Social Participatory Video

Documentary in the Construction of

Identity within the Territory

1
Angela Garcs Montoya
2
Leonardo Jimnez Garca

1
Historian, MS in Aesthetics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. PhD in
Communications from Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Professor associate of the Faculty
of Communication at Universidad de Medelln. Researcher in the line of Communication
and Youth Cultures from the research group Communication, Organization and Politics.
Research experience in the field of youth cultures, youth communication collectives and
political participation of youth.
E-mail: agarces@udem.edu.co

2
Conscientious objector to conscription since 1999. Co-founder of Corporacin para la
Comunicacin Ciudad Comuna (2009) in Medelln, Colombia. Audiovisual Communicator
from Politcnico Colombiano Jaime Isaza Cadavid. Currently studying an MS in
Communication and Human Rights at Universidad Autnoma Latinoamericana. Researcher
in the lines of memory, territories, communication for mobilization and social change,
education for peace. Director of the following participatory social documentaries: El Jardn
de Dudas (The Doubt Garden, 2013), La Dignidad que Emerge desde las Laderas (Dignity
Emerging from the Hillsides, 2014), and Agua-Cero (Zero-Water/Downpour, 2015)
E-mail: leojiga@gmail.com

The case of Comuna 83 in Medelln

In this chapter we will assess the Social Participatory Documentary (DSP, in Spanish),
developed by Ciudad Comuna (CC) as a practice of social and territorial appropriation.
DSP is a communication practice aimed at generating processes of social transformation in
urban border territories, in order to go beyond the vision imposed by the mass media,
especially commercial audiovisual communication in Medelln, which attempts to position
the city under the Eternal Spring motto. Thanks to its communication for citizens
empowerment approach, DSP allows dwellers to dream, envision and find possible
scenarios for the generation of structural changes in political, economic, social and cultural
life for communities. It is a form of communication for social mobilization as it allows the
construction of communitarian life plans, as said by Sierra (2010): Each community has
its collective life plan, as it thinks about itself somehow, creates its own image and, from
that depiction, imagines its future.

CC has achieved the activation of two punctual actions: one, related to documentary
production techniques; and the other, to means of articulation for social mobilization. In
this spirit, this chapter will show the elements constituting Social Participatory
Documentary which have been developed and polished throughout the experience in
communications of CC, in its dialogue with Comuna 8s territory. The audience and
mobilization generated by El Jardn de Dudas (The Doubt Garden) will also be analyzed,
as it resulted from the conflict generated by the Jardn Circunvalar4 (Circumventing
Garden) megaproject, which has been approved by Medellns Municipal Development
Plan. Such megaproject champions the approach supported by the local administrations- to
the city as an economic element, attracting capitals for its tourism profiled development.

3
T.N. Medellin, as a municipality, is administratively split into 16 Comunas (communes), and each one of them is in turn
divided into barrios or neighborhoods. Comuna 8 is on the central-eastern hills of the Aburr Valley.
4
If consideration is given to urban development in Medelln, recent urban planning and renovation processes in Medellin
stand out, such as the rural-urban circumventing garden. This works intend an intervention on broad areas which have
been considered vulnerable (both socially and culturally), so that they can be pacified by means of civil works. In the case
of the urban border, the works of the circumventing mega-garden started, including infrastructure works, ecological
pathways and the integration of transportation systems.
No wonder, Medellin keeps its Eternal Spring City motto, always open to leisure,
consumption and permanent high-tourism events.

1. Social Participatory Documentary (DSP) a visual methodology for

social mobilization.

Process prevails over product in the DSP methodology. The main thing is the collective
reflection. Doing the video is a way to explore and transform reality surrounding us, so that
it may be recorded. The documentary may be considered secondary in itself, as it is some
kind of a pretext to mobilize energies and stimulate collective processes to impact and
transform realities. Besides, DSP also enhances the strengthening of local organizing, the
recovery of collective memory and identity, and the building and maintenance of
democratic processes, all of which are basic elements incorporated into the social-
communicational process built from DSP.
It should be made clear that the documentary is not the aim, as the process is more
important, and it is considered a meaningful element in the generation of senses aimed at
social mobilization. The DSP process generates high quality finished videos, which will be
interesting for the public and likely to be communicated. This is why the process
becomes an act of public and collective communication, thus encouraging reflection and
debate, and the acceptance of criticism about the work done, etc. If the video remains a
class exercise which can only be seen within the group, the DSP processes should rather
refer to an educational activity. On the other hand, when quality videos are shown to
diverse audiences, DSP processes close the creative circle and allow participants to better
understand the means, and to complement the educational action with the communicational
one.
Lets analyze the elements comprising the creation of a documentary, and how they are
treated in the DSP approach.

