ABSTRACT
Understanding the sources of Medellin's "wounding" requires peeling back numerous layers of urban history over several decades. For the purpose of analyzing how the narcotics trade has affected Medellin over the last several decades, it is useful to think in stages (always keeping in mind that these are loose approximations, not fixed or discrete temporal units). The combined effect of Plan Colombia's military aid program to combat narcotics trafficking and violent confrontations between the left, the state and right-wing groups have pushed tens of thousands of poor people from marginalized "peripheral" zones in Uraba and the Choco into Medellin's already overwhelmed urban shantytowns. When Medellin's industrial base experienced a profound crisis in the decade of the 1970s, the city's already high unemployment rate soared, and the number of unemployed or "inactive" male youths between the ages of 12 and 29 rose to become the highest in the nation.
