Colombia

Poverty in Colombia:

Inequality of Resource Distribution

and Class Stratification

Sunil Santoni-de-Reddy

December 2003

Colombia has historically faced social and economic pressures which have hindered the country from thriving as a global power. As a result of the country’s vast terrain and mountainous barriers, Colombia has been a divided nation. However, the greatest division within the country is that of class stratification, not topography. Due to a historically weak economy and an unstable government neglecting basic needs of all Colombians, many of the nation’s lower-class citizens have been living in poverty. Widespread unemployment, lack of quality education, and an onset of continued violence throughout the country have all acted to keep the lower-class down in society and have ultimately helped push the middle-classes onto the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. From the middle of the nineteen hundreds to present day life has improved for the Colombian lower-class people as a result of governmental reforms to reconstruct the nation’s economy. However, although unemployment rates have fallen and more people are staying in school, an inequality in the distribution of wealth remains that inhibits the lower-class from achieving social mobility.

The first step that must be taken in this paper is to evaluate what is meant by the term poverty – who is considered poor in Colombia? In this paper, poverty shall be defined as “the lack of resources to cover basic needs … It means lack of resources and access to services, and can be the first step to social exclusion.”[1] In 1995, approximately 20.4 million people fell below the Colombian poverty line out of an estimated national population of 39.2 million people.[2] Amounts of received income and consumption rates per household are the best measures of poverty. Data is measured based upon large-scale random sample household surveys that are used to determine poverty lines within given communities. However, there are faults with this type of analysis that must be acknowledged – these measurements identify the people who lack resources but they do not consider how likely one is able to access these them. Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs) are utilized by the World Bank in their borrower countries and bring to light “how the poor define poverty in multidimensional ways that encompass self-respect, autonomy, access to land, and so on, rather than income alone.”[3] Because there is room for error with many procedures, the best simple indicator of poverty has been the consumption expenditure per person.

It must also be considered how people attain wealth in Colombia. “Six income sources are distinguished: wages and salaries, income from independent employment, receipts from capital, transfers (public or private), transitory receipts such as inheritances or lottery winnings, and unclassified income. The first two sources together are called labor income.”[4] Labor income is the most important source of wealth; in the late 1970s “there [was] hardly any group for which labor income is less that half of the total income, and for most groups the share exceeds 70 percent.”[5] The lowest class in Colombia, those who make up the first decile with respects to poverty, is made up of people forming the bottom forty percent of Colombia’s income distribution. In a study where percentage of labor income was measured in correspondence with the total income per household head, it was found that 94 percent of all total income received by people living in the poorest decile comes from some form of paid employment, in contrast to an average of 34 percent for the middle-class and 4 percent for the wealthiest class in the nation.[6]

Thus, labor income acts as the main source of total income for people in the lowest-class in Colombia; the poor depend on their wages for survival.

At this time, it is important to recognize that what is offered, here, are only generalizations of the poor in Colombia. People belonging to the lower-class do not share exactly the same routes to poverty. As Maria Antonia Gallart states when commenting on Colombian youth living in poverty, “young people living below the poverty line are not a homogenous group. There are striking differences among them given that some live in the streets, others are in very poor households and have spent few years at school, while others have educated parents and better opportunities to get out of poverty.”[7] Similar statements apply to all people living below the poverty line. There are differences between the quality of life of those living in urban areas in contrast with rural zones. Some live without any hope of social mobility whereas others have greater resources at their disposal, etc. Not all poor people are the same but ultimately they are all for the most part made inferior in a society where there is a great inequality of wealth that goes to benefit the upper-class elite.

The quality of life for those living in poverty must be examined to understand how the poor are set apart and abandoned in society.

Poor households have, on average twice the number of children as non-poor ones. This is an

important factor explaining low per capita incomes resulting from high dependency ratios.

The other element is the number of people employed. In urban areas the average number of

people employed (per household) is lower among the poor. Households in poverty are also

relatively young and poorly educated.[8]

Historically, many of the poorest families living in the rural regions of Colombia were active in farming their own land or that of a landowner. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, approximately eighty percent of the rural poor family’s income came from paid labor and often spent as much as eighty to ninety percent of their income on food. Sixty percent of campesinos, peasant farmers, earned less than two thousand pesos per year – this figure is approximately three hundred United States dollars. Poverty in rural zones, “meant low levels of consumption and nutrition, high mortality rates and low life expectancy, little education of inferior quality and virtually no prospect of substantial advance in economic or social terms … the occupation of farmer or agricultural worker was of low social prestige.”[9] Healthcare is not received by many of Colombia’s poor. Rural peasants are more likely not to attain healthcare. Approximately twenty percent of people needing medical care do not seek such assistance because “it is too expensive or too far from their home.”[10]

In the mid-nineteen hundreds half of the rural peasants could not read or write and less than two percent of them continued education beyond the first year of secondary school.

