Colombia, with an Open Heart
Struck by years of violence, residents of the Medellín region exorcise grief through singing. The Coro Reconciliación thus allows victims and former combatants to unite in an unprecedented way and make their voices heard.
Photo: Nora Teylouni for Le T.
San Pedro Cemetery, Medellín. A light breeze rustles the palm fronds while birdsong atop slender cypress trees soothes the stillness of the place. In the distance, the droning complaints of a weed trimmer complete this discreet polyphony, seemingly appreciated by the motionless statues. Originally, San Pedro was reserved for the eternal rest of the intellectual elite: presidents and national figures are buried here. It is also the cemetery that holds the most remains of mobsters, hitmen, and small-time dealers.
In 1991, when Pablo Escobar (1949–1993) was at war with the state, violence peaked in the city and San Pedro reached capacity. Not only were Medellín cartel members killing indiscriminately, but gangs were also fighting for control of the outlying neighborhoods. That year, 4,585 people were murdered. The gallery of sorrows remembers it: the white marble of the tombs contrasts with the vivid colors of the thousands of plastic flowers laid there, along with photos, small balloons, and relics of Archangel Michael.
Colombia’s history is intrinsically linked to that of violence. Between 1985 and 2018, the conflict between the government and paramilitary groups caused 450,664 deaths, 121,768 disappearances, and 7.7 million displaced people, according to figures from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The peace accords signed on August 24, 2016, in Havana, between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) ended a bloody armed conflict that had lasted more than half a century. Today, the ambitious process of “total peace” led by President Gustavo Petro’s government aims to silence the guns, end drug trafficking, and bring about social justice. But “a war is easier to start than to finish,” wrote Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In 2019, to soothe memories, the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra founded the Coro Reconciliación. The goal? To restore a voice to those who had lost the ability to speak due to the armed conflict. “Since the demobilization and reintegration processes (of paramilitary groups and the FARC), the issue of reconciliation has begun to occupy an important place on the national stage. Society’s polarization became evident in events such as the approval of the peace accords, and the various processes led by social organizations began to include actors such as demobilized and reincorporated combatants, who also need spaces for dialogue and expression,” explains María Catalina Prieto, director of the Medellín Philharmonic (Filarmed), who initiated the project. “With this in mind, and in line with its mission of transformation through music, the orchestra decided six years ago to create the Coro Reconciliación so that victims and signatories of various peace processes could have a space to meet.”
Healing the living
Located not far from El Poblado park, where lush philodendrons seem straight out of a Sam Szafran painting, the Filarmed team welcomes us warmly with a tinto, the local coffee that immerses us and helps beat the jet lag.
“The Coro Reconciliación is the only initiative that approaches the topic from a choral perspective,” explains Juanita Eslava, head of social programs for the Philharmonic. “The call is constantly issued through various social organizations linked to victim and signatory processes. To join the choir, people must certify that they are registered in the National Registry of Victims or that they are signatories of one of the peace processes (registered with the National Agency for Reintegration and Normalization). No previous musical training is required.”
In the Castilla neighborhood, the Juanes de la Paz gymnasium bears the name of the Medellín-born singer who rose to fame about fifteen years ago with his hit La Camisa Negra, which looped endlessly on radio stations around the world. Antonio* awaits us. His face, still boyish, radiates kindness. The son of former combatants, he tells his story with modesty: “Until I was 8, violence was my daily life. In the municipality of Anorí (Antioquia department), I witnessed clashes between different groups. Today, I need to leave that behind.” As a former combatant, his mother benefits from the Coro Reconciliación program. Antonio accompanies her and listens to rehearsals in silence. “One day, the choir director invited me to join.” Since then, the young man has sung in the bass section. He adds: “I look forward to every Saturday, our rehearsal day, to disconnect from the week. Singing in a choir is like working as a team: you have to become one voice.” When we ask about the future of his country, he replies calmly: “My generation adapts to the times.” He dreams of becoming a conductor or cellist.
On Saturday, we join the choir’s weekly rehearsal, held in a former hospital building. The mood is cheerful. Seated at the electric piano, Freddy Lafont begins with a physical warm-up. The Cuban-born multi-instrumentalist has directed the choir for three years. To guide the ensemble, he draws on a music-learning method developed by Jim Daus Hjernøe: The Intelligent Choir.
Marcela* has sung in the alto section for four and a half years. She recalls her musical beginnings singing and playing guitar as a child, before explaining why she joined the FARC: “When the guerrilla was in the jungle, I wasn’t with them, but my son was one of the falsos positivos. I needed to know the truth about his death. The state accused the FARC of killing him, but it was false.” That’s how she grew closer to the guerrilla and began advocating with them. “They are my brothers in struggle,” she says. “Even though Gustavo Petro has committed to total peace, we’re still in a hidden war. But Colombians are starting to wake up and understand that everyone must act and take responsibility. The state isn’t the only actor in this change.”
