Cementerio de San Pedro

The Colombian city of Medellín is still shaking off its bad reputation.  In the 1980s, while serving as global capital to the cocaine trade, it had one of the highest homicide rates in the world and was also home to one of the most notorious (and richest) men, Pablo Escobar.  The ubiquitous nature of brutality helped give it the nickname “City of Eternal Violence”.   But a series of positive turns—including the death of Escobar in 1993 and the demobilization of urban militias between 2003 and 2006—has helped return Medellín to stability and even vibrance.  Today Medellín is better known by another (and older) nickname, "City of Eternal Spring," which reflects its mild climate and beautiful natural setting.

Few visitors to Medellín these days will witness violence during their stay.  Some, however, may wish to see the Cementerio de San Pedro, where this photo was taken.  Established in 1842, it’s statuary and tombstones are elaborate and often provocative.  High walls muffle the noise of city traffic and foster a sense of serenity.  Death itself even seems far away, at least its violent forms.

In the quote I used last week from A Tale of Two Cities, the following, more somber lines came immediately afterwards:

Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.  No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all.  No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged.  It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page.  It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on its shore.  My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end.  In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?