From Narco Roads to Porsche Tolls: How a 28-Km Tunnel Turned Medellín–Santa Fe into a Global Parable of Progress

The 28-kilometer sprint between Medellín and its mountain-shadow suburb Santa Fe de Antioquia used to be a three-hour roulette of potholes, roadside shrines, and the occasional armed checkpoint. Today it is a 30-minute glide along Tunel de la Quiebra—eight kilometers of asphalt that feel positively Swiss until you remember the tunnel was mostly financed by tolls so steep that even Zurich would blush. A Colombian commuter now pays more to shave off minutes than a Milanese pays to cross half of Europe, which is either progress or the most elegant heist in modern infrastructure.

To the international observer, the Medellín–Santa Fe corridor is a neat parable for our age: the Global South finally gets its Autobahn, only to discover the bill arrives in dollars and the speed limit still feels suspiciously negotiable. The tunnel, opened in 2006, was heralded as proof that Colombia had graduated from Netflix-narco clichés to respectable emerging market. Consultants from Madrid, Seoul, and Toronto lined up to pat each other’s backs, presumably relieved that their PowerPoint slides about “post-conflict mobility paradigms” were no longer theoretical. A McKinsey alumnus even called it “a mobility dividend for peace,” a phrase so sanitized it could have been bottled and sold at Davos alongside gluten-free canapés.

Of course, the dividend is distributed unevenly. On weekends, the tunnel becomes a catwalk for Porsche Cayennes fleeing Medellín’s drizzle toward boutique fincas and artisanal gin. Meanwhile, the old road—now rebranded the “scenic route” by Airbnb copywriters—still hosts chivas packed with farmers whose monthly income equals one tank of premium gasoline. The same asphalt that ferries hedge-fund botanists to agave tastings also carries plantains that will be sold for cents in the city’s markets. It’s globalization in miniature: everyone uses the same highway, some just pay more per kilometer than others earn per day.

Environmentalists, never the life of the party, point out that the tunnel merely displaced congestion rather than cured it. Traffic jams have migrated to the western exit like a chronic rash, and weekend tailbacks now stretch past the cement factory, gifting Santa Fe the kind of smoggy sunsets once reserved for Jakarta. Still, local officials brand the corridor a “green corridor” because the exhaust is invisible inside the mountain, which is rather like calling a landfill odor-neutral if you close the lid tight enough.

Internationally, the project has become a case study in the contradictions of development capital. Multilateral lenders trumpet it as a triumph of blended finance; libertarian podcasts cite it as proof that toll roads beat state planning. Meanwhile, the IMF quietly notes that Colombia’s transport PPPs now carry contingent liabilities equal to 3.8% of GDP—an elegant euphemism for “we’ll all be paying for this tunnel long after the Porsches are electric.” In the marble lobbies of Washington, everyone agrees the corridor is a “leveraged win-win.” In the roadside cafés of Santa Fe, the phrase is less common, though the coffee remains excellent.

Yet for all the cynicism, something stubbornly human persists. A Belgian chocolatier opened a bean-to-bar workshop in Santa Fe’s colonial square, lured by the same tunnel that once smuggled contraband emeralds. Japanese honeymooners pose beside 17th-century churches, their Instagram geotags scattering pixels of Andean sunlight across timelines in Tokyo. And every Friday, Medellín’s office drones—those who haven’t been laid off by fintech layoffs—still flood westward, chasing the mirage of a weekend that feels less algorithmic. The tunnel, in other words, delivers both cargo and fantasy in equal measure, which may be the most honest metric of progress we have.

So the next time you read that infrastructure is the skeleton upon which prosperity grows, remember Medellín–Santa Fe: a bone graft financed by tolls, hope, and a dash of geopolitical vanity. It works, sort of, provided you don’t look too closely at the interest schedule—or at the faces of those still waiting for the dividend to arrive in a currency they can actually spend.