The unbearable resilience of Medellín: Violent recovery and contested representations of (post-)conflict

This article critically examines the complex and ambiguous relationship between resilience and violence in the recovery of conflict-affected cities. Focusing on Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, it traces its transformation from a hotspot of intense urban conflict to a celebrated hub of tourism and innovation. Once labeled the world’s “murder capital,” Medellín has become a flagship for resilience initiatives, frequently lauded for its recovery from decades of violence. Yet beneath the celebrated narrative of the “Medellín Miracle,” extortion and forced displacement continue to permeate life in marginalized neighborhoods. Everyday violence challenges dominant accounts of postwar success and blurs the boundaries between wartime and the post-conflict period. To unpack these contested dynamics, the article advances a twofold framework—examining the resilience of violence and the violence of resilience —as a lens to rethink how urbanization and conflict mutually shape one another. By doing so, it demonstrates how recovery efforts, while promising stability and security, can also reproduce entrenched inequalities, consolidate marginalization, and generate new forms of victimization. By highlighting these tensions, the article contributes to broader debates on the politics of resilience, the afterlives of violence, and the uneven geographies of urban transformation in post-conflict settings.