Role of the producer: the functions of the audiovisual producer are reassessed, so
that his role as a political subject may be considered, he should be involved in a
specific reality questioning and transforming the territory.
 Events in the documentary: they are actual events held by the community, not
encouraged by the documentary; they are rooted in the particular situations
experienced by the community, and should be made visible and disseminated by the
documentary. This is why a script is not written before the shooting, it should be
built collectively with the participation of the community.
Shooting of the documentary: The documentary enhances the already existing
forms of participating and organizing within the community. For this reason, as
long as there is a social weave supporting the documentary, it will find its place and
will make significant sense. In regard to the documentary recording the social
conflict generated by the Circumventing Garden megaproject, also known as the
Green Belt, the inter-neighborhood board and the board of desplazados (displaced
people, or internal refugees) of Comuna 8 joined the documentary.
Social mobilization: The Social Participatory Documentary is aimed at confronting
the official principles of territorial planning accepted by the State. It should go
beyond denouncing, in order to move forward in the process of making the
emerging forms of producing the territory visible in a participatory and
communitarian way. In this regard, something really important has been the
consideration of two different versions of the territory: one of them, a map of
Comuna 8 comprising 32 neighborhoods; and the other, the official map which only
acknowledges the existence of 15 neighborhoods. The huge gap is due to the lack of
recognition, on the part of the local Administration, of the settlements appearing in
the urban fabric, after the forced displacements Antioquia has suffered in the last
three decades.
Narrative of the Documentary: The Social Participatory Documentary collects the
voices and events existing within the community (without altering or re-
constructing them during the shooting or the editing), as it commits to the
vindication and visibility of the territory and its forms of participation.
Memory building: Documentaries become material evidence intended for the
visibility of the conflicts and the alternative proposals of production of territory. As
history evolves, they become evidence of the existence of mobilization and
 resistance processes, which are made invisible in the process of planning and
managing the territory.

A specific assessment of the social participatory documentary The Doubt Garden (2013)
acknowledges the achieved articulation of communitarian expressions and processes, which
were invisible to the local Administration.

Consideration has also been given to the presence of diverse forms of intervention in the
territory, which should not only include official planning, but also the communitys views,
which must be considered and included. The process of social mobilization generated by
the documentary operates as a tool, useful both for dialogue and confrontation with the
megaprojects attempting to intervene and regulate Comuna 8s territory.

The final outcome of the action research in the documentary The Doubt Garden was the
acknowledgement of the voices and experiences of the dwellers of settlements, harshly
pummeled by the local Administrations intervention through such urban renewal
megaproject. The narrative approach in the video shows how the actors weave a political
discourse, and a proposal for territorial development confronting the claims of the
innovative city with arguments. The common thread running through the entire
documentary is the memory narratives on the particular reality of the intervened territories,
in which the negative impact of the megaproject becomes apparent. The narrative of the
documentary allows acknowledging and analyzing the level of political empowerment and
awareness within communities, and the clarity of a political discourse capable of
confronting the arguments of government institutions with solid and convincing reasoning,
and still remain communitarian.

The social and organizational dynamics in Comuna 8 will show renewed forms of social
resistance, as this time there is no list of demands and requests made to government
agencies; the autonomous educational processes started in the territories strengthen the
communities leadership and political commitment. The social organization, community
mobilization, and communitarian popular communication processes invigorated by Ciudad
Comuna offer communities a level of social empowerment, allowing the renewal of their
strategies and the building of new understandings of resistance processes, with diverse
ways to become evident.

The first expression of the resistance processes promoted by the organized communities
within Comuna 8 territory is associated to their ways to produce, build and promote
territorial planning. After the construction of a map where they could see themselves,
including all the neighborhoods founded and built on the urban-rural border, the
communities have developed actions to make the existence of their territories visible.
Throughout this process, community communication has played a crucial role, mainly the
communitarian audiovisuals implementing the DSP methodology promoted by Ciudad
Comuna. The processes of social appropriation of the media allow the weaving within the
community of a different image and narrative of their neighborhoods, and of those dwelling
in them; thus reaffirming the sense of belonging and the identity of those who assume
themselves as part of a community, of a territory.

There is another element that builds up resistance processes within communities, the
development of proposals for social and communitarian organization aimed at
strengthening social mobilization processes. Communities go beyond the classic
organization by particular goals and objectives, or by vindications associated to
populations, given that they have common bodies for articulation and dialogue.
Vindications such as life with dignity, the fundamental human rights, the social
construction of habitat, and comprehensive human security become the claims of the
organized social processes, and have an impact on the conceptions about and interventions
on the urban borders. That is why we think DSP should become a methodology and a
participatory resource, aimed at ordering and projecting the ways of organizing and
mobilizing, produced by the dwellers of the territory as an expression of community
resistance. Lets draw a parallel between the forms of intervention in the territory of that
which is instituted (local Administration), and that who institutes (the community).

Chart 1 - Forms of intervention in the territory

Dimensions What is instituted Who institutes it
(local Administration) (the community)
Social appropriation of Obedience, subduing of the Communities develop a profile of the communitarian
the territory communities through territorial researcher and planner, by building, in a
territorial planning dialogue of knowledges, a new conception of territory,
imposed by planning by appropriating it, and by developing processes of
experts. public discussion around it.

Community Development of vertical Building of autonomous, horizontal, assembly-style

organization and bodies and processes for organizing and participating processes, based on the
participation participation, with marked construction of grassroots political agreements aimed
leaderships, and forms of at collective action, respectful of autonomies, which
organization attached to recover traditional forms of organization such as
regulations (Community convites, cabildos (councils), open boards,
Boards, Committees and vindication boards, with self-management processes
citizen overseers) designed for their sustainability, without the
involvement of political actors from government
institutions.
Human Security Implementation of -Guarantee of fundamental rights
repressive, militarist or - Social construction of habitat
welfare-dependant policies -Vindication of a life with dignity
to contain the situation -Recovery of traditional knowledge, and of the cultural
of social and armed and social wealth of the territories
conflict in the - Development of conviviality processes aimed at
neighborhoods on the envisioning new forms of security within the
urban-rural border communities
Source: Revision of processes of social appropriation of the territory by Ciudad Comuna, visible in their
media (Visn 8 newspaper, Comun-Audiovisual, Voces de la 8).

