Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

New Libarary "Rocks" Medellin, Colombia
August 8, 2008

Medellin, Colombia. A mere mention of the city ignites thoughts about the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, or teenage kidnappers zooming by on mopeds known as sicarios. Many of you who´ve seen films like Barbet Schroeder’s La Virgin de los Sicarios or Victor Gaviria’s La Vendedora de Rosas will remember the city of Medellin as a paradise plagued by two decades of internal war between its citizens and the narcotraffickers.

 But things have changed. Thanks to a tighter grip on the country by its current President Uribe (a native of Medellin) and a cool, young and liberal mayor named Sergio Fajardo Valderrama who cleaned up the city a few years ago and donated money to building libraries and programs for literacy.

Some of you may remember me mentioning in a recent blog regarding a children’s book version of Cien años de soledad, I’m currently traveling within Colombia. My latest stop took me to Medellin, known as the city of eternal spring. But this blog isn’t about the reformation of the city per say, but about one of the most architecturally spectacular libraries I’ve seen. The Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti designed the Biblioteca Parque España to look like three gigantic coal-colored rocks built into the majestic Andean mountain range surrounding this valley metropolis.

While most of Medellin’s population lives in the valley, the poor have always inhabited the higher grounds of the mountains, similar to Brazil’s favelas. Hard to get to by car or foot because of its steep and narrow little streets, mountain villages like Santo Domingo where the library was constructed, were riddled with crime and became the birthing place for many of Escobar’s young army of hitmen. Today, Medellin has a metrocable service up and down the mountain’s sides (see photo below) that connects to its metro system so that these once isolated villages can now be easily accessed. Former mayor Fajardo Valderrama believed that if the poor of these neighborhoods had a libraries and books, the temptation to turn to crime would diminish.

He was right. With donations from the Spanish government (hence the title), the king and queen of Spain also came to its inauguration in 2007. Luckily, those royals didn’t have to slum it. That once infamous slum in the mountains now has a library fit for a king. 

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on August 8, 2008 | Comments (0)