A Graphic Anthropology of Street Art in Medellin’s Comuna 13 : The Jaguar and the Hummingbird

This book examines how street art transformed Medellín's Comuna 13 from one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods into a thriving tourist destination, exploring both local community dynamics and global forces of urban renewal and touristification.

This book examines how street art transformed Medellín's Comuna 13 from one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods into a thriving tourist destination, exploring both local community dynamics and global forces of urban renewal and touristification. Shaped by a long history of violence, political conflict, and forced displacement, Comuna 13 has undergone a striking transformation from the 2010s onward. This study traces the complex processes set in motion by street art interventions, encompassing local dynamics such as community organizing, collective memory construction, and the re-appropriation of public space, alongside global dynamics including tourism development and institutional co-optation. Most importantly, the book approaches street art images not simply as research objects but as active subjects that speak, manifest desires, and exert agency—offering readers unique insights into how visual culture shapes urban transformation and everyday life experiences. The book is suitable for researchers in visual studies, graffiti and street art research, anthropology, urban studies, sociology and Latin American studies.