The major deterrent to higher levels of rural education appears to have been the lack of

facilities … Schools have typically been located in old dilapidated houses; frequently the only

teaching material present was a map of Colombia. As of 1970, more public funds were being

spent on the 23,000 students attending the national universities than on the 1.35 million

primary and secondary school age children in rural areas. Less than 10% of the primary

school budget went to rural areas.[11]

Education will play an important factor in continued poverty, as will be discussed later in the paper.

Other pressing issues for the rural poor are a lack of political involvement – the country’s government is located in Bogotá and the government has often been criticized for ignoring the rural countryside to focus on urban problems. As a result of low political influence, the rural poor are exposed to control from large-scale farmers. Land competition is a major source of campesino concern because they can not compete with large farm owners whose ultimate goal is expansion for maximum profit. Ultimately, “low rural incomes are and have been the result of (a) a high supply of workers with agricultural skills but little opportunity outside agriculture, and (b) inequality in the distribution of the other income earning assets, land and capital.”[12] The rural poor are kept in the lower-class because they are denied access and full ownership to the land they farm and as a result they are overpowered by the wealthy landowners.

Poverty stricken areas of urban centers do not differ greatly from the conditions the rural poor must face. In general terms, urban poverty may be characterized by: “high densities, dilapidated or shanty housing, and an absence or undersupply of water, sewage, and garbage services and other amenities.”[13] In the late nineteen-seventies many of the barrios in Colombia (where most of the urban poor reside) lacked water service and those that had access to water shared community fountains. In addition, many barrios were not equipped with electricity or telephones. Decent trash collection services and sewerage were also lacking for many of the barrios in Colombia.[14]

The quality of low-income housing in urban centers is poor. One of the major problems in the cities is overpopulation, in part due to rural migration to the cities where jobs were thought to be more plentiful, and also as a means for the rural peasantry to escape the political violence that erupted in the mid-twentieth century between the Liberal and Conservative parties. With an increased population in the cities came a decrease in ample living space. The government is also responsible for not providing the poor with enough public housing for those needing basic shelter. In the National Development Plan of 1972 the Colombian government emphasized construction and greater employment in the cities and discouraged the same expansion in the countryside.

As a result of this plan, migration to the cities erupted and a demand for housing ensued.

However, failure of the government to offer enough low-income housing resulted in the overcrowding of the housing that was available and an increase of people in the streets. The government also used zoning measures in order to limit the amount of land that would be set aside for low-income housing. Thus they are responsible for the lack of shelter available for the people invited into the cities who were indirectly promised a better future.[15]

Both the rural and urban poor suffer as a result of insufficient resources at their disposal. Ultimately, “there is a feudalistic class system and an urban-rural cleavage whereby the rural population and lower segments of the urban population have been denied certain sanitary and medical services, educational facilities, occupational mobility, and general socioeconomic advance.”[16] Because these resources are made available to the wealthier members of Colombian society, the lower-class is hindered from rising up out of their inferior positions. The insufficient distribution of wealth in Colombia is greatly a result of social reproduction whereby institutions of society act to keep the lower-class down. By denying the poor resources of education to improve their lives, for example, the government was implementing social exclusion. “Social exclusion focuses on the ways in which contact with public institutions work to exclude the poor … the institutional arrangements of the modern state that keep substantial numbers of the population dependent and without adequate access to the opportunities of their society.”[17] In other words, the rich are able to thrive and attain greater wealth whereas the poor either remain stagnant or fall into greater poverty.

In Colombia, wealth is “concentrated in a small percentage of households while large sections of the population live below the poverty line.”[18] In 1988 the lowest half of the population only received 18.9 percent of the total income of the state whereas the top tenth received 37.1 percent.[19] Furthermore, “the poor in the cities can see the conspicuous consumption of the rich; in many cases, they work for people who have consumer durables far beyond those of the U.S. middle class.”[20] The same trends are true in many other countries.

