue a look from the marginal and the young, beyond the statistical data of positive studies. This bias in the look took the authors of the Anthropology thesis above mentioned and directors of this project to review the more secular products such as argumentative films and literary production. In that search, works such as the legendary film by Victor Gaviria “Rodrigo D” appeared. This film shows how the drug trafficking phenomenon builds a Manichean relation with the "sicario" figure in outskirt neighbourhood. Another text found was “No nacimos pa’semilla” (We were not born for seed) by Alonso Salazar that more than a sociological text became the adventure book in which young people recognized their story as something mythical and with the same value as the national history.
In the last five years, the works dealing with the outskirt from Anthropology have been called to look at the displaced by violence and natural disasters; but they have put aside the look of the outskirt understood as a fragmented space where ways of living are produced which make complex subjects as these just can placed themselves in the transit between permanence and instability.
The project also discusses the traditional anthropological position –in some way sterilized by the attempts of validating its discourse as scientific and objective- focusing its look on the spectrum –that is, approaching exclusively to the visible content of images-, in which limited its encounters with image universe, and its only project consisted of translating the visual into words, understanding images as a simple datum[7]; and so, they can not more than illustrate their discourse in which only words are the mechanism to build “knowledge”.
From Rouch (1979), it is proposed a reflective approach to visual discourse as an alternative route for the so called visual Anthropology that points at not to translate neither to illustrate, but to explore the diverse opportunities offered by the images to build knowledge, both from their contexts of production and their contexts of observation. This exercise also states the decentralization of the look to approach other discourses, to other representations of reality, and to do this it questions their methodologies, their theoretical precepts which have to be reconfigured in order to approach the alterity, suggesting a route to be built.
Debray (1994) suggests a possible route that reunites at the same time: a history of the art that deals with manufacturing techniques; a semiology dealing with the symbolic aspects; and a history of mentalities for thinking the role occupied by images in society. But this triad could not be approached in an independent way. The proposal would be then to recognize in these three analysis levels –technique, symbolic and political- the complexity of images, their polysemic nature, and then the necessity of establishing a methodological corpus which allows approaching to the unity of the figure, from the relations interwoven among its intervals. And in this sense, the technological developments, those of the filmic and photographic theory, could shed light to the potential of images as alternative of the anthropological discourse, and in the same way, an ethnographic approach to images could serve as support to their production and interpretation.
In conclusion, an anthropological proposal from what is called a visual ethnography, does not mean to keep the camera in the ethnographer’s kit, but the construction of a whole methodological corpus that enables those images to build knowledge from the very production and from further visualization contexts.
After working in the Project for more than six years with different young people from the city, it is possible to identify the following achievements in the participants:
The participants build a more critical look facing their social surrounding which goes beyond the neighbourhood in which they live.
Young people have been able to find “other” ways of telling their reality, meeting themselves and interacting with different situations and people. That is, young people have passed from the indicative and objectifying –what the narrator voice wants to be- to the pictorial, polysemic and interactive the image in many cases can be.
Violence and its stories were not a generalized discourse in the narration of any of the participants. Though the works carried out start from the events occurred during urban conflicts, their search transcends the individuals and how they make use of their insight facing the situations brought by the armed conflict: fight by power and prestige, confinements, impositions, temporalities.
4. Reflections on the youngsters participating in the project
From the memory workshops it was possible to create a collective reflection regarding the characteristics of the youngsters participating in the project, which could have influenced their decision of joining it.
Firstly, it is important to say that the youngsters participating in the research and who are part of those giving continuity to the process, all come from the group that, at the moment of their incorporation to the project were not linked to any channel and had no experience with media production. This is interesting because the relation with the medium is not the purpose of his/her job, but the challenge of creating new points of view and stories about their neighbourhood.
One of the main common characteristics of the participants in the project, including one of its sponsors, is that they come from the city marginal areas and in the majority of cases have received the pressure of some of the different kinds of violence present in their contexts, which are not always the same. Nevertheless, although they have all been activists in changing processes in their localities, they never chose illegal ways, but on the contrary, they chose looking for expression channels which would enable them to visualize their bets.
“one realizes that we all come from popular sectors of the cities or rural areas stricken by violence… and this is precisely the reason that makes possible the appearance of the need to resist and express”. (Sandra Benítez, a young participant in the project Life History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the Pasolini group in Medellín, May 22nd, 2008)
Nevertheless, the need of expression of this young people is not possible to be canalized through the political parties on the one hand[8] because their agendas, in the case of Colombia, are far apart from the problems of the population, as they are more concerned with their own survival. On the other hand, young people’s participation channels are usually formal spaces that do not promote effective participation leading to solving needs. It is for this reason that these youngsters look for other non-institutionalized ways of expression where they express themselves, in many cases, against excluding institutionalization.
