The displaced population’s Return and Relocation Plan moves forward with projects for peasants, youth, rural schools’ recovery and artistic groups in this municipality, a place where "there’s a musician in each family."

With excitement and big smiles, the young aspiring musicians unpacked the brand-new instruments that were glowing. Afterwards, the trumpets, saxophones, flutes, guitars, drums, and marimbas were heard thanks to their dexterity.

For the young people who make up the marching band and the music school in Concordia’s municipality, art also contributes to repair the damage caused by violence and recover the social and cultural ties that bind them to their land.

Gilmar Alvarez is one of them. For him, music is the best hobby, and it could be his calling for the rest of his life, which took a turn in this southwestern Antioquia’s town. He says they relocated several years ago because "my family was displaced from Salgar when the guerrillas made them leave and there was a lot of violence."

He has been studying music for three years and likes to play the drummer in the marching band. This is the instrument he unpacked the day the musical endowment delivered by the Unit for the Victims arrived, this was done to comply with the displaced population’s Return and Relocation Plan action.

The new instruments "will allow us to increase music hotbeds coverage in schools and villages. As well as to improve the lives of children, young people, and the elderly," says Giovanni Loaiza, who began as a musician in these groups and now works as a teacher.

In Concordia, culture is a tradition, and music is an important part of it. However, and for many years, the confrontation between guerrillas and self-defense groups broke traditions and silenced the instruments when thousands of people left the town.

Now that hundreds of displaced people have returned or have relocated, there is a concern on strengthening artistic groups and encouraging hometown pride; the expression "for every family there is a musician" is constantly repeated.

For this reason, excited after the instruments’ arrival, the cultural manager Luis Vasco expressed the following: "I’m very happy, because music also works as an uplifting instrument. Our young people, many of them who are victims, will once again be proud and take back their tradition when families used to gather around guitars in their homes.”

The Concordia’s displaced people Return and Relocation Plan has implemented actions such as farmers support with agricultural and poultry supplies, and recovery and furniture and technologic provision for rural schools.

According to Wilson Cordoba, the Unit for the Victims Antioquia’s Territorial Director: "We keep moving forward in the social fabric recovery in more than 30 targeted municipalities with these Return and Relocation Plans, so the victims who returned remain on their land with better living conditions and become productive again.”

In this Antioquia’s municipality, which registers nearly 3,000 armed conflict victims, the entity has invested more than 1,300 million COP in its integral reparation.

(End/JCM/COG/RAM)