The middle class in Colombia is virtually being eliminated. Society is being cleaved into a binary system of an upper-class and a lower-class. In the late nineteen-seventies the middle class had already moved towards a lower-class position:

The proportion of low-stratum households in poverty ranges from 46 to 57 percent, with 12 to

14 percent in extreme poverty. This happens because the low stratum is so large, typically

including some 60 to 70 percent of the population, that it is quite heterogeneous with respect

to consumption per head.[21]

For Colombians, “life is marked by a deepening divide between rich and poor.”[22] The class conflict that exists based upon the possession of wealth may be illustrated through various forms of competition between members of the lower-class and members of the wealthy elite. In rural Colombia:

most of the land is operated by a few large farms and makes the tendency towards disparities

in income in rural households and farm holdings more severe. Big landowners have easier

access to credit, subsides, technological development and extension programs, which

discriminates against small and poor peasants.[23]

Small farmers have a difficult time competing with the larger farms because they do not have the same resources available to them. Large landowners have taken a more active approach in competing with the peasants that surrounded them; the peasants were transformed into wage laborers. “Agricultural entrepreneurs effected this transformation by asserting rights of private property over large areas of public lands occupied in part by peasant settlers; that is, they enclosed the peasants’ fields.”[24] When the large landowners were unable control the peasants, many times they expelled them from the land through violent usurpations. Campesinos that were able to maintain possession of the land they farmed inevitably still had to compete with the larger landowners for ultimate success. “For increasing farm incomes to contribute to the income of the poorer operator families, it not only is necessary that small farms become more productive (in

value terms) but also that their land base not be reduced.”[25] What this signifies is that in order for the campesino to have any degree of success he must expand production and maintain his land base, meaning no usurpations from large-scale farmers.

In the urban setting often the marketplace is a good example of competition between the small-scale and large-scale. Although both aim to maximize profits,

larger-scale operators, who were more advantageously placed in terms of their capital and

personal constraints and consequently able to take larger risks, were able to make regularly

larger profits both per unit of capital and in total than smaller-scale sellers … Small-scale

sellers, who were caught in the vicious circle of small amounts of capital, uneconomic

wholesale buying, and very low profit margins, operated below the level at which expansion

was possible and operated only to maintain the status quo and not become insolvent.[26]

As shown, the small-scale seller must struggle simply to get by whereas the large-scale seller is in a position for continued expansion and earned profit. The small-scale farmers are unable to compete with large corporate chains and supermarkets that can afford to compete with the small-scale vendors because “the competitive prices and hygienic displays of supermarket fresh produce has attracted the upper income groups who represent considerable spending power in the city.”[27] Thus, small-scale merchants and farmers are trapped in a struggle for survival. “In general, professional, clerical, administrative, and teaching positions are not associated with poverty. Occupations with a relatively high incidence of poverty are domestic service, construction jobs (especially unskilled labor, but even craftsmen are likely to come from poor families), and some industrial jobs, such as those in the shoe industry.”[28] Members of the lower classes are not only degraded in their line of work, but the low income they receive can not compete with the incomes maintained by the upper-classes who work as professionals.

Ultimately, when a member of the lower-class is given the opportunity to work, he or she will take such an opportunity to secure some degree of financial stability for his or her family. However, Colombia’s poor have faced widespread unemployment which has enabled them from earning enough funds to keep their families protected. In cases like Bogotá, where the city incurred large population growth due to rural migration, there was an

inability of the industrial sector to provide the necessary employment for the city’s working

class. This pattern of economic development has resulted in high unemployment in Bogotá,

high underemployment, and employment skewed toward those occupations where salaries

have traditionally been the lowest (i.e., the unskilled services).[29]

In addition, “industrial closures and cutbacks in government spending led to many workers losing their jobs.”[30] The mass of unemployed Colombians and rural migrants without work created social tension within the cities.[31] “The existence of a minimum wage and payroll taxes for formally employed unskilled workers contribute to unemployment and informal segment of unskilled workers.”[32] Taxes thus offer another burden on the lower-class population. When unemployment results, many people turn to the informal sector for wages. However, the informal sector keeps workers in extremely low income-brackets. The poor must chose between unemployment or temporary work in the lowest paid jobs.[33] For a poor population, wages from labor are the only source of income and thus maintaining or finding employment is crucial for the members of Colombia’s lower-class.