But, where does this search for ways and spaces for expression of these youngsters from Medellín come from?
It is outstanding at first instance the presence of the feminine figure more than the family as a socialization referent in the participants of the project. In most cases the grandmother, the aunt or the mother were a motivating and orienting stimulus towards working with others, persistence and the search of their own dreams and as the person reassuring confidence in themselves as subjects. The paternal figure was seen in some cases even as an obstacle and hinder for assuming their own challenges.
Another common element has been sensibilization to creation processes and artistic expression. Most of these young people had joined theatre groups and in some cases they had developed a great fondness for writing and the narrative
“I can see two things that often come out when we are doing presentations and that have signed some of the interviews. These are theatre and community service. It seems it all starts there” (Eric Baniz, youngster participating in the project Life History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the Pasolini Group in Medellín, May 22nd, 2008)
In accordance with the former declaration, previous to joining the Pasolini project, all youngsters were involved in community service, in working “with others”, as it is expressed by Carlos Santos, another participant. It is then shown that there is a need of influencing the surroundings and the participation in any of the organization expressions with the aim of solving difficult situations at the local level.
Processes like the ones described above have enabled them on the one hand, to progressively acquire a political formation oriented in the first place, towards the construction of critical readings of reality and the strengthening of their autonomy, and on the other, to be open to learning and to changes. At the same time, this makes it possible for them to be willing to engage in experiences and processes which will enable them to accept challenges and find channels to express their bets.
In conclusion, they all have the need to express themselves although in a given moment they did not have the ability, nor the necessary tools to communicate as a project of a society. This is to say, to make it a reality they were looking for a different language to do it. They were looking for scenarios like the ones offered by Pasolini in Medellín, that would enable them to construct a new reality, a new world, with a new perspective, with other meanings. It was a search for new languages and aesthetics that would allow them not only to question the dominating discourses and logic for interpreting the world[9], but also to propose new worlds starting with the new discourses and interpretations that would be created in the process.
Another knowledge acquired during the development of this research has to do with the pertinence and opportunity of the projects. It is impossible to think that a project like Pasolini in Medellín can be designed with the aim of getting to any kind of young people without discrimination. It will surely get to those youngsters who have been building up an increasing need of expression and that will find in this project the possibility to do it. It is not only the means; it is also the senses, eyes and heads to take another look to the neighbourhood and its surroundings. It is maybe for this reason that those who had experience in media were involved likewise in the project, because for them, the relationship with the surroundings had already been constructing an experience centred in the environment itself and not in the view being formed in the process.
5. Final Reflections
One of the key features common to the project participants, including one of its drivers, is coming from the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city and in most cases have received pressure from some of the violence in their contexts, which is not equal for all cases.
“Then the matter of experience for my neighborhood was quite particular because I witnessed all the violence in neighborhoods and throughout the armed conflict that was committed throughout the 90's ... and I began to live this whole affair and that began to mark my life as I was growing up ... the issue was even more complicated ... When members of my family were part of the gangs in neighborhoods and began to fight the issue of territoriality ... who commanded, and that process started in the city to position itself as in the case of paramilitary, but it was also the matter of militias and gangs which had influence in everyone, and that was me again in the middle of a conflict because the question when I still was in college was, well, what is my place within this entire violence?, but I was also asked from outside, for example. when a paramilitary group began to control my neighborhood, again the question was, which is my place?, what about me? And my answer was "I do not have anything to do with this ," then there was a really tough time which marked two of my cousins and I asked myself again “What about you buddy” Then I decided to move voluntarily and left my neighbourhood” (Young participant in the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
It should be noted that although all of them have been activists in processes of change in their localities, they never chose politically by non-statutory but rather from the search for channels of expression that would enable them to make visible their choices of life.
This need for expression of these youngsters, on one hand, it is not possible to be channeled by the parties Politically[10], because their agendas in the Colombian case are growing more distant from the population´s own problems and deal more with their own survival, and on the other hand the instances of young participation are spaces that mostly do not allow a formal effective participation which leads to the resolution of their main needs. It is for this reason that these youngsters seek other ways to enable them to express themselves, which are not institutionalized, and many of the cases are precisely against an institutional which excludes them.