The presented experience of the documentary El Jardn de Dudas, done under the DSP
approach, manages to promote critical readings of reality and, especially, to become a
pedagogical instrument allowing the construction and socialization of dreams, ideals, and
the envisioned future and city, which are part of the communities feelings; it departs from
an image of the city that cannot be found in traditional media, let alone in the technical and
rational forms of knowledge supported by the local Administration. Besides, DSP has
strengthened Ciudad Comunas vision, related to the construction of social transformation
processes from the popular communitarian communication approach, thus making a site for
dialogue out of documentaries, to re-think about territories, identities and ways of being,
becoming and living within a community.

2. Symbolic and subjective dimension of territory as expressed in

DSP.

Dialogues emerging from each challenge posed by DSP processes with actors from a given
territory imply acknowledging the voice of communities, its status and worth. That is why
DSP intends to recover, through all available devices, the knowledge communities have
accumulated historically, as well as recognizing they are the immaterial capital that has not
been recorded by other audiovisual media. It is worth noting that the life experiences of
those populations persisting in their social struggles for the social, cultural and material
construction of territory become visible in DSP.

The importance of memory always stands out, associated to the acknowledgement of the
social value of communitarian actors and their territory, in dialogues and collective spaces
of reflection. In DSP memory is presented as the main resource to guarantee the
preservation, protection and dissemination of narratives of popular solidarity and
organization, which originated and breathed communitarian life into their territories.

In our dialogic processes, these perceptions in regard to memory within territories have
been called localized memory in an attempt to map the concepts developed within the
collectivity- that is: to recover or find memory, to situate memory, to promote its situated
self-narrative, shows the chances of existence of localized memory in a reducing
environment, which de-localizes it just by localizing it (Garca Gutierrez, 2009, pp-85).

Certain methodological and pedagogical tools related to memory have consolidated, in

order to generate processes of critical self-narrative, and thus make new sense, in order to
find connectors between the life histories of the social actors, and the social conflicts and
struggles whose representation, re-elaboration and structuring is intended in the
documentaries, to get the communities subjectivities, visions and dreams involved, and
have them join the circles of dialogue of each DSP. Rutas del tiempo (the paths of time),
the socialization of life histories, communitarian cartographies, and el tendedero de los
recursos (a resource clothes-line), are some of the instruments that have allowed us to
explore and exploit memory as a potential narrative resource, both in the research process
and throughout the realization of documentaries.

In regard to the use of memory and memories as resources for a critical self-narrative, the
proposal is to acknowledge the sensitivity of each culture of memory when it comes to the
development of tools for a critical self-narrative, in order to understand and face memory,
fundamentally, as a matter of justice with the usurped presents (Garca Gutirrez, 2009. pp-
89).

The persisting defense of memory raised by community actors, in the processes of re-
signifying and vindicating territory, has upgraded it in our perspective- to the category of
right, and has led to the politicization of the reflection on the right to the city.

Potential life and community histories emerge from these self-narrative processes of
acknowledgement of situated memory, which feed documentary narratives. Collaborative
memory building processes become visible as well, which develop into powerful
systematization processes, and generate new memory related participatory community
processes. An example of this is the Community Memory Festival Comuna 8, an initiative
which has taken on life of its own after the realization of the La Dignidad que Emerge de
las Laderas (Dignity Emerging from the Hillsides)5 (2014) documentary. Lets see how the
social organizations from the territories introduce their assembly-like memory processes as
a political action within their territory.

5
This documentary recovers memory from the social and communitarian mobilization processes developed in Medellin in
2014, which faced the privatization processes enforced by the Land Ordinance Plan and the megaprojects with initiatives
of participation, popular education and peaceful mobilization. This Medellin, so-called the most innovative, fails to
acknowledge the deep inequality generated by the neoliberal and capitalistic model promoted by the city government, and
makes it invisible. Realization: Ciudad Comuna. Co-production: Corporacin Con-vivamos. Year of realization: 2014-
Duration: 26.Production: Comunaudiovisual Collective Ciudad Comuna. Direction: Leonardo Jimnez
 The Communitarian Memory Assembly is thought of and projected as a space for
debate and political construction, among community actors from diverse territories
within Comuna 8 in Medellin, associated to memory, social resistance to
megaprojects of urban transformation, the reality faced by victims, and peace
understood from the perspective of communitarian actors and their community
organization processes, which represent a living tissue transforming and re-
signifying our territories (Presentation of the Communitarian Memory Assembly, in
the Memorias en Dilogo A dialogue between memories- process, April 2015).

Given such backdrop of memory expropriation and alienation, the gathering together of
communities to share their narratives, their experiences, to weave back local memories
destroyed by the official (hegemonic) narratives, becomes an act of liberation. Lets see
some of the narratives recovering the sense of producing territory (Oslender, 2002)

9 years ago, Pinares was only land. The paths and the houses were between 70 and
80 % made of wood. Now, there are new pathways, 50% of the houses have been
improved, there is a recreational park. This development came after our
organization, with the neighborhoods solidarity. We have worked in committees.
We have had to carry construction material up the neighborhood stairs from
different places. And today we acknowledged that we have the same projection: we
have to defend our territory. Pinares de Oriente is currently designing a proposal, as
we are fed up with following the city Administrations imaginaries (Gisela
Quintero. Memory Narratives, from Pinares de Oriente neighborhood April 2009)