Scandal at the top of the state
The falsos positivos (“false positives”) scandal deserves revisiting. Dressed up as guerrilla fighters by the Colombian army to inflate its war statistics, innocent people were abducted and killed. In 2005, President Álvaro Uribe’s government, via his defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, issued Decree 14.52, a highly lucrative rewards system designed to encourage soldiers to locate guerrilla fighters. Three million pesos (about 780 Swiss francs) for a guerrilla killed; five billion (about 1.3 million francs) for killing a FARC leader. These sums led some to invent fake FARC fighters and false victims. Political scientist Mauricio Romero was one of the first to reveal the links between Colombia’s ruling class and paramilitary groups.
Reports from the National Center for Historical Memory have established that 75% of crimes committed in Colombia were carried out by state forces, state agencies, and paramilitary groups. With the army’s complicity, paramilitaries went so far as to build cremation ovens to dispose of their victims’ bodies. Colombian journalist Javier Osuna investigated these extermination centers. In 2015, he published a book, Speak to Me of Fire: The Ovens of Infamy. Since then, he has lived under police protection.
Wearing sunglasses, Liliana* strikes diva poses. “My ancestors were Roma. I studied music at the University of Tolima (in the Andean region of central-western Colombia),” says the singer. “At one point in my life, I chose a different path to heal my pain. I was exposed to violence from a young age: I lived among weapons, gangs, the guerrilla. Today, singing with this choir lets me express my art and my values, and try to leave all that violence behind to look toward the future. Here in Colombia, transgender people like me are even more exposed to attacks and aggression. What I want now is to live in peace, forgive, breathe, and give love.” Liliana also dreams that trans women may one day be safe.
A sprawling city
The next day, on the road to Bello, one of the municipalities bordering Medellín, the discussion turns to urbanization. Lina, our fixer, explains how the Medellín metro and its various cable cars have helped open up poor neighborhoods previously controlled by drug traffickers. At night, the city resembles an octopus stretching its tentacles across the hillsides. In Bello, the streets climb steeply and Noelia’s house appears suspended from the clotheslines. The electric wires trace the lines of a musical score across the sky.
Cuantos años de espera, cuantos años buscando, quantos años de dolor. De angustia y esperanza, de cansancio en el corazón. (How many years of waiting, how many years of searching, how many years of pain. Of anguish and hope, of weariness in the heart.)
Sitting at her dining table, between a Coca-Cola bottle and what we understand are photos of her children, Noelia begins to sing. We hold our breath, but not our tears. “The lyrics talk about the forced disappearance I suffered,” she explains. “I lost both my sons. The first disappeared on November 23, 1998. He was on a bus when soldiers forced him off — I never saw him again. I searched for him in morgues across different departments in Colombia. After a while, exhausted, I had to stop.” On June 6, 2002, her second son was abducted. “It was a government order to kidnap young men and present them as guerrilla fighters,” says Noelia, also referencing the false positives scandal. “Armed soldiers arrived one evening during dinner and said: ‘Don’t worry, your son will be back to eat.’ He never came back. He was 23.”
Some time later, her daughter tried to find out more about her brother’s disappearance and learned that he had been killed and buried in a mass grave in the Guaviare province, in southeastern Colombia. “A paramilitary group kidnapped my son,” Noelia states. After this tragedy, she joined Madres de la Candelaria, a group of families of kidnapping, murder, and forced disappearance victims in Colombia that works to denounce human rights violations and demand truth and justice in the name of collective memory. Forced disappearance is a crime committed by all parties in the armed conflict: paramilitaries, guerrillas, and state agents.
In June 2004, three armed men arrived at Noelia’s home at night. She lived with her daughter, a single mother of two girls aged 2 and 4. The soldiers took the 22-year-old woman by force, made her say goodbye to her children and her mother, shot her once in the head at the doorstep, and emptied the rest of their rounds into her body.
“Violence kept me from being someone else,” Noelia continues. “My heart is so broken I’ve had four heart attacks. I wouldn’t be here without music. It was God’s hand that helped me pull through. The Coro Reconciliación keeps me alive. It’s like therapy. Singing to the world about what happened is a way to keep the story alive and escape the silence.”
*Names have been changed
The Edgelands Institute, a driver of social transformation in several cities worldwide including Medellín, funded the journalists' travel costs, making this report possible.