Education is a principle resource for social mobility and impacts people’s aspirations for economic prosperity. “Education appears to be the most powerful classifying characteristic, or the on that most sharply separates households by income level.”[34] A meritocracy does not exist in Colombia, education is a class issue:

Clearly one’s class depends on education, and some sons and daughters of the working class

use education to improve their circumstances. Yet in many cases such mobility is not possible.

Even free public education for low-income families has a cost in terms of lost income when

the children are in school rather than at work. These families need the wages, however

meager, of their children. In addition, public education is insufficient in coverage and

sometimes poor in quality.[35]

One’s level of education has an influence on how likely one will be able to find employment, and maintain their positions, in order to earn enough wages to get by. In the late nineties, a survey was taken by Colombians with varying levels of education. The results of the survey indicated that the rate of unemployment for people who attained university-level educations was lower than the rate of unemployment for those who only attained a secondary school education. What is interesting to observe is that people who only received a primary school education had lower unemployment rates than a majority of the people who finished secondary school. An explanation for such an observation is that people with minimal skill levels have minimal choices in life and are thus forced to find a job whereas those with greater levels of education have greater opportunities and thus hold out from accepting any line of work available.[36]

Better educational opportunities must be offered to the youth of Colombia. Children and young adults who come from poor households “face a difficult challenge, given that they are entering the work-force without prior experience, which is a handicap in difficult labor markets. Moreover, they tend to have less educational qualifications than other youth and an urgent need

to generate income to cover basic needs. Therefore, the education and training of poor youth, and

their performance in the labor market, are important in order to alleviate poverty.”[37]

The quality of educational instruction in the established schools in poor district continues to be poor even despite government attempts to increase the number of schools in these communities with hopes of enrolling a greater number of students. In 1978 it was reported that “the major deterrent to higher levels of rural education appears to have been the lack of facilities … As late as 1967 only about one-quarter of rural primary school teachers had any kind of diploma [and] about 15% had no education beyond the primary level themselves.” [38] By the end of the twentieth century enrollment in elementary as well as secondary schools grew to cover about half of the student-aged children.

As a consequence, the younger generations are better educated than their elders. However,

some problems in formal education continued and high rates of repetition and attrition acted

as selection devices that left out a large number of teenagers who had not learnt the basic and

technical skills needed to perform adequately in a difficult labor market. Moreover, the

differences in the educational quality of schools brought forth the question of the value, in

terms of competencies, of secondary education diplomas for students graduating from schools

serving the poorest part of the population.[39]

Thus, due to inadequate resources at the poorer educational institutions, students are not benefited from attending school because they do not receive the tools needed to succeed in the work-force. This fact may explain why many people choose to drop out of school and why others do not continue their educations beyond the primary level.

The composition of one’s family also impacts the sustainability of one’s impoverished living conditions. Dependence burden is associated with the number of people that working members of a family must support financially. An instance where a single mother works to support her three children reveals a higher dependency burden, for example, than an instance where two parents work to support their three children because in this case two incomes are supporting three children as opposed to one. In the nineteen-eighties a survey was taken in poor communities in Bogotá and Medellín that indicated the proportion of family members employed and their number of dependents. What was found from this survey was that a family with more that four dependents per worker was three times as likely to be poor than families with fewer dependents: “the higher the dependency burden, the more likely the family is to be poor.”[40][41] In addition, people who can afford to have their children watched or enrolled in some form of childcare service can afford to work more hours and earn more money. Members of the higher-classes are at an advantage because their income can more easily support their number of dependents than poorer workers can. “If the working adults have low individual incomes, the family cannot escape from poverty by having more members work, since children can add little to income. If one or more adults have very high incomes, however, the family can afford to have many children and still not be poor.”

In the market place of Bogotá, family commitment means low profit for merchants. “With heavy family financial commitments [the merchants] set up with limited accumulated capital and little hope of expanding their enterprises … Many [women] started their working lives in domestic service, but had been forced out by the time their second child arrived. Large family commitments limited the likelihood of accumulating sufficient capital to increase the size of their enterprise, so they tended to be medium- or small-scale sellers.”[42] Thus, people who have less of a dependency burden of family placed in a better position of accumulating wealth because their wages can be saved better than someone with a larger family who earns the same wages.

