San Javier in the Fog: The Muralists Repainting Comuna 13's Memory

The escalators were broken again, which meant climbing. I started up the concrete stairs of Comuna 13 at seven in the morning, when the fog still sat heavy over San Javier and the empanada vendors were just dragging out their oil drums, and by the time I reached the third tramo I'd already passed two murals I'd never seen before — one of them still wet. That's the thing about this neighborhood: the walls don't hold still. They haven't for twenty years, not since the first aerosol cans replaced the bullet holes, and right now, in 2024, a new generation of muralists is rewriting what the old generation painted over, which is itself a rewriting of what the paramilitaries left behind. The fog helps, honestly. It softens the tourist crowds, muffles the reggaeton from the shops selling overpriced mojitos, and lets you actually look at a wall without someone's selfie stick in your peripheral vision.

1. The murals most people walk past

Everyone photographs the same three walls. You know the ones — the massive graffiti-tour backdrops near the escalators at Calle 32B, the ones that show up in every travel reel with a Drake song underneath. They're fine. They're competent. But the murals that matter right now are further up, past the last escalator, in the callejones above Calle 34 where the houses lean into each other and the paint is rougher because nobody's being paid by a tourism board.

Look for Jeihhco's older collaborative work near the top of the 13 de Noviembre sector. Look for the portraits — not the abstract color bombs, but the faces. Women from the neighborhood, people who were displaced during Operación Orión in 2002, kids who grew up in the reconstruction. The new pieces by Chota, a muralist who grew up on these same stairs, tend to appear without announcement on walls that were bare the week before. I saw one in March that depicted hands releasing a bird made of newspaper clippings. It was already half-covered by a tarp someone had hung out to dry.

That impermanence is the whole point, and most guided tours don't mention it.

2. Eat before you climb, or regret it

There's a woman named Doña Luz — at least that's what everyone calls her — who sells empanadas de pipián from a cart at the base of the stairs near the San Javier metro station exit. They're small, fried in oil that's been working all morning, filled with a potato-and-peanut mixture that's more Cauca than Antioquia. Three for 5,000 COP. I eat them standing up, burning my fingers, which is the correct way.

Higher up, near the escalator midpoint, the food gets worse and more expensive. The tourist-facing restaurants along the main mural corridor charge 25,000-35,000 COP for bandeja paisa that tastes like it was assembled by someone who read about bandeja paisa. Skip them.

If you make it to the top and you're still hungry, walk past the souvenir stalls to where the residential streets begin again, and find the tienda with the yellow Postobón sign that sells tamales antioqueños for 4,000 COP each. No name on the shop. You'll smell it.

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3. Operación Orión and the argument over what to remember

Here's where I disagree with most coverage of Comuna 13: the narrative that the neighborhood has "transformed" from violence to art is too clean. It flattens the timeline into a before-and-after that serves tourists more than residents. Operación Orión — the 2002 military operation that killed civilians, disappeared dozens, and supposedly cleared the guerrillas — isn't a resolved chapter. Bodies were found in the La Escombrera landfill as recently as 2015. Forensic excavations have been slow, contentious, incomplete.

The muralists know this. Jeihhco, who co-founded Casa Kolacho, has said publicly that the murals aren't celebration — they're testimony. Some of the newer artists push further. A collective called Memoria y Camino has painted walls that name specific victims, specific dates. These aren't decorative. They're accusations.

I watched a guide on one of the big tours tell a group of Europeans that the neighborhood had "healed through art." One of the older residents sitting on her stoop looked at him with an expression I can still see. Tired.

4. When the fog rolls in

Go early. Not for safety — the neighborhood is safe during daylight hours and has been for over a decade — but for the light. Between 6:30 and 8:00 a.m., especially in the wetter months from April through June, fog fills the valley below and climbs the hillside in sheets. The murals look different when they're damp. Colors deepen. The concrete darkens around them and the painted figures seem to float forward off the walls.

Almost nobody is there at that hour. The escalators start running at 6:00 a.m.

By 10:00 a.m. the fog burns off and the tour groups arrive and someone sets up a Bluetooth speaker and the place becomes a transaction. I don't begrudge anyone a living — the souvenir economy is real and necessary — but the place at dawn and the place at noon are two different neighborhoods.

5. Beyond the escalators: the studios nobody promotes

If you turn left at the top of the final escalator instead of following the crowd down the main painted corridor, you'll reach a cluster of small studios and workshops that operate without signage or social media presence. One of them belongs to a printmaker named Andrés — I didn't get his last name — who makes linocuts of the neighborhood's rooflines and sells them for 15,000-40,000 COP depending on size. The ink smelled like linseed and the floor was covered in paper scraps and he did not try to sell me anything until I asked.

There's also a screen-printing workshop two doors further that produces the political posters you see pasted around the comuna — the ones with the clenched fists and the dates. They'll talk to you if you speak Spanish and you're not in a hurry. They will not talk to you if you are holding a GoPro.

Skip the souvenir stalls at the escalator landing that sell mass-produced "Comuna 13" snapbacks and fridge magnets — none of it is made locally, and you can find the same stuff at any tourist market in El Poblado.

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