Living in the Sewers of Colombia

Ryan and I try to keep the stories upbeat and positive here on Medellin Living, but we’re also not blind to the difficulties faced by Colombia’s poor people.

In this Vice video, originally released in 2007, you’ll see life on the streets of Bogota for the poorest of the poor, who are not just living on the streets, but under them in the sewer system.

As shocking as that may seem, what really surprised and saddened me was the “death squads” that target Bogota’s weakest element for “social cleansing” which is an utterly misguided, criminal, and frankly genocidal approach toward trying to address the problem.

The homeless problem, of course, is not limited to Bogota. Sewer dwellers exist in Medellin too. This past December, a story ran on the Huffington Post about a couple who have called a sewer in Medellin home for 22 years.