The last factor influencing the continued poverty in Colombia is the presence of violence in the countryside as well as in the cities. Levels of violence reached their peak in the middle of the twentieth century during La Violencia (1948-1963), a period of political violent conflict between the Liberal and Conservative parties in the country involving approximately two-hundred thousand deaths. Currently about thirty-five thousand deaths occur every year as a result of armed conflict; the violence has yet to come to an end.[43] It must be noted, that violence is not exclusively caused by poverty nor is poverty caused only by a history of violence: “it is clearly too simplistic to suggest that violence or poverty can be ranked, but rather that they are interrelated.”[44] However, one focus group in Aguazul, Colombia, “identified the various causes of violence as ‘poverty’, ‘lack of unity’, ‘unemployment’, ‘lack of education’, ‘lack of land’, and ‘lack of business in agricultural products’,”[45] all of which are aspects of poverty in Colombia. Thus, although violence does not necessarily cause poverty, it is one element that is influential over the populations of lower-class Colombians.

In rural settings in 1965, and earlier, peasants were faced with violent upheavals of the land they worked on because of usurpations by larger landowners. Below describes some violent methods taken by the landowners in the nineteenth century to dispossess colonos (peasant farmers):

They threw pasture seed in the settlers’ crops and turned cattle into their fields, pulled down

bridges to cut market access, and jailed colono leaders on trumped-up charges. In some

instances, landowners also formed vigilante bands to attack the most recalcitrant colonos in

order to intimidate the others. Usually such tactics succeeded in forcing settlers to sign

tenancy contracts or abandon the area.[46]

In addition, violence was prevalent during seasons when agricultural production was high: “crop theft is attractive during the semi-annual coffee harvest, and cheap land is available when the occupants are threatened by violence … in certain areas the victims are generally those who have failed to pay for protective services against banditry and violence.”[47] Peasant farmers must always compete with large-scale owners for their land; the campesinos have a choice to endure the hardship they face when competing with large farm owners, or migrate to other regions in the country to start anew. Many times the peasant farmer chose the latter, migrating to the cities of Colombia to create a better existence in fleeing from violent threats. The peasant farmer who chose to stay on his land was also susceptible to acting out violence. The farmer’s anxiety coupled with his frustration over environmental havoc was enough to force him into violent behaviors which included joining gangs of angry campesinos or violent unions.[48]

The urban poor are also driven to violent means or criminality to defend their livelihood. Some unemployed members of Colombian society “reported that they had no option but to steal in order to feed their families, although this was viewed very much as a last resort. In Medellín, a group of young men aged between 16 and 20 years discussed the strategy of manos ajenas (strange hands) or robbery as the only way to provide for their families … Another man from Bogotá reported how he stole through desperation: ‘If they don’t let us work, we are pushed into robbing. You can’t let yourself die from hunger, and less your children’.”[49] Thus, many poor people in Colombia feel their only option is to become criminals in order to help their families survive.

Many of the important elements of poverty have been discussed, but it is valuable to consider a chain of cause and effect to better understand how society impacts the lives of lower-class Colombians. In 2003, a group of teachers in Medellín indicated some causes of poverty: unemployment means there are no wages to live off of, closing of businesses means workers will be unemployed, economic policies benefit the wealthy while subsides are taken away from the poor leaving them impoverished, low-wages mean money can’t cover a family’s basic needs, etc. The teachers subsequently indicated results of poverty: having no money leads to an absence of housing, to get money poverty stricken people will turn to crime, having no food leads to malnourishment, etc.[50] When the government fails at providing quality educations, subsidized housing, decent wages, and job resources, poverty results for the lowest class in society. Feelings of hopelessness often are prevalent realities for urban and rural poor in Colombia. As a result, those living in poverty must struggle to survive, often turning to criminality to feed their families. When the poor steal or commit other crimes they are viewed by larger society as deviants. However, when the poor commit no crimes, and simply exist without shelter, nourishment, or other basic needs, their appearance alone labels them as deviants in society because they create disorder for the wealthy-elite who control the power-base.

