medellin on cnn international last night...

geoff71 says on Oct 15, 2009, 06:03:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/10/14/colombia.hitmen/index.htm...

one day at a time

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Cali2005 says on Oct 15, 2009, 06:55:

actually the going rate for hiring someone in the barrios is much cheaper. 150,000 pesos to 200,000 so thats 75 bucks to 100 bucks, but im sure thats for a normal joe.

The big thing here that is a problem is that people think this is all over medellin. Its the poor neighboorhoods, and Poblado for example remains practically untouched. This is where people stay when they come and visit from other countries.

Gang violence is just as deadly in the USA if your driving around the round wrong neighborhoods.

In Medellin this violence is concentrated on those who run in the drug trade, or caught in the power struggle fighting to be the next luitenant, boss of the block, or taking out the competition in the neighborhood.

I have several employees from these nieghborhoods, and although it is a bad problem they seem to brush it off and say its just guys that are in the gangs that get affected.

Occasionally innocent people get caught in the crossfire, but just as in the USA street gangs do rob, and innocent bystanders get killed with bullets. Medellin is very large with many suburbs just like Miami, Oakland, LA, or NewYork here we have a neighborhood after neighborhood, and each poor section has its own street gangs.

Hopefully when the economy picks up in a couple years things will turn around.

Medellin Apartments and Tours http://www.ParadiseRealtyMedellin.com

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geoff71 says on Oct 15, 2009, 07:34:

i hear you.. but i think most people know that its safe.. and most of it is drug related.. i have no fears of medellin.. although i have not been there yet.. i most certainly wood like to visit soon..

one day at a time

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dguittar says on Oct 15, 2009, 08:15:

Most homicides are intraracial. In spite of the rhetoric here, most crimes are perpetrated by Colombian on Colombian, not on non-Colombians. Most of the graft and the bribery, the illegal para groups, FARC, and the illegal seizure of indigenous lands are not committed by foreigners.
This is the same in the US. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm .
This is a social problem as well as a criminal problem. Jobs, education, and training are necessary to raise the standards of living. Consider, this could take foreign investment capital.

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AFEE13 says on Oct 15, 2009, 09:29:

Cali2005...spoken like a true scholar..its no worse than your average "hood" here in the states

Never looking back or too far in front of me, the present is a gift and I just want to BE

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emerson_wylde says on Oct 15, 2009, 10:25:

I agree with the gist of everything Cali2005 posted. One exception is that the magnitude of killings is not comparable to cities in the US. Consider a place as populated as Los Angeles County, who has about 400 gang related homicides per year, compared to the much smaller Medellin's current 2,000 killings per year. Nonetheless, CNN's coverage was highly irresponsible, in my opinion, because many people in the world don't know anything about Medellin besides Pablo Escobar. While CNN doesn't have the responsibility to be Medellin's tourism board - they owe it to readers to provide appropriate context and perspective for this kind of a story.

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Simon says on Oct 15, 2009, 10:41:

"CNN's coverage was highly irresponsible, in my opinion, because many people in the world don't know anything about Medellin besides Pablo Escobar."


And unfortunately, many people in the world don't want to know more about Medellin than that.

Also, I wouldn't say Medellin is "much smaller" than Los Angeles.

"Just an honest, decent Colombian trying to do the right thing."--Simon

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emerson_wylde says on Oct 15, 2009, 10:45:

LA County population is about 10 million;
Medellin population is about 2 million.
If LA County had Medellin's per capita gang killing rate -- that would be about 10,000 killings per year, not 400.

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Simon says on Oct 15, 2009, 10:55:

"LA County population is about 10 million;"

I just checked Wikipedia and it said 3.8 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles

"Just an honest, decent Colombian trying to do the right thing."--Simon

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emerson_wylde says on Oct 15, 2009, 11:34:

You checked the city of LA, not the county. The gang killings for the city are more or less proportionate with that of the county - somewhere under the 200 per year mark. The source you cited pegs the LA County population at around 13 million. In any case, the point still holds -- the magnitude of the current problem in Medellin is much much greater than in the area that many consider the gang capital of the US. I don't think it is right to distort the reality of what life is like in Medellin because it remains a great place to live and visit, but at the same time saying that the magnitude of gang killings there are comparable to cities in the US is inaccurate.

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soylocombiano says on Oct 15, 2009, 13:39:

It seems that at the moment there's a lot of criminals whacking each other. Maybe it's due to a power vacuum due to the decapitation of the mafia. Similar wars have occurred in NY, for example, in the 80's, and could be interpreted as a positive note. Possibly the cartels are becoming decentralized, and are fighting over who will share in decreasing revenues. That's not to say that the US's drug habit is decreasing, just that the sources of supply, and the associated revenues, are shifting closer to home, leaving a smaller pie for the Colombians.

I haven't personally been affected by all the crime that the Americans are trying to make me aware of. If it weren't for CNN and PBH, I might not even be aware of it, and no, I don't curl up on the keyboard in Poblado. I just got back from a moto trip downtown.

Granted, I don't go into the barrios up on the hill, just like I avoided Crack Town US, whichever city I happened to be in.

Living well is the best revenge

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