In our quest to become more fluent in Spanish, Doug has hooked us up with a local hiking group. On the weekends, we explore different parts of the city while conversing in English as well as Spanish. I am grateful for all the patient local ¨tutors¨ and friends that we have met during these outings. Whether it is a walk through the forests to beautiful vistas or a stroll through the streets to local cervecerías (craft breweries), we enjoy to chance to practice our Spanish while learning about our current hometown.
But it was our visit to El Cerro de Moravía (the hill of Moravía) that once again showed us that even when faced with a difficult past, the Colombian people are working together to build up a neighborhood that blooms with new life.
Our guide, Gloria is one of the local volunteers determined to build up the culture, customs, music, and food of her beloved neighborhood of Moravía from a difficult past.
As she points out is this picture, Moravía is located near central Medellin not far from the Medellin River. Up until the 1970s, this area was sparsely populated pasture lands. Because of the undesirability of the area, many of the city´s poor set up a shanty town on the flat, swampy area. Beginning in 1977, the city of Medellin decided to use this land for their municipal garbage dump. Over the next seven years, a mountain of trash over 30 meters (100 feet) high and 7 hectares (17 acres) wide arose on the once flat plain.
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| Pictures of the ¨mountain of trash¨ in 1984 (top) and the ¨garden of Moravía¨ in 2014 (bottom) |
Despite living in the close proximity of the toxic garbage dump, poor families continued to migrate to the area. Rummaging through the garbage became their means of survival. Discarded food, clothing, metals, and other ¨treasures¨ provided a way for them to support their families.
Although my Spanish is not good enough yet to completely follow Gloria´s narrative, I tried to understand her stories of growing up in the midst of this open-air mountain of trash. During the terrors of the Colombian drug wars in the 1980s, people fled the countryside violence and settled into Moravía making it the most densely populated neighborhood in Medellín. In 1984, the city stopped dumping garbage in this area, but the problems persisted. In 2005 this neighborhood was proclaimed a ¨Public Calamity¨ as the continuous emission of toxic gasses and instability of the soil presented great health concerns for the people living near ... or in some cases, on the mountain of trash. City and community leaders began to work together for a solution.
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| ¨No more garbage - Nature is sacred - We care for our neighborhood |
What we saw during our walk through Moravía´s neighborhood streets were signs of resilience, urban development, and transformation that have continued since 2005.
In 2008, the Cultural Development Center opened to provide classes and recreational space for the neighborhood.
Neighborhood homes and streets have been spruced up and local restaurants and businesses have opened to provide services and employment for the local community.
Local fútbol teams compete on beloved sports fields,
and children play on grass-covered hills that used to be dangerous garbage pits.
But a walk up to the hilltop garden reveals the greatest sign of new life for Moravía. What was once a huge mountain of trash is now a lush foliage-covered hillside. Community members maintain the thousands of plants that will slowly purify the years of waste buried under the mound.
Sculptures of art replace the piles of trash.
A walk through the hillside garden of Moravía reminds us that ¨Todo quedará en nuestra memoria¨ ... Everything will remain in our memory. For, as the community of Moravía knows well, if we forget our mistakes of the past, we are bound to repeat them.
Moravía still faces many difficulties, but it is through the determination of community leaders like Gloria that the neighborhood of Moravía will continue to rise up from its troubled past and bloom with new life!
Hasta pronto ... bloom with happiness ... and enjoy the adventures in your life!
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