This Thursday morning, Matthew Watson Croulet got into a taxi in Medellín. He was disoriented. The Police report claims that he only remembered where he was staying. The driver took him to a hotel in El Poblado, a tourist neighborhood very popular with foreigners. When the 25-year-old U.S. citizen entered the site, what workers saw disturbed them. He seemed high. It was clear that he was not well. Worried, the employees called an ambulance. Watson, meanwhile, continued to his room. They found him dead there at 9:25. His body was transferred to Forensic Medicine to establish the cause of death, states the Prosecutor’s Office.
Watson’s is the latest case of a growing problem: more and more foreign tourists are dying in Medellín. According to the district Office, last year there were 37 violent deaths – due to unnatural causes – of foreigners in the capital of Antioquia. They were one every 10 days, on average. So far in 2024, 359,000 tourists have visited the city, and there have already been 29 violent deaths of foreigners, more than one per week. If the pace continues, the year would close with 61 cases. Cases that seem to follow a pattern, says the same entity.
Recently, on May 31, another American citizen was found dead in a hotel in Laureles, also a tourist commune. An employee found Jaime Eduardo Cisneros, 54, lying on a bed. His body was half naked, rolled up in a sheet, with no signs of violence. Authorities have not yet determined his cause of death. They indicate that the man entered his room with a woman during the early morning hours. She left shortly after. He does not.
Tourists, drugs and prostitution
Carlos Calle leads the Tourism Observatory of the Medellín District Personery. He is dedicated, precisely, to generating reports on the behavior of tourism in the city. He explains by phone that the city closed 2023 with the highest rate of foreign visitors in its history: almost 1.5 million. “It was also the year where we saw the most violent deaths of foreigners,” he says. According to him, Medellín is safe for tourists. However, he says there is a “negative profile” of increasingly frequent visitors. “The situations in which these foreign tourists are negatively affected are almost always related to the search for drugs or prostitution,” he says.
The birthplace of Pablo Escobar and once one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Medellín has become a desired location for international travelers in recent years. It is known in Colombia for being the city of innovation, beauty, partying, and narcoculture. This has brought positive and, of course, also negative consequences. In recent years, more and more foreigners come to the Paisa capital with the intention of paying for sex, an activity that is not a crime in Colombia. Some of these visitors also engage in the sexual exploitation of minors, something completely prohibited.
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Although the days of Escobar are already in the past, Calle remembers that the city is home to a large number of criminal gangs, which offer exactly what tourists with a “negative profile” are looking for: drugs and sex workers. According to the researcher, many such travelers end up in dangerous situations, consuming high doses of narcotics in environments that may be unsafe. Some local criminals even take advantage to supply them with scopolamine. Also called burundanga, it is a drug known for its powers of “chemical submission.” It is ingested without being noticed and can be hidden in drinks, inhaled, or blown into the face. The victim loses his will and, later on, will probably forget what happened. And you can even die.
Calle highlights that, among the millions of tourists who travel to Medellín every year, those who do so looking for sex and drugs are relatively few, but in increasing numbers. She adds that it is important “that they arrive with some responsibility.” “Number one, in Colombia the exploitation of minors is a crime. We are not going to tolerate that. Number two, don’t accept drinks from a stranger at a bar. Do not agree to get into a car from a stranger. If you want to go with a girl, talk about the location or at least try to stay in communication with someone,” he explains.
Yiri Milena Amado, the most recent director of the Attorney General’s Office in the Aburrá Valley, a region in which Medellín is located, agrees with him. Amado left office in May, after he was eliminated by the new attorney general, Luz Adriana Camargo. Before that, in March, she gave an interview to Week about the wave of deaths of foreign tourists in the city. He explained that the cases had one element in common: “Deadly cocktails.” In the article, the magazine explains that, in the places where the deceased travelers have been found, the Prosecutor’s Office has found a mixture of several drugs: “Cocaine, cough and marijuana. Also sexual enhancers, like Viagra, and bottles full of alcohol.”
Everything in plain sight, in the streets of Medellín
Amado and Calle’s versions coincide with what is seen on the streets of Medellín. Last April, EL PAÍS traveled to the city to do a report on foreigners and sexual exploitation. The testimonies of several sex workers and multiple visitors made it clear that drugs are a fundamental part of the environment. Sitting in Parque Lleras, where dozens of foreigners come every night to pay for sex, the pimp who introduced herself as Alexa Gómez said that she needed drugs to sleep with clients. “She makes you happy, and everyone likes a smile,” she said. Another sex worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that her clients used to use a lot of drugs, and that she often encouraged men to use more, as a strategy to avoid having to sleep with them.
In a bar in Parque Lleras, a 78-year-old American citizen, who introduced himself as Bob, shared a table with three sex workers. He said that he had been visiting Medellín for years to pay for sex. “There is a very rare freedom here. “You can do whatever you want,” he commented. During the interview, the man, originally from the state of West Virginia, gave 50,000 pesos ($12) to a prostitute and asked her to get him cocaine. The woman accepted the money, left and did not return for a while.
Over the next half hour, Bob repeatedly asked the other two women about the whereabouts of his partner and the drugs. Yuliet, as a sex worker who said she was 24 years old, introduced herself, explained that the American really liked to get high: “He uses too much cocaine and wants us to do it too. I don’t like it, it scares me, I prefer tusi. But I still do cocaine when he asks me to.”
Sexual exploitation of minors
Some foreigners also travel to Medellín with the intention of sexually exploiting minors, which is equivalent to committing a crime in Colombia. On March 28, a 36-year-old American citizen was discovered by the Police in a hotel in the El Poblado neighborhood along with two girls aged 12 and 13. According to Colombian law, sexual consent in minors under 16 years of age only exists if the couple is older by up to three years. Despite the age difference between Timothy Alan Livingston, the man was released shortly after and returned to Florida two days later. A Colombian judge issued an arrest warrant against him in April, but he remains free in the United States.
Less than a month later, the US Police captured the American pedophile Stefan Andrés Correa. The man had traveled 45 times from the United States to Colombia in two years to abuse minors. During the investigation, the authorities found nine cell phones on which he had numerous evidence of sexual abuse, in addition to conversations with a Colombian pimp who, allegedly, connected him with girls in Medellín, where Correa traveled to sexually exploit them.
These two cases shocked the capital of Antioquia and led Mayor Federico Gutierrez, who took office on January 1, to launch a huge prevention campaign. In the last three months, the capital of Antioquia has been filled with posters that try to prevent the sexual exploitation of minors. “Don’t even try, it’s a crime,” they read. These notices cover the walls of the city’s two airports, and are also seen in many hotels and restaurants. There are no official figures on how many minors have been sexually exploited in Medellín in 2024. Last year, more than 320 victims of this crime were reported in the city, according to the NGO Valientes Colombia.
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