The only thing I remember of the time when I lived up the Pan de Azcar hill, is the
terrible war I experienced with my kids, I lost my daughter. We want them all to
give us a break. The first ones were the paras (paramilitaries), then it was the
guerrillas; they raped my daughter and then killed her. We were re-located here, it is
like a matchbox; it is not worth it. That is why I tell people they should not let
anybody take them out of their houses. Because the government is blind to all this
 suffering of the poor. (Luz Mara Martnez. Memory Narratives, from Pinares de
Oriente neighborhood April 2009)

These narratives offer evidence of contesting expressions from communities dwelling in the
urban borders of Medelln, in which it is necessary to start questioning and bringing down
the truth of that official narrative of the city, which has been imposed onto the peripheral
districts for decades. For this reason it is necessary to keep and recover a Shared Memory
meeting, spaces in which communitarian actors start their own paths, they let their
narratives flow, in some sort of repairing therapy for the community consisting of pain,
resistance, hope, impunity, and solidarity.

3. DSP as an instrument for denunciation and social mobilization.

The DSPs done by Ciudad Comuna between 2013 and 2014 focused on the construction of
deep readings of the impacts the Green Belt and Camino de la Vida (The Path of Life)
megaprojects would have upon the territories within Comuna 8. They have enabled the
Organization to qualify and renew the set of methodologies through which DSPs are
constructed, as well as to promote processes of social denunciation and mobilization. These
documentary films are the audiovisual memory and testimony of the feelings and visions
communities have of their territories, and the oppressive conditions the megaprojects have
generated there. In the hands of political actors from the territories, they become material to
support their denunciations; blunt instruments that clearly express the proposals to
appropriate the territory, and to stimulate organization within the social fabric, which gives
preference to the organized social fabric of Comuna 8.

Two visions of development become evident: on the one hand, the ones promoting the
advancement of infrastructure works, from principles of innovation and competitiveness;
and, on the other hand, those interested in recovering community legacies resulting from
solidarity and popular construction processes in different neighborhoods and sectors, thus
acknowledging the social, subjective and symbolic dimensions interweaved by the
communities with the territories they inhabit.
Different instruments of denunciation and motivation for social mobilization are
acknowledged in the DSP methodology, among them: the documentaries The doubt garden
(2013) and Dignity emerging from the hillsides (2014), and the short film Agua-Cero
(Downpour/Zero-Water) (2014). Reading the productions in chronological order weaves a
common thread that allows organizational processes within Comuna 8 mainly the Inter-
Neighborhood Board for Housing and Public Services, Victims Board, Displaced People
Board, and the Neighborhood Committees for Territorial Appropriation of Comuna 8
Neighborhoods (El Faro The Lighthouse-, Pinares de Oriente Eastern Pine Forests-, Las
Golondrinas Barn Swallows-, Villatina La Torre Villatina the Tower-, and Esfuerzos de
Paz Peace Efforts)- to tell citizens in general how government institutions, such as the
Urban Development Company (EDU, in Spanish), implement megaprojects without prior
consultations to the communities, without giving clear information to the territory dwellers
about neighborhoods and sectors destroyed in order to continue with the construction
works.

EDUs approach on land-use planning infringes fundamental rights, and government

institutions privilege a service-based city model, centered on modern infrastructure, for a
comuna with high historical vulnerability levels resulting from conditions of inequality,
lack of social policies and programs aimed at solving the territory dwellers basic needs, as
well as the ever-present social and armed conflict.

This acute social and territorial conflict has been faced with restrictive, repressive, and
militarist measures by the local Administration. These exacerbate social stigmatization of
the territory, particularly of the youth and human rights organizations.

As an instrument for denunciation, the DSPs produced by Ciudad Comuna allow the
community to confront the visions of development promoted by megaprojects. Through
DSPs, the community shares a critical reading of the context, the set of affectations, and the
institutional visions that not only ignore the social and symbolic construction of territory,
with positions that disregard and discredit the social knowledge of community actors, but
the deep knowledge they have generated in regard to their territories, which represent
accumulated decades of work empowered by social struggles and processes aimed at the
social, political and cultural construction of neighborhoods and sectors.

The documentary The doubt garden is a DSP developing context reading of the conditions
of settlements in Medellins urban borders. Through its public dissemination (in the first
months of 2013), it started circulating throughout citizen debate spaces, community
organizations and university circles. These exhibition spaces watch the documentary while
asking What is the Green Belt megaproject?

The dissemination and appropriation of the DSP in university film shows and other local
exhibitions, as well as social networks, mainly impacts the audiences. It is due to the way
the directly responsible officers of the megaproject intend to discredit, disregard and
stigmatize positions based on other views on development. They are expressed in readings
and proposals made by community leaders and social organizations, which created spaces,
community audiences, for the public discussion of the project since 2013.

Then, The Doubt Garden (2013) DSP becomes a context reading exercise, and a look on
the reality of borders connecting the peripheries of comunas 1, 3 and 8 of Medellin, on its
eastern hillside. It arouses the public interest, -mainly among citizen monitoring processes
of the development plan, academic territorial observatories, and social research programs in
public universities throughout the city- to approach and get to know these peripheral
realities in depth, and the ways urban transformation megaprojects affect them.