Before these young people did not have either the capacity or the tools they needed to communicate as a project of society, what is to say to build it, that is why they were looking to find a different language to do so. These are the scenarios that offers them the project Pasolini in Medellin that allows them to find language and aesthetics not just for interpellating the dominant discourses and logical interpretation of the world but also for proposing new worlds from speeches and new interpretations that would be built into the process.
“And then is when we say “OK, we are ready,” in the middle of this context actions of resistance must be created because we are not going to leave this neighborhood because this is the neighborhood of ours, then we started to think more about the story of the image we wanted to tell as stories, and that is when Pasolini comes to our lives , and starts all this wonderful creation process, the things that I remember the most of the process, say, most importantly, on the one hand that when we talked about telling stories the priest was a hard landmark because he was very concerned with fear, we also feared by the pressure exerted on the community and at the same time that resistance that we wanted to achieve from the stories that we were going to tell with Pasolini...when the boys were threaten the , when the priest began with all his pressure, the only thing we could do was what we did, go and get the newspaper and tell him that we were looking to meet in the evening because we worked and studied during the day, then give explanations was like the only thing that had to be done at that time because we felt hopeless , the other thing was to start telling the people what we were doing for people to give any feedback and overcome all doubts, was the only tool we had when we got the opportunity to tell stories, even the same day as the broadcast of videos lots of people came to watch. And we were given new reasons to resist and to show that there are other possibilities in the middle of this conflict"(Young participant in the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
Finally, as a way of countersigning the dynamics that are consolidated with the generation of these processes of appropriation of not only communication skills but the sense of anthropological reflection from the visual ethnography, stands out as once generated spaces, processes are developed Parallel to the sense of empowerment about the possibility of action as communication and social interaction.
"We have made other jobs of video, also at 13th commune, and now we build a strong group in audiovisual which is going to have a political index and might as well argue that some things like from the popular academy ..." (Young participant of the project, Living History Workshop, preliminary exploration with the group Pasolini in Medellin, May 22 and 23, 2008)
6. References
Alcaldía de Medellín. [en línea], disponible en: http://www.medellin.gov.co/alcaldia/jsp/modulos/V_medellin/index.jsp?idPagina=351, 27 de julio de 2008.
Arango G. y Pérez C. (2004). Pasolini en Medellín, apuntes para una etnografía visual sobre la periferia urbana. Tesis de Antropología. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas. Universidad de Antioquia.
Arango G. y Montoya V. (2007). Archivos de los excluidos. Memoria Social y el Conflicto Armado en el Barrio Popular No. 1. (Working papper).
Colombia, (1993), Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de barrios subnormales en Medellín (PRIMED): Estudio de Factibilidad. Colombia. Municipio de Medellín. [en línea], disponible en:
http://www.crid.or.cr/crid/CD_Asentamientos_Humanos/pdf/spa/doc7145/doc7145.htm, recuperado, 27 de octubre de 2006.
Debray, R. (1994). Vida y Muerte de la Imagen. Barcelona: Paidós.
Herrera, A. y Pérez M. (2007). Con las propias voces: una mirada a las esferas públicas desde las prácticas culturales en tres barrios de la Comuna 13 de Medellín. Tesis de Maestría. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia.
Herrera, A. y Pérez M. (2006). Entre zonas híbridas y zonas duras: elementos para pensar una esfera pública plural, diversa y contradictoria. Informe de avance de la Tesis de Maestría. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. (working paper).
Naranjo, G. y Villa, M. (1997), Entre luces y sombras. Medellín: espacio y políticas urbanas. Medellín, Corporación Región. [en línea], disponible en: http://www.region.org.co/elementos/pdf/LIBRO-Entre-LucesySombras.pdf, 27 de octubre de 2006.
Noreña, H. (2007). Modernización y orden social en Medellín. Breve esquema siglo xx. En publicación: Los paramilitares en Medellín: la desmovilización del Bloque Cacique Nutibara. Un estudio de caso. Tesis (Maestría en Ciencia Política). Colombia: IEP UDEA, Instituto de Estudios Políticos, Universidad Antioquia, 2007. [Citado: 27/7/2008]. Disponible en: http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/colombia/iep/tesis/norena.pdf
Pink, S. (2001). Doing Visual Ethnography. SAGE: Londres.
Riaño P. (2000), Recuerdos metodológicos: El taller y la investigación etnográfica, en Estudios sobre las Culturas Contemporáneas. [en línea], año /vol. V, núm. 10, disponible en:
http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/316/31601008.pdf. Recuperado: 16 de noviembre de 2006.
