| Summary: | Since 2002, the San Javier district known as Comuna 13 in Medellín, Colombia, has occupied a space in the imagination of Colombians as a violent and dangerous area. Comuna 13, a marginalized neighborhood in the city’s urban sprawl, had been receiving for decades the displaced victims of the violence of the armed conflict in the countryside as well as people from other towns and rural areas attracted by Medellín’s reputation as a progressive and developed city. This thesis analyzes the news articles referring to Comuna 13 in El Tiempo, a widely circulated newspaper in Colombia and a powerful tool of manufacturing public consent, articles which persistently associate the area with violence in the public perception as a result of military operations Mariscal and Orión, launched by the government to disband groups of urban guerrillas that had taken hold in this segregated area of Medellín. Key discussions of the place, including Comuna 13: Crónica de una guerra urbana (2007) by Ricardo Aricapa and Crónicas en el barrio El Salado by Albeiro Ospina dialogue with the discourse of the press, while giving voice to the residents who account for their own versions of violence. These narratives are contrasted with the political actions of youth movements through hip hop which empowers them to create their own poetics of space. The four elements of hip hop (rap, graffiti, breakdance and DJing), practiced by young residents, who have taken to the streets occupying them with sounds, movements and images, become tools in the production of space, reconfiguring in epic dimensions their own perception of Comuna 13. === Arts, Faculty of === French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of === Graduate
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