Lets take a look at some examples of readings, by organized communities resisting

eviction peacefully in their territories since February 2013, which started circulating when
the documentary was published in Ciudad Comunas YouTube channel:

"What a great job, with multiple positions on a public project generating uncertainty
among the most vulnerable populations". (Raul Soto)
"The worst thing is that they want to turn Medellin into a commercial town, only worried
about foreign tourists, while our people remain adrift. Medellin a place for inequality...".
(Felipe Machado)

"It is outrageous!!! Medellin, a place for life? Or rather a place for tourists? Mr.
Mayor, I would like you to start analyzing the needs of our Comuna 8: decent housing,
health, education, food, public services (free lifeline supply of water), and something very
important: LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE ... it is not a matter of looking at other cities around
the world and copying them here...." (Joan Sanchez)

Dissemination of documentary The Doubt Garden (2013) did not only allow us to unmask
before citizens the contradictions and negative effects of a megaproject, of which
government institutions used to praise themselves, it also contributed to the activation of
circles of interest weaved among communitarian actors, social and organizational
processes, and academic spaces throughout the city. After assuming the Comuna 8 case as a
reference; and the documentary as an instrument allowing the acknowledgement of this
process, social initiatives from the eastern hillside generated mobilization processes and
spaces for community discussion in regard to the megaprojects negative effects: forums,
workshops, hearings and symbolic protests.

It is possible to see the mobilization of the organizations from Medellins eastern hillside,
in their having community hearings held in a plenary session of the Council of Medellin. In
the hearing, communities were able to express their concerns about the Green Belt, and the
documentary had worked as a source for reflections and ideas addressed in these debates. A
clear example of this work of political mobilization is the statement released by
Corporacin Con-Vivamos from Comuna 1, on behalf of the organizations comprising the
Green Belt Oversight on the eastern slope:

Corporacin Con-Vivamos, conceives the Green Belt as a reserve of spaces intended

for public use, that could prevent urban expansion and allow environmental protection,
as long as acknowledgment is given to the history, the memory and the proposals for
 social construction of habitat, community risk management, alternative land use, local
development processes, participatory planning, and comprehensive neighborhood
improvement, among other proposals, designed by communities and organizations
within territories. After taking previous approaches into account, we publicly request
greater clarity in regard to the implementation of the Borders Macro-Project and the
Metropolitan Green Belt Project6.

As DSP became a public document of virtual access and disclosure circulating between
citizens and community forums, in neighborhood and city events, it makes political sense
and captures the attention of social sectors concerned with reality in the peripheries.

After The Doubt Garden, the reflection on impacts of megaprojects on hillside territories is
resumed and, therefore, the theme is revisited by the next DSP: Dignity Emerging from the
Hillsides. This documentary was built during the second half of 2013, and released in mid-
2014. The communities managed to deepen into their previous reflections on the impacts of
urban transformation megaprojects. But at the same time, a more consolidated reflection on
the guiding question of this process emerged in this DSP: Which city models are
envisioned in institutional megaprojects? And which are vindicated by community actors?

The dialogues generated within the DSP production have allowed building a structured
reflection on the most political and compelling claim generated by community actors: their
Right to the City. In this regard, it is worth socializing some of the shared readings of the
scholar and geographer David Harvey, in an exchange he made with representatives of
community organizations from Comuna 8, during his visit to Medellin in early 2015. There,
he clarified the vision of their Right to the City championed by these social processes:

It is the right to make the city the way we want and desire it to be. It does not mean
being surrounded by the capitals forces of accumulation; by the kind of city emerging
from very powerful elites who are essentially building a city according to their own

6
Intervention by Corporacin Con-Vivamos during the Debate Forum on Territorial Planning of the Green Belt, at the
Medelln Council. On September 17th, 2014.
 desires, where the rest of us have to live. So the Right to the City is the right we all
have to discuss the city of our dreams7.

In the documentary Dignity Emerging from the Hillsides (2014), the organizations and
community actors integrated into the participatory process take the challenge of building a
narrative structure beyond the critical context reading, allowing the introduction of
proposals and alternatives woven by the communities organizational projects, in order to
project the city they envision. The acknowledgement of different visions of the city
projected upon both sides of the implementation of megaprojects is the final outcome of the
process, embodied in a 25 minute narrative. On the one hand, the perspective of political
and economic elites while projecting their approach on development on a discourse of
innovation for Medellin. It departs from the great works associated to mobility and to urban
space transformation, involving the use of strategies consolidated by the capitalist model:
urban land speculation, the transformation of habitat areas into areas of public transit, the
creation of monopolies in mobility systems, and the implementation of urban projects based
on the habitability parameters of high-rise housing.

On the other hand, communities express their own perspectives on their Right to the City,
in their social mobilization actions. They are represented by their vision of a dignified
territory where the fundamental human rights come before urbanistic projections. They
envision territories where communities have decent housing, where living conditions
generate well-being within families, where investment is mainly focused on addressing
social needs; a city where the emotional, symbolic and historical relations building the joint
identities of dwellers and their neighborhoods and sectors, may be acknowledged.

The community actors who took part in the DSP Dignity Emerging from the Hillsides,
managed to materialize their own proposals for political action as a key to weave a
common narrative thread of the production. It defined the documentarys accompaniment
of the major mobilization actions undertaken by communities in 2014, as its main
methodology. Since it has been projected as a scenario to ensure the continuity of critical

7
Conversation of David Harvey with community actors and social processes from Comuna 8, in Medelln. March, 2015.
readings of the reality generated by the implementation of the Green Belt in Comuna 8; the
DSP The Doubt Garden allows going beyond an approach that starts in denunciation and
then moves on to mobilization. In this sense, lets analyze several options:

From the recognition of the problem to the materialization of community-based

alternatives, transcending from the understanding of the institutional approaches and
projects, to the recognition of their own structured views on their Right to the City.

