Sandra Galvez, Luis Orozco, Jairo Escobar and Diego Zapata, the Picacho Community Video team.
Picacho, Medellin, Colombia, February 28, 2001

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA, February 28:
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Although neither youth is involved with the myriad groups-- street gangs, bandas, milicias, combos, sicarios, and paramilitaries who vie for control block by block in their neighborhoods, they know plenty of people who are. Neither goes home without phoning to be sure the coast is clear. Failure to do so could be fatal.

In Picacho I spent a morning with the teens who form a community video collective. Although they've been tolerated by the local bandas because they make cultural programs and show positive aspects of life in their communa, there are many "de facto" censorship rules it would be suicidal for them to break.

The fear of being killed for speaking the truth or of endangering the lives of others who reveal their truth to the camera in photographs or on film, exerts many limitations both subtle and extreme on how stories can be told here in Medellin and in Colombia at large. As ubiquitous as the violence in Los Angeles appears for young people growing up there, the reality is that more viable escape routes exist there than here in Colombia. Watching Diego, Jairo, Sandra, and Luis as they work I am moved, by their pride, by their hope and mostly by their courage.

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to Colombia, March 2