In the middle of the twentieth century women’s role in the workforce was increased. Women’s participation rate grew from thirty-four percent to fifty percent between the years 1976 and 1995, occupying approximately forty-two percent of the entire workforce, whereas that of males grew from sixty-nine percent to seventy-seven percent.[51] One of the reasons for the increase in the feminization of labor is because “female recruitment is encouraged by their willingness to accept worse terms of employment than men. Women are more likely to work part-time and without a formal contract.”[52] However, it is not always true that women were forced into poor conditions of work. The increase of women in the formal sector of work resulted partly because men were not as likely to take on temporary work and thus found jobs in the informal sector. Another cause for the surge of women’s growing employment opportunities in the late twentieth century is due to “the plummeting birth rate (gross fertility dropped in urban Colombia from around 6.0 births in the early 19602 to 2.5 in the late 1980s) [which] had the effect of enabling more women to go out to work.”[53] In addition, “in terms of social security,

women were more likely to be covered than men.”[54]

In evaluating women’s decision to work there are two different motivating factors. For the small population of women who attain a quality education, work is a mark of personal achievement and success. These women are able to earn greater wages than women with lower levels of education. For the women who did not have access to quality instruction or training in a line of work, maintaining a job is often a result of the necessity of keeping one’s family alive. These women are sometimes forced into accepting a job because they must earn wages to feed their family and provide the basic needs of survival. Often women take on jobs to increase the total income of the house, adding to their husband’s salary, and other times single mothers are the primary source of income.[55]

Next, young people also play a great role in understanding poverty in Colombia. “If the young people in households below the poverty line are compared to those above that line, there are clear differences between them in educational attainment … The proportion of people leaving school without finishing the seven grades of elementary education is larger in the underprivileged population and, also a lesser share of them attain post-secondary education.”[56] The lower-class youth in Colombia have less opportunities that their peers living above the poverty line. Wealthier districts are able to provide their students with better quality educational establishments, greater teaching aids and resources, and qualified instructors. As a result, the lower-class poor are given inferior educations and lack basic skills that employers inevitably require their employees to possess.

There have been improvements in Colombia with regards to the government supplying the lower-class youth with better opportunities in order to reduce the prevalence of poverty in the country. For example, Youth Training Programs that are funded by the state and implemented by private institutions are offered to children and adolescents living below the poverty line with a limited secondary education or less. These programs generally train the youth, usually for three-months, to have the skills necessary for employment within a given sector of work.[57]

It would not be fair to disregard the opinions of those living in poverty when evaluating the lives of Colombia’s poorest citizens. In Colombian cities, Participatory Urban Appraisals (PUAs) were used to survey the lower-class members of society. When the people “were asked to list which problems most seriously affected their lives, those related with physical security, crime and violence predominated … Problems related to economic security, categorized mainly as a lack of financial capital and income poverty, were also significant, yet not as important as physical security and violence. Indeed, ‘poverty’ as a term was only cited as a small minority of cases as a problem (5% of the total in Colombia).”[58] It is interesting that many people living below the poverty line in Colombia fault the nation’s violence and not educational opportunities or conditions of employment as causing their state of poverty. According to one man living in poverty in Yopal, Colombia, “‘while there’s unemployment and poverty, there will always be hunger and violence’.”[59]

While the poor in Colombia feel physical safety of their families is a greater problem than income poverty, it is possible that they do not recognize how employment and educational opportunities influence the onset of hunger and violence threatening their families. As discussed earlier, with no employment or low-wages, family has little or no money to buy food with, causing the hunger previously noted. With no hope for social mobility, people often turn to criminality and violence. Whether it be stealing food or finding illegal work, lower-class citizens must do so as a means of earning wages to support their families. The goals of guerrilla groups and other peasant movements such as the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC), for example, are: “(1) to gain access to land; (2) to improve conditions of reproduction in order to strengthen the existing peasant economy; and (3) to resolve other specific socio-economic and cultural demands.”[60] Such groups are formed as a means of improving the life of the poor in Colombia who are sometimes ignored by the government. Thus, although hunger and violence may affect the physical safety of those living in the lower-class, such are results of limited opportunity and inequality within the country, which is directly associated with economic or income poverty.