Riaño Alcalá, Pilar (2000). La memoria viva de las muertes. Lugares e identidades juveniles en Medellín. En: Revista Análisis político No. 41. Septiembre-diciembre de 2000, disponible en
http://168.96.200.17/ar/libros/colombia/assets/own/analisis%20politico%2041.pdf recuperado: 23 de mayo de 2008
Rouch, J. (1979). La Cámara y los Hombres. Traducción de Maria Lucia Castrillón del libro Pour une Antropologie Visuelle. Cahiers de L´homme. París.
Salazar, Alonso. (1990). No nacimos pa´semilla. Planeta: Bogotá.
Salazar A. (2006) Violencia Juvenil. Caso Medellín. BID, disponible en http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=821497, recuperado: 24 de julio de 2008.
Schmitter, P., Giraldo, M.I., Patiño, J.M. (2006, agosto), La ocupación del territorio en el proceso de urbanización del área metropolitana del valle de Aburrá, en Scripta Nova, Revista electrónica de geografía y ciencias sociales [en línea], vol. X, núm. 218 (83), disponible en http://www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-218-83.htm, recuperado: 26 de octubre de 2006.
Vega, J. y Escalante, K. (2007) Organizaciones Juveniles: ¿Espacios de formación ciudadana? En: Signo y Pensamiento. Volumen XXVI julio – diciembre. Universidad Javeriana.
Vega, J. y Bayuelo, S. (2008) Ganándole terreno al miedo: Cine y comunicación en Montes de María. En: Rodríguez, C. (2008) Lo que le vamos quitando a la guerra. Medios ciudadanos en contextos de conflicto armado en Colombia. Documento No 5 Friederich Ebert Stiftung. Bogotá
7. Audiovisual productions about young people in Medellín
Dalton, Scott y Martínez, Margarita. (2004). La sierra. Documental
Gaviria, Victor (1989). Rodrigo D: no futuro. Largometraje.
Gaviria, Victor (1998). La vendedora de rosas. Largometraje.
Gaviria, Victor. (2004) Sumas y restas. Drama.
Maillé Emilio. (2005). Rosario tijeras. Drama.
Schroeder, Barbet (2000). La virgen de los sicarios. Drama.
[1] Other participants in the research Project are Erik Baniz León, Sandra Benítez, Duvan Londoño and Carlos Nicolás Santos, members of the Project Pasolini in Medellín, Edgar Gómez and Akemis Sánches –students of the Universidad del Norte-, Kelly Pozo – Young Researcher Colciencias/Universidad del Norte, Juan Sebastián Salazar – student of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and Alejandro Yépez –student of the Universidad de Antioquia- as research assistants.
[2] Sociologist and Magister in Political-economical Studies, professor and researcher of the Research Group in Communication and Culture PBX of the Universidad del Norte. jvega@uninorte.edu.co
[3] Philosopher and Magister in Communication, professor of the Universidad de Antioquia. Perezmoni2000@yahoo.com
[4] Anthropologist, co-director of the Project Pasolini in Medellin. Notes for a visual etnography
about urban outskirts. elinstantaneo@yahoo.com
[5] Anthropologist, co-director of the Project Pasolini in Medellin. Notes for a visual etnography
about urban outskirts. camiloperezquintero@yahoo.com.ar
[6] You can find the paper in English and in Espanish, and the video on the blog http://www.pasolinienmedellin.blogspot.com/.
[7] “Images may become ‘the basis for systematic knowledge’. However images can only ever be ‘primary evidence’ that has an ‘independent authority’ and ‘authenticity’, but that ‘may often have no place in the final product of the research, except as occasional illustrations” (Collier & Collier, en Pink, 2001: 96)
[8] Even though political parties are not participation, not representation instances for youngsters coming from this part of the city, it is also true that during election campaigns the parties get a high voting from these sectors through the use of promises and gifts.
[9] With this respect, it is important to highlight that there is a previous study of juvenile organizations developed in the Atlantico Department, were it is revealed how identities produced in juvenile organizations with a certain degree of structure are constructed mainly as legitimating identities of adult logics and less as resistance identities or identities coming from the young people. Vega, J. and Escalante, K. (2007) Juvenile organizations: Spaces for Citizenship Construction? In Signo y Pensamiento: Volume XXVI, July-December. Universidad Javeriana.
[10] Although the parties Politically not constitute instances of participation or representation to the young people in these sectors of the city, the electoral junctures of these parties grow extensively on the votes ranging from those sectors, convening them with short-term perks.
