Portal U de A

By: Andrea Carolina Vargas Malagón, journalist at UdeA Communications Department 

This year, Medellín celebrates 350 years since its founding as a town. Unlike other colonial cities, it wasn't established by a conquistador but grew as a transit point that gradually populated along the Aburrá Valley. This way of being born also seems to influence how its history is told: Medellín doesn't have a single story but many. New voices are emerging in this era of podcasts, reels, digital maps, and community stories. What urban story is being shared in this social media-driven era? And who owns that voice? At the Alma Mater newspaper, we consulted UdeA researchers to analyze how stories about the city are shaped today. 

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Given the diversity of voices narrating the city, not everything that circulates is new. What changes is who speaks, where they speak, and what they choose to highlight. Photo: Communications Department, UdeA / Alejandra Uribe F.  
 
History is usually associated with founders, war heroes, and battles. These stories reside in books, archives, and libraries. However, for some time now, new ways of narrating the past have been adopted and given way to other stories and actors, which amplifies the voices of those who had somehow been made invisible and paves the way for transforming the perception of the city. 

"Social media and digital ecosystems are today the meeting point where knowledge is shared and the multiple realities that inhabit us are brought together. They are spaces where people express opinions, celebrate, react with awe or rejection, discover, reflect, and reimagine citizenship. While not the only arena, they offer immediate and constant access, with broad freedoms for consumption and creation," commented Andrea Vásquez, political scientist and director of Compás Urbano, a citizen engagement agency born from the need to expand the ways Medellín is understood and experienced. The agency found a channel to narrate the city on digital platforms. 

On November 2, 1675, the governor and captain general of the province of Antioquia, Miguel de Aguinaga y Mendigoitia, proclaimed the erection of the Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Medellín. 

Given the diversity of voices and formats used to narrate the city, not everything that circulates is new. What changes is who speaks, where, and what they choose to highlight. It's no longer just historians and researchers telling stories about major events or illustrious figures, but also residents sharing neighborhood memories, everyday conflicts, urban transformations, and resistance stories that previously didn't fit into official narratives. 

"It's not just about how stories are told, but also about which are told, and which are silenced or hidden," said Viviana Mazón Zuleta, librarian and professor at the Inter-American School of Library Science. In her view, Medellín is narrated today from multiple perspectives, even outside the institutional framework that, for a long time, was the primary gatekeeper of memory. 

While social media and digital narratives contribute to the multiplicity of voices and stories about the city —and, to a certain extent, to the democratization of information— they also pose certain risks to constructing memories and perceiving Medellín. 

According to historian Eulalia Hernández Ciro, a professor at the Institute of Regional Studies at the Universidad de Antioquia (INER), social media stories are often based more on myths than on thorough investigations, which results in the exaggeration of certain versions without proper verification. 

“Some Instagram profiles, for instance, showcase a valuable photographic and audiovisual heritage, but these images are often poorly credited, taken from other sources without proper credit, or used to create myths. They lack a critical understanding of how they circulate. A similar issue occurs with the stories shared by some tour guides, where connections to drug trafficking and Pablo Escobar are common, which frequently distorts the history,” explained Hernández Ciro. 

"Social media allows those who access them to learn about the stories of historically marginalized populations, but that doesn't necessarily mean that these populations have more democratized access to information," said Viviana Mazón Zuleta. 

Professor Mazón Zuleta shares a similar view regarding how stories about the city are sometimes told in a lighthearted way. She warns that many of these narratives are driven by specific intentions that can create an image of Medellín that doesn’t necessarily reflect the many realities within it. 

"Many content creators are paid to show and promote certain places in the city. It is an economic strategy that seeks to return to that narrative of Medellín as a "little silver cup" and brand it with labels like "innovative city" or "smart city," which has important implications, such as gentrification and territorial disputes," said Mazón Zuleta. 

According to both professors, the most emblematic case is Comuna 13 of Medellín and its strategy to promote tourism and redefine the territory through the Graffitour. While it has generated employment, its constant promotion in digital narratives has contributed to the rising cost of living in the area and continues to cause intra-urban displacement and territorial disputes. "Many residents can no longer cope with the constant intrusion into their private lives. They feel watched by hundreds of foreign eyes that invade their privacy and daily surroundings," said Mazón Zuleta. 

"On social media, a dual narrative prevails. On the one hand, it is about overcoming, progress, bravery, and city transformation. On the other hand, it revolves around violence, even as a tourist product," Vásquez added. Both visions, she explained, tend to simplify complex realities and make the city invisible as a living, diverse, and constantly evolving process. 

The construction of urban memory requires dialogue between different forms of knowledge 

"There are YouTubers and influencers who do serious work, with rigorous research and powerful communication strategies. It's not true that only historians can tell urban history, but certain apologetic and mythologized commonplaces and biases that require a critical look are detected. This raises the question of where history teachers and students are. It would be interesting to combine historical research tools with those of the digital world," Hernández Ciro stated. 

According to Andrea Vásquez, it's not just about managing cultural content or drives but about fostering critical thinking and a sense of belonging to the city. That's why Compás Urbano aims to place the voices of communities at the heart of the discussion, not only as sources but also as creators of their own stories. 

"We read the city from our observatory and are constantly updating our knowledge of its cultural actors. We walk through this territory with locals and tourists, guided by those who live and energize it. We do narrate Medellín, but not without first reading, exploring, and helping to strengthen it," said Andrea Vásquez. 

Similarly, Mazón Zuleta expressed that it must be recognized that not all researchers are able to share what they do in a way that the public can understand. Therefore, dissemination work through social media and digital narratives helps transform language so that this work reaches more people and even allows them to challenge stories that, for too long, have been taken for granted. 

Precisely from that perspective, Universidad de Antioquia’s INER, led by Professor Hernández Ciro, is conducting Trayectorias, travesías y caminos sobre la historia urbana de Medellín (Trajectories, Journeys and Paths on the Urban History of Medellín). This project aims to produce a historiographical assessment that questions how the city has been historically narrated, what themes and perspectives have been most recurrent, and which periodizations have captured historians’ interest. The goal is to finally develop a geovisor: a digital tool for geographic analysis and queries that allows users to find out what has been written about different places in the city. 

"We want to know how that story has been told, from what perspective, and with what archives," explained Hernández Ciro. According to the professor, there have been important findings in the execution of this project. "On the one hand, a lot of history has been written about the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries because they were key periods of modernization and industrialization, but there is another part of the 20^th century that remains to be chronicled, especially the more contemporary history," she specified. The project is funded through the 2021-2022 Programmatic Call: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts from the Committee for Research Development (CODI), affiliated with the Vice-Rector's Office for Research. Universidad de Antioquia’s Institute of Regional Studies also contributed funds. 

The truth is that urban memory is not constructed only by institutions or spontaneous narratives that go viral on social media. It requires an encounter between those who research and those who inhabit the city, between those who tell stories and the objects of those stories. Medellín's history remains contested and open to new questions, tools, and voices. 

"Promoting interest in the city —and tourism— must be based on an ethic of respect and care. Creating content that informs, contextualizes, and promotes a responsible way of inhabiting the territory is key. At Compás Urbano, we're convinced that transformative narratives not only spark curiosity but also raise awareness because what isn't known isn't loved, what isn't loved isn't inhabited, and what isn't inhabited isn't cared for," concluded Andrea Vásquez.