The Colombian government has not ignored the problem of poverty completely. There have been times when the government attempted to protect the livelihoods of the poor, although sometimes these initiatives failed. For example, in 1874 and 1882, Law 61 and Law 48 were passed by congress to reform the public land of the rural countryside. These “laws advanced the principle that whoever cultivates public land is its rightful owner. The new statutes not only permitted peasants to form homesteads wherever they wished on the national domain but also stipulated that the land they farmed was legally theirs and should not be taken from them, even if

they had not as yet obtained written titles.”[61] Despite the existence of these laws, usurpations continued on the part of the large landowners. Peasant revolts and other unionized uprisings resulted to combat the powerful landowners. Inevitably the government recognized the peasant distress and announced through Law 200 of 1936 that all land not made productive after ten years would be legally reverted back to public ownership.[62]

Major programs that proved to be more successful to reconstruct the nation and aid the poor were implemented beginning in the nineteen-eighties. The government’s aim was to reduce rates of poverty within the country. In 1990, under the administration of César Gaviria, a series of reforms were created to decrease taxation, improve foreign exchange, and cut government spending. “International trade, foreign investment and capital flows were liberalized, foreign exchange controls were lifted, the financial liberalization process was deepened and an independent Central Bank was established. [However,] reforms to the labor regime were less far reaching.”[63] The purposes of the Gaviria reforms were to increase government expenditures for the state and to lift approximately four million people out of the population of thirteen million poor Colombians. “Of the increased expenditure, most was spent on health and education and relatively little was spent on housing.”[64] Thus, although little was done to improve government subsidized housing, the government put more money into improving the quality of education in poorer districts and improve healthcare as well.

Coupled with the above initiatives during reconstruction was a decrease in the rate of unemployment. Labor participation rose during the nineteen-nineties which was brought about by a “boom in the labor-intensive construction industry. Building activity increased dramatically during early 1900s as a tax amnesty tempted Colombians to bring their capital back to the country and as drug monies were channeled into construction.”[65] Thus, economic growth and decreasing unemployment rates seem to reveal a move in the right direction for the poor living in Colombia.

Although reforms are beginning to take place in Colombia, “the concern, even among the major development banks, is that restructuring is still hurting the poor. The new economic model has brought less security in the workplace, longer hours of work, and lower pay rates.”[66] Even though employment may have increased in Colombia, and the economy is growing and becoming less backwards, inequality still remains which threatens to keep the lower-classes poor. Although more people are finding work in Colombia, “the proportion of workers earning low incomes has actually increased; a trend which has accelerated since 1990, a period during which the value of the minimum wage has declined.”[67] With minimum wages it is improbable that a family living in poverty could ever earn enough to rid themselves of the struggle for survival, especially when competing with members of a small but powerful aristocracy.

There is no indication that the income distribution has improved in Colombia between the rich and the poor. It is difficult to say whether or not poverty in Colombia can be eliminated. It is my personal belief that the country has the ability to accomplish such a task. It has been shown through the years that Colombia has become more advanced economically speaking, and rates of poverty have been decreasing slowly along with reconstruction reforms. With this evidence, it seems that the country is heading in the right direction. The quality of education is improving in lower-class barrios. This has allowed more people to attain the skill necessary to compete in the workforce. With greater employment comes greater opportunity to achieve social mobility. However, income levels for those living in poverty have not increased. The poor must consider the dependency burden, taxation which greatly reduces the monies needed to secure the basics of life, and violence which threatens their livelihoods.

Historically, wages were lowered so that Colombia could compete in the international market. It was difficult for wages not to be lowered, especially because there was an excess of jobs being created as a result of rural migrants into the cities all looking for work.[68] However, the Colombian nation is not as economically unstable as it may have once been. If the minimum wage were increased the poor would be able to live more comfortably, provided that the cost of living does not similarly increase. What is needed is not necessarily a creation of more jobs, but higher wages for the jobs already in existence, and a suitable distribution of the country’s wealth. Better distribution would not only help the lower-classes but the nation at large. “Improved distribution of assets is also a necessary condition for stimulating economic growth. It would generate more equal growth of income which, in turn, would minimize the need for redistribution, generating a virtuous circle of more growth and more equity.”[69]

In conclusion, Colombia has seen a decrease in levels of poverty through greater employment and educational opportunities. However, life for the lower-class has not improved significantly enough to lend them an option of social mobility. Inequality still exists in society where power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small population. With greater wealth and resources going to the upper-class in Colombia, little remains for the lower-classes. The cleavage between the upper- and lower-class will continue to leave the country divided and will create greater adversity for many poor citizens who struggle to survive.

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[1] Maria Antonia Gallart, “Poverty, Youth, and Training: A Study of Four Countries in Latin America,” Compare: A J Journal of Comparative Education 31, no. 1 (2001): 113.