Appropriation of the territory, the social construction of habitat and the social
empowerment of communities from their own vision of the city.

The level of political qualification of grassroots social movements on Medellins eastern

hillside may be seen more clearly in this production, and their ability to influence public
debates on Medellins destiny and future through their positions. David Harvey stresses the
following in his dialogues with Comuna 8s community actors:

The fact that urban movements are starting to think about the city as a whole, allows, in
my opinion, a potential movement that is likely to become a vital part of any anti-
capitalist struggle. At a certain point, they will start demanding different types of cities;
which are not dominated by capital, nor by the search of profit, but by the purpose of
creating an environment that is open to creative and pleasurable activities8.

Actions for political and social mobilization become relevant for DSP; in them, the
narrative proper of documentaries expresses more clearly the empowerment of social
movements organized within Comuna 8, while vindicating their Right to the City. This
became evident at the moment of doing the Public Community Consultation in Comuna 8:
an unprecedented action in the history of territorial social struggles. It essentially articulates
the political use of citizen participation mechanisms (Popular Enquiry), the strategic use of
Ciudad Comunas community media to invite communities to mobilize their participation
in the consultation, and a strategic use of the results boosted by the documentary Dignity

8
Conversation of David Harvey with community actors and social processes from Comuna 8 in Medelln. March, 2015.
Emerging from the Hillsides (2014), in order to impact on public opinion. This was
achieved with the acknowledgement of 3,000 voices of people taking part in the
consultation. 99.9% of them clearly considered comprehensive neighborhood improvement
projects to be a priority and an alternative over the Green Belt works.
Chart 2: Results and participation rates in this referendum
BALLOT STATIONS VOTES VOTES Null Unmarked TOTAL
for YES for NO VOTES VOTES VOTES
1) Villa Turbay School 89 0 1 0 90
2) Esfuerzos de Paz 1 186 0 3 1 190
Youth House
3) Villatina Social Hall 257 1 0 0 258
4) Sol del Oriente Plant 311 2 1 0 314
Nursery/House
5) Cedepro Altos de la 410 6 4 0 420
Torre School
6) Las Golondrinas School 350 3 1 0 354
7) Llanaditas Community 114 2 1 0 117
Hall
8) Julia Agudelo School 240 0 0 2 242

9) Las Estancias House of 18 0 0 0 18

Culture
10) La Ladera Library 215 3 0 0 218
2.190 17 11 3 2.221
TOTAL VOTES

Percentages 98.6% 0.7% 0.5% 0.1% 100%

Source: Results of the popular consultation on community proposals for Comuna 8 borders, based on Medellins Land
Use Ordinance. May 18, 2014.

The Popular Consultation process shows that 98.6% voted YES, so we won the
Consultation: 2,190 out of the 2,221 voters supported the proposal made by Comuna 8
community organizations.
Having a record of the origin, development and impacts generated by these political
mobilization actions for the Right to the City, turns a DSP into an invaluable document of
memory, accounting not only for the social and political positions of the community
dwellers, but for the organizational capability, the strategic use they make of legal
instruments to defend human rights, and their capability to influence policies, programs and
megaprojects governing the future of Medellin. The dissemination of these social struggles
through documentary production allowed the total breaking down of totalizing and
homogeneous discourses, which intended to show widespread citizenship acceptance of the
urban transformation projects undertaken by government institutions, based on the Medellin
Innovative City motto.

Renewed visions of the city emerge within social and academic circles, through the actions
taken for the broad dissemination of the documentary. They re-assess urban border
territories, from the perspectives of community organization processes on the hillsides.
Another thing that becomes evident is the visibility of critical narratives and reading
approaches to the prevailing model of city. The need has been acknowledged to create
spaces for political debate, allowing the questioning of Medellins current development
model.

A clear example of such DSP dissemination and appropriation is the context of the
adoption of the Medellins Land Use Ordinance (POT). An Urban/Rural Dialogue Table
was developed in this area, a scenario for the convergence of urban and rural social
processes, vindicating the Right to the City, taking critical positions on the imposed model
of city. The Table made a political statement after the approval of Medellins POT, which
will record for posterity the memory of the wide gap between the city envisioned by
capitalism, and the ones envisioned from the territories:

We vindicate the right to a different opinion, to protest, to mobilization and to political

opposition; the right to think differently, and to be acknowledged as actors in the
political construction of the city. To participate is not to legitimate, it is not only to
agree with and accept the municipal Administration policies. To participate is also to
 be able to point out the contradictions and to outline proposals. To participate is to
publicly discuss, deliberate and build. (Political Statement Urban/Rural Dialogue
Table, 2015).

At the end of 2014, we start the creation of a third documentary, built with the DSP
pedagogy and methodological principles. The new challenge is to weave, together with
children, a new view on the reality of the peripheral Comuna 8 neighborhoods affected by
the Green Belt megaproject. This view will focus on the impacts upon the inhabitants of
these territories, of the lack of sewage service and drinking water. Reference is made to an
alarming report emerged from the community censuses conducted by the Inter-
Neighborhood Housing and Public Services Board: over 12,000 people living in these areas
still lack access to drinking water and sewage system9.

