Despite billions in U.S. aid, Colombia struggles to reduce poverty

Despite billions in U.S. aid, Colombia struggles to reduce poverty

By Juan Forero
Washington Post staff writer
Monday, April 19, 2010

ALGARROBO, COLOMBIA -- Eight years after President Alvaro Uribe took office and began harnessing billions in U.S. aid to pummel Marxist guerrillas, Colombia is safer for this country's 45 million people and for the foreign investors who have flocked here.

But stubbornly high levels of poverty expose a harsh reality: Despite better security and strong economic growth, Colombia has been unable to significantly alleviate the misery that helps fuel a 46-year-old conflict and the drug trafficking behind it.

What social scientists here call lackluster results in fighting poverty have become a campaign issue ahead of May elections, in which Colombian voters will elect a president to succeed Uribe, Washington's closest ally on the continent. Unless a 43 percent poverty rate can be steadily reduced, experts on the conflict contend, Colombia could regress even as the United States continues to provide military assistance.

"There is not only significant poverty, but some of the poverty is stunning in its extreme," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who has traveled extensively in Colombia since 2001. "It really is at the root of so much of the unrest that occurs."

That poverty, and Colombia's big gap between rich and poor, is particularly evident in towns along the Caribbean coast, such as this community of dirt roads and forlorn farms. Here in Algarrobo (population 12,000), a wealthy and influential family, the Davilas, received $1 million in grants through an Agriculture Ministry program that provided tens of millions to affluent farmers nationwide. Critics here say it made no difference that the Davilas own one of the most productive and lucrative oil-producing palm groves for miles.

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But the other Colombia is one of rising inequality, the only major