[2] José Leibovich, and Jairo Núñez, “The Urban-Rural Poverty Gap in Colombia,” in Portrait of the Poor: An Assets-Based Approach, eds. Orazio Attanasio, and Miguel Szekely (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 2001), 140.

[3] Cathy McIlwaine and Caroline Moser, “Poverty, Violence, and Livelihood Security in Urban Colombia and Guatemala,” Progress in Development Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 114-115.

[4] Philip Musgrove and Robert Ferber, “Identifying the Urban Poor: Characteristics of Poverty Households in Bogotá, Medellín, and Lima,” Latin American Research Review 14, no. 2 (1979): 31.

[5] Musgrove, 32.

[6] Musgrove, 36.

[7] Gallart, 121.

[8] Poverty in Colombia, (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1994), 11-12.

[9] Albert R. Berry, “Rural Poverty in Twentieth-Century Colombia,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 20, no. 4 (1978): 356-357.

[10] Poverty in Colombia, 73.

[11] Berry, “Rural Poverty,” 359-360.

[12] Berry, “Rural Poverty,” 362.

[13] Musgrove, 40.

[14] Timothy O’Dea Gauhan, “Housing and the Urban Poor: The Case of Bogotá, Colombia,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Politics 19, no. 1 (1977): 113.

[15] Gauhan, 100-106.

[16] Robert C. Williamson, “Toward a Theory of Political Violence: The Case of Rural Colombia,” Western Political Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1965): 37.

[17] Bryan R. Roberts, “Citizenship, Social Policy and Population Change,” in Exclusion and Engagement: Social Policy in Latin America, eds. Christopher Abel, and Colin M. Lewis (London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002), 115-116.

[18] Gallart, 115.

[19] Harvey F. Kline, Colombia: Democracy Under Assault, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 9-10.

[20] Harvey F. Kline, 134.

[21] Musgrove, 40.

[22] Alan Gilbert, “Employment and Poverty During Economic Restructuring: The Case of Bogotá, Colombia,” Urban Studies 34, no. 7 (1997): 1055.

[23] Alicia Puyana, “Rural Poverty and Policy: Mexico and Colombia Compared,” in Exclusion and Engagement: Social Policy in Latin America, eds. Christopher Abel, and Colin M. Lewis (London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002), 399.

[24] Catherine LeGrand, “Agrarian Antecedents of the Violence,” in Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, eds. Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992), 32.

[25] Berry, “Rural Poverty,” 364.

[26] Caroline Moser, “Why the Poor Remain Poor: The Experience of Bogotá Market Traders in the 1970s,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 22, no. 3 (1980): 370-371.

[27] Moser, 381.

[28] Musgrove, 47.

[29] Gauhan, 102.

[30] Gilbert, 1052

[31] Leon Zamosc, The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Struggles of the National Peasant Association, 1967-1981, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 47.

[32] Eduardo Lora, and Marta Luz Henao, “Colombia: The Evolution and Reform of the Labor Market,” in Labor Markets in Latin America: Combining Social Protection with Market Flexibility, eds. Sebastian Edwards, and Nora Claudia Lustig (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), 277.

[33] Gallart, 117.

[34] Musgrove, 45.

[35] Kline, 19.

[36] Gilbert, 1057.

[37] Gallart, 113.

[38] Berry, “Rural Poverty,” 359.

[39] Gallart, 115.

[40] Musgrove, 37.

[41] Musgrove, 43-44.

[42] Moser, 372.

[43] McIlwaine, 118.

[44] McIlwaine, 122.

[45] McIlwaine, 123.

[46] LeGrand, 38.

[47] Williamson, 39.

[48] Williamson, 42.

[49] McIlwaine, 124.

[50] McIlwaine, 125.

[51] Gilbert, 1061-1062.

[52] Gilbert, 1054.

[53] Gilbert, 1062.

[54] Gilbert, 1062.

[55] Gilbert, 1062.

[56] Gallart, 117.

[57] Gallart, 120.

[58] McIlwaine, 119-120.

[59] McIlwaine, 123.

[60] Andrew Graham, “Peasants and the Agrarian Question in Latin America,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 33, no. 2 (1991): 179.

[61] LeGrand, 37.

[62] LeGrand, 42.

[63] Lora, 261.

[64] Gilbert, 1050.

[65] Gilbert, 1057.

[66] Gilbert, 1053.

[67] Gilbert, 1065.

[68] Zamosc, 99.

[69] Leibovich, 137.