Comuna 13 - The Killing Fields of Medellín, and the Cult of Pablo Escobar
- Vladimir
- Mar 15
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 20
Comuna 13 wasn't just a neighborhood. It was a war zone disguised as a community, a vertical slum clinging to the mountainside like a desperate prayer. Imagine thousands of working-class souls — electricians, street vendors, mothers holding together families with nothing but willpower and hope — trapped between the crosshairs of drug lords, paramilitaries, and a government that seemed more interested in body counts than human lives.
Images courtesey of Google Search Operation Oreon 2002 Medellin Colombia
During the height of Escobar's reign, these were people who woke up wondering if today was the day a stray bullet would find them. Not soldiers. Not criminals. Just people trying to feed their children. Ordinary humans crushed under the weight of a war they never asked to fight.
In Operation Orion in 2002, the Colombian military and paramilitary forces descended on Comuna 13 like a biblical plague. Hundreds died. Thousands were displaced. Entire families erased in a single, brutal military sweep designed to root out guerrilla fighters. The irony? Most victims were just trying to survive, caught between narcos, guerrillas, and state violence.
But here's the truly twisted part: Pablo Escobar, the monster who created this hellscape, still maintains a cult of personality that would make Che Guevara blush.
In Medellín today, Escobar isn't just a historical figure. He's a brand. A mythology. Tour guides make fortunes showing tourists the sites of his most notorious crimes. Local kids wear t-shirts with his face. In poor neighborhoods, he's remembered as a Robin Hood who built housing, funded soccer fields, gave money to the desperate.
Comuna 9 — now that's a different story entirely. This was Escobar's personal playground, a neighborhood he essentially constructed as a monument to his own twisted version of generosity. Entire blocks of housing built with narco-dollars, given to families who had nothing. Imagine that — a mass murderer playing urban planner, creating entire communities with blood money.
The people loved him. And why wouldn't they? In a system that had abandoned them, Escobar provided something the government never could: immediate survival. Schools. Hospitals. Housing. The fact that these gifts were soaked in the blood of thousands seemed almost secondary.
Today, you can take "Escobar Tours" where wide-eyed tourists snap selfies at the very rooftop where he was gunned down. Local guides — some of whom lost family members to his violence — now make a living telling his story. It's a grotesque capitalization of trauma that would make any decent human being's stomach turn.
But Colombia doesn't run from its history. It metabolizes it. Transforms it. The same neighborhoods that were killing fields are now street art havens, tourism hotspots, symbols of resilience.
In Comuna 13, they've turned violence into art. Massive murals cover walls that once ran red with blood. The metro cable — originally built to give poor mountain residents access to the city — now serves as both practical transportation and a tourism attraction, a literal and metaphorical lifting of these communities.
Escobar's legacy is a Rorschach test for Colombia's soul: Depending on who you ask, he was a demon, a hero, or something horrifyingly in between.
The country doesn't forget. But it also refuses to be defined by its worst moments.
Comuna 13 - The Killing Fields of Medellín, and the Cult of Pablo Escobar
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