PHX Reporter

The Phoenix City Council voted June 14 to approve a new sister-city partnership with Medellín, Colombia, making it the first Phoenix sister city in South America.

Mayor Kate Gallego announced the sister-city deal, the12th such partnership for Phoenix, during the June 14 meeting. The council welcomed Oscar De las salas, a native Colombian and resident of Phoenix, to speak before the board ratified the deal.

“This is quite a unique opportunity for my home country, Colombia, and for the city of Medellín,” De las salas said at the meeting. “We are celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relationships between the two countries, and Medellín will be the first one amongst many other cities that are coming into sisterhood.”

De las salas added that although Medellín was infamous for drug violence during the 1980s, it since had turned itself into a growing city focused on clean energy, transportation and a greatly cleaned-up river, the Rio Medellín.

"We have a strong South American community in Phoenix, and it is growing, so this will be a wonderful opportunity to really celebrate so many of the partnerships and areas we have in common with our new sister city, including a focus on technology and entrepreneurship," Mayor Kate Gallego said at the meeting. "They have a very robust bioscience research community, and I think there are important synergies there. We already heard in the testimony about the shared interest in mobility and sustainability. I think we can learn a lot from each other. So this will be a great partnership."

Phoenix has 11 other “sister cities” across North America, Europe and all parts of Asia.

“Sister cities agree to send and receive delegations of various types, including political and business leaders, arts and cultural representatives, educators and technical experts, because these exchanges promote cross-cultural understanding, municipal and technical cooperation, and business opportunities,” the city’s website states.