Coffee, Cocaine, and Roller Coasters

The Making of Memory in Colombian Theme Parks

Abstract

In Colombia, where histories of colonial dispossession, civil war, and narco terror resist resolution, the theme park has emerged as an unlikely instrument of national memory-making. At two of Colombia’s most visited theme parks, Parque del Café in Quindío and Hacienda Nápoles in Antioquia, this _Article traces what happens when Colombia’s contested histories and mythologies are given gates, entrance fees, and roller coasters. At these parks, I argue that celebration works as a technology of historical resolution, producing and selling a coherent narrative scrubbed clean of complexity. Parque del Café freezes time, embalming a cafetero heritage built on colonial dispossession and celebrating a lifestyle it claims to honor even as it hastens its disappearance. Hacienda Nápoles, built from the ruins of infamous narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar’s estate, accelerates time, declaring narco terror transcended and the state triumphant. But in practice, buried violence and histories resurface through the very practices of celebration as visitors project their own desires, griefs, and fantasies onto curated space. Through historical analysis and participant observation in the parks and surrounding communities of Montenegro and Puerto Triunfo, combined with semi-structured interviews with visitors, workers, residents, and local experts, this _Article traces how celebration becomes not only the mode through which history is tamed, but the very arena in which the impossibility of its taming is revealed.