The realization of the short docufiction film Zero-Water/Downpour (2014)10 is an essential

complement to the structural views interwoven in the two previous documentaries. It allows
the construction of a narrative that could be called critical introspection, which brings
viewers to a reflection on the place of fundamental citizen rights in the public policy
guidelines for Medellin. This short film clearly questions the Innovative City model
supported by Medellins government plans throughout the last 8 years. The documentary
stresses the critical situation of neglected fundamental rights, in the same neighborhoods
and sectors where large sums of money are invested in urban transformation works, such as
the Green Belt.

In the documentary Zero-Water/Downpour, the original idea and a first proposal of script
were completely developed by the children from Las Golondrinas, Llanaditas and El
Pacfico neighborhoods. The people participating in the documentary are engaged in the
creative building of their own life experiences, based on the daily struggle that involves
helping to get water for their families. That is why it roams around everyday spaces which

9
Report on the public service situation in Comuna 8, Medelln. Inter-Neighbourhood Board of Housing and Public
Services, 2014. This social process has struggled for the right to a free lifeline supply of water, decent housing and public
services for the peripheral inhabitants of Comuna 8.
10
Short film Zero-Water/Downpour, a Ciudad Comuna production. Year 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SuOq-Bgjh4
are shown to sensitize viewers, who are mostly unaware of the existing social dramas
within these communities who lack access to drinking water. Here are some comments
raised by the short film:

It's amazing that this kind of things still happen in this city. When they sell us the idea
that we live in an "innovative" city, the question is innovative for whom? (Jael
Maryori Betancur, 2015)

The saddest thing is that during political campaigns vote hunters come up to this
area and promise to help these people. Some community leaders also play with
peoples needs, and take advantage of their neighbors by bringing councilmen to lie to
them (Benjamin Tapitas, 2014).

The DSP processes, the methodological explorations and experiences generated between
2014 and 2015 allowed the consolidation, from the narrative proper of documentaries, of a
story that accounts for the political visions of territorial actors engaged in the construction
of their territories. Documentaries are the voice of community victims of the regional
armed conflict, a conflict that displaced them from their birthplaces, and re-victimizes them
today by means of land-use related megaprojects.

There is a long and difficult road towards solutions to the problems of displacement and
loss of territorial roots caused by megaprojects. Along this way, the DSP processes
developed by Ciudad Comuna have managed to amplify the voices of communities, and to
activate public opinion processes. Public debate on the present situations on the hillsides of
Medellin is nurtured with these actions for communitarian social mobilization, in which the
future of the city is discussed. The realities in the outskirts of the eastern hillside become
visible, after being traditionally hidden behind the discourses of development, modernity
and innovation championed by the government in office.
Conclusions
In regard to the audiovisual communication processes promoted within the Comuna 8
territory, which have been endorsed by Ciudad Comuna, we see that neither media
appropriation nor the production of other readings of reality through audiovisual are easy
tasks to cope with. Community audiovisual producers acknowledge the development of
communicational processes enhancing the experiences of participants, in the relation
between social appropriation of territory and audiovisual production, since it allows the
transition from the individual to the social subject, and his/her corresponding social action.
We claim, following Sierra and Gravante, that appropriation takes place when people are
familiar with the tools, place value on them, learn to use them in order to satisfy their needs
and interests (probably their social groups), and give them a sense of belonging (2010). In
this sense, it is necessary to interpret these communication processes, referring to
audiovisual appropriation and creation in marginal urban contexts, as a matter of
mediations rather than media and, therefore, not only of knowledge, but of
acknowledgement, resistance and appropriation from concrete and situated uses and
practices (Barbero, 1987)

The communicational practices, proper of communitarian social audiovisual developed by

Ciudad Comuna, allow finding other voices in Medellins communities which have been
marginalized and made invisible, thanks to the use and appropriation of Participatory Social
Documentary. Through it, communities find a way to re-interpret territory, and build
messages from a local perspective and with territorial roots, thus boosting communicational
processes which reflect social struggles, community identity and social vindications from
the peripheral dwellers of Medellns Comuna 8.

Along the paths of audiovisual creation explored by Ciudad Comuna, the recovery and
recreation of social senses and symbolic references from the organized communities within
the territory becomes evident: in the words of Martn Barbero we say: only those who can
tell count, only those who are able to narrate their own identities, and to name the world
with their own terms will have a solid presence as political subjects (Martn Barbero,
2002)
It is worth noting the importance of citizen communication developed by Comuna 8s
audiovisual communication collectives, proper of a hostile context, where young people re-
signify their territory, community organization, and their views on the city through
audiovisual production processes built with an inclusive and participatory approach, by
means of the praxis of Social Participatory Documentary.

When young people at Ciudad Comuna become aware of the mediations they do across
their territory, they realize, through their management of their media, that when they tell
their own stories, the right to communication is being acknowledged. This is when the
relation social agent-communication-local territory becomes important, understanding that
the local territory is a place that is close, visible, controllable, and, additionally, it is looked
at and used on a daily basis. From there the public sphere becomes possible, social life
may be organized by bringing it closer to politics. Public management is demystified there,
as it loses power in order to gain participation (Alfaro, 2005: 39)

This is how we understand the important job done by Ciudad Comuna, aimed at opening
room for OTHER VOICES in Medelln, which cannot be heard on the mass media, thus
configurating other production and audience channels, thanks to independent and creative
audiovisual production made by young people in the peripheral areas of Medellns
Comuna 8. Professor Jess Martn-Barbero says, during the development of the
Communication Agenda for Colombia:

Independent video, while losing its inferiority complex relative to cinema, and getting
over marginal temptations opposing it to television in a Manichean way, is opening another
space for communicational pluralism. It operates in parallel circuits or paves the way
between the gaps left by the market circuits, to bring an unsuspected cultural heterogeneity
of social actors, and rich themes and narratives through which substantive changes in the
political culture of the youngest parts of society emerge and express themselves (2009:35).

While building renewed visions of urban margins, audiovisual productions by youth

communication collectives confront the technical knowledge of experts who have
historically planned the city, under concepts taken from urban landscaping, innovative city,
and sustainable mobility. Additionally, they show how local Administrations generate high-
impact megaprojects, to transform the city according to international standards of urban
modernization. In spite of being at the forefront of megalopolis urbanism and planning,
they leave aside the living conditions of marginal population. That which has been
forced to dwell in the margins, given its condition of displaced population, and which
forcefully faces the need to build settlements as the only way to remain in the city.

As a research practice, Participatory Social Documentary plays a crucial role in the process
of building and spreading the communitarian understandings and developments of territory.
In them, the acknowledgement of neighborhoods and sectors, still unnamed in the official
political administrative map, emerges as great influence of a unified community discourse.
It poses arguments to debate Medellns concepts of innovation and development, after
reflecting on life with dignity, human rights and the right to dwell in the territory.

If understood as research praxis, the pedagogical processes generated by Social

Participatory Documentary contribute to the building and recovery of immaterial capital,
within the peripheral territories of Medellns Comuna 8. They develop readings and
understandings of their neighborhoods dynamics by means of documentaries. Some
elements comprising the social and immaterial capital, which are recorded in this
documentaries, include the processes of deconstruction of the territories historical
memory, the recovery of histories of the foundation of neighborhoods, of the historical
narrative of the journeys and origins of peasant families who become starring actors in
documentaries, as well as the visibility of trajectories of community organization and
mobilization.

The research approach generated by DSP finds a method of permanent systematization,

developed by the community audiovisual collective through the methodology of
audiovisual observatory. It consists of the audiovisual identification and accompaniment of
human rights issues within territories, such as housing, public services, organization
processes, social mobilization, as well as the social and armed conflict.

The narrative defined and explored by DSP is documentary; this narrative choice made by
the audiovisual collective was motivated by a conviction, by a sense of vindication which is
part of the consensus reached by communitarian audiovisual producers. The implicit aim of
DSP is to allow community voices to express themselves and become visible, by turning
audiovisual language into a channel for expression. When the narrative of documentary is
considered from the perspective post-production, it proposes a common thread to the
editing process which departs from the grouping of the communities problems. It intends
for the final audiovisual contents to build a horizon of sense, in which the problems
communities face become evident, as well as the social alternatives they generate by
themselves to deal with them.
The finished productions rebuild the memory of social appropriation processes assumed by
communities through DSP, they show the evolution of a collective work of construction.
Each documentary is connected to community narratives. It becomes an instrument for
community use, for dissemination purposes, and to defend their approaches on territory.
They are used by communities as a toolbox to raise communitarian awareness, so that the
prevailing views on the city may be debated. Such audiovisual memory remains relevant
within the context of the city, as the realities and ills it documents do not change rapidly
because they are structural problems of the city.

As a research practice, DSP develops new processes of community relation and co-
authorship, as the production plans proposed go hand in hand with communitarian social
initiatives thus allowing a bond between territory, the realities documented and the use of
the DSP pedagogy. Social organization and mobilization processes become linchpins of the
documentaries, and the challenge of DSP is to collect the memory of those processes. The
latter allows the construction of identity bonds within communities, as the final outcome of
DSP operates as a mirror reflecting the effort made by territorial leaders to face their
realities.

Proposals for a life with dignity may be found in community documentary, it develops a
new approach on communication. The view of audiovisual language which focuses on
modern technological devices is thus transcended. Given an approach that presents DSP as
community research praxis, communication represents the real possibility of building
community bonds, of meeting, of developing new senses, meanings and symbols to
apprehend community and neighborhood identities.

DSP manages to gather the main principles of popular education, an approach broadly
developed in Latin America, as follows: DSP proposes processes of accompaniment and
knowledge building which develop from dialogues between different forms of community
knowledge; it projects itself as a means of expression for peripheral communities to build
and disseminate their own views of the city. Audiovisual production processes are
considered spaces to meet, to dialogue and to produce popular subjects from an
emancipation approach. The communicational readings of social reality developed raise
questions and propose debates on the hegemonic views on society, culture, and social
realities reflected on the mass media. Community processes promoted by DSP are not only
aimed at audiovisual production, they also promote the strengthening of community media
and organizational processes, by encouraging the formation of communication seedbeds
and groups across the territories.

All of the audiovisual productions within Comuna 8 territory develop four main categories
when reflecting about it: Territory is built from a heritage approach, that is, from the
appraisal made by community dwellers of those things with immaterial and social value
(popular knowledge, history, landmarks, tradition and cultural wealth); territory is a social
and cultural construction made by communities, it clearly differs from a technical-
administrative approach; territory is identity as communities acknowledge and assume
themselves as part of a comuna, a neighborhood, a sector, certain social dynamics and
social-affective bonds; and territory is built from the history and development of
community organization processes.

DSP encourages and contributes to the strengthening of mobilization processes through the
dissemination of documentaries which show the cultural transformations and the struggles
against the systems hegemonies by proposing organizational practices and by portraying
communities just as they are. Documentaries transmit the message of social transformation
proposals and vindications built by communities; they defend new readings and
understandings of the city which cherish social knowledge.
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