The main objective of this article is to look at the way tourism entrepreneurs and gangs share territory in Medellin's burgeoning and unregulated tourism sector. A description of the extortion of tour guides, street-artists and business owners will show that the ‘tourism vacuna' (the ‘vaccine', as extortion is referred to in Colombia) met only limited resistance on the ground. This contribution will then explore how kinship and friendship influence the control of the tourism sector by criminal groups. It will also demonstrate that the take-over of the tourism sector by Medellin's gangs has led to the depoliticization of a practice initially born as a means of resistance to the violence of the barrios. Finally, based on the interweavement of tourism, kinship and extortion, it will call into question the notion of ‘criminal governance'.