The murky background behind one of Medellin’s Christmas traditions, the Alborada

Marcus

I’ve started this blog to share my experiences while travelling during my sabbatical. Focus on travel, food, drink, and history.

It started with a bang. Soon the valley and hills were alight. Colourful fireworks danced and weaved around the sky, shooting up from around the valley. Families and friends gathered on balconies to watch the show. Thunderous noises bellowed from all directions. A constant racket. Medellin was on fire, figuratively.

I had been warned in advance that the 30th would be different and it certainly was memorable.

Each year on the ultimate night of November, all the comunas of Medellin light up with fireworks to ring in December and the Christmas season, in a tradition known as La Alborada. It’s a custom that’s since spread to other Colombian cities.

Little did I know that its origins lie in the murky past of narco traffickers and paramilitaries. Medellin is a city in which history can feel like yesterday. A city that is modern and vibrant but with a foot dragging in the past.

The origin story of the Alborada

At midnight on the 30th of November 2003 Medellin woke up in a panic. Initially the citizens didn’t know whether the flashes were fireworks or bullets. Had the city returned to violence? The authorities didn’t know what was going on either.

Ostensibly it was supposed to be a celebration of the laying down of arms by the paramilitaries – a show prepared and executed by the paramilitaries themselves. A spectacle to mark the end of abnormal times – when the state had to turn to private armies in order to do their dirty work. But in reality it was a dramatic display of power from Don Berna, the paramilitary leader, to show who really called the shots in the city.

Don Berna’s paramilitaries

At the turn of the 21st century, a paramilitary organisation named the Block Cacique Nutibara led by Don Berna was established to try to take back control of the north eastern communes in the city which were ridden by guerillas and narco traffickers. 

In sweeping and bloody military operations, paramilitary groups – that is groups operating outside of the law – worked hand in hand with the military to exterminate the criminal enterprises that controlled vast swathes in the city. One such operation named Orion, which led to the pacification of Comuna 13, resulted in 88 deaths, 12 cases of torture and the disappearance of 92 people.

A year later, the paramilitary group, which maintained control of about 10 comunas, agreed to give up their arms as a means to transition to peacetime. Ostensibly to celebrate and mark the occasion, their leader, Don Berna, ordered the purchase of all the fireworks possible in the city. Five days later they met to light their loot in a number of the city’s comunas.

In fact the fireworks were a statement of the territories in which Don Berna would maintain his power and control. His organisation – the Nutibara – would function as a sweeping criminal enterprise focused on narco-trafficking. His control of the city was so complete that during his time the murder rate actually decreased.

The Don, probably the most renowned Medellin crime leader since Pablo Escobar, was later captured for violating the terms of his agreement and in 2008 he was extradited to the United States where he is serving a 31 year sentence for drug trafficking.

The celebration today

Although with Berna locked up thousands of miles away from the city, the tradition in Medellin has continued to grow in popularity, despite the authorities efforts to discourage it, and has become a firm fixture in the city’s Christmas calendar, as well as in other parts of Colombia.

Many people I talked to resented the night – not due to its origin – in fact its background seemed to be little known – but due to the tremendous noise and its traumatic effect on animals, including cats and dogs, and birds that fall from the sky disorientated by the racket. Animal rights groups campaign every year against it.

The final words are left to Juan Mosquera Restrepo, journalist, scriptwriter and director, who eloquently lamented the celebration’s significance:

A sadness called Medellín has just attacked me. It was like this: detonations in the distance and I wonder, out loud, “is that gunpowder or a bullet?” Then I say to myself, in a low voice: “Damn it, that phrase is from here.” There are phrases that hurt to have learned in your city

Some of the information for this blog was sourced from an infobae article published in 2018.

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