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As Antioquia emerges from a complicated past, overcoming its challenges starts to looks more like opportunity than risk. And political and business leaders want to entice investors and travellers alike to this central north-western region, which is home to an entrepreneurial spirit and natural beauty.
Its place on a map means spring weather all-year round, with the chance to explore the Andes mountain range, the rain forest, rivers and waterfalls, as well as beaches looking out onto the waves of the Caribbean Sea.
Many visitors, who are increasingly coming from the UK, choose Antioquia because of its history – the region’s indigenous population first made contact with Europeans in the 16th century, when Spanish expeditions travelled along the Caribbean coast in the Uraba area.
Later, settlers arrived in what is now Medellin and with them economic development. In the 18th century, administrators encouraged cocoa and cotton plantations as part of agricultural, mining and monetary systems reform in Antioquia.
Today, these industries are increasingly attracting foreign investment. Exploration activities for natural resources, such as energy and gold, are currently in a boom cycle – though investment in infrastructure is sorely needed.
Major renewable energy projects are in the works, such as Hidroituango, which will be the largest hydro project in the country generating 18% of total capacity installed.
Tapping into renewable energy resources is a priority in Colombia, a country that has the greatest biodiversity in the world. In this sense, Antioquia has a tremendous responsibility to build, farm and extract resources sustainably for the benefit of its more than 6 million inhabitants.
That responsibility extends to the involvement of marginalised populations in public policy, most visible in Medellin’s architecture and in some of the partnerships that local companies have formed to provide social services.
The biggest challenge Antioquia is trying to overcome? Image.
During the 1990s, a four-decade long conflict, fermented in a time known as “La Violencia”, escalated alarmingly between the government and insurgent groups, principally the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which were heavily funded by the drug trade. The most well-known drug baron, Pablo Escobar, is still attached to Medellin, the city where he waged a bloody war of supremacy throughout the ‘80s, and where he was gunned down in 1993.
The government, under the administration of former president Alvaro Uribe in 2002, employed political, economic and military means to weaken all illegal narco-terrorist groups, resulting in a peace agreement the following year which demobilised some 31,000 paramilitary group members. In the following three years, attacks on rural towns fell by an impressive 91%.
Now, under the current federal administration as well as that of the region, one of 32 in the country, Antioquia is continuing down the road of growth and development, albeit with some of the issues faced by many emerging international economies – insufficient infrastructure and basic social needs for rural areas.
Addressing these issues is no small task, but one that the entrepreneurial people in the region, known as “Antioqueños” or “Paisas”, are tackling by reaching out to the international community.
However, this overture is not an invitation for multinational corporations to take controlling shares in Antioquian companies. Local business leaders are instilling protectionist policies, claiming that it is in the interest of the public to ensure sustainable community development.
Major established companies in Antioquia continue to strengthen their presence in Colombia, while also looking for new, international avenues of growth. Cement company Argos is enjoying success in the US and is wellrespected globally, while European ‘fair trade’ requirements make its markets particularly attractive to Antioquian agricultural companies.
One of those Paisas, Carlos Raúl Yepes, chairman of the largest bank in the country, Bancolombia, says the region is beginning to reap what its entrepreneurs have sown. “People here have special characteristics, precisely because they have had to suffer violence and this has taught us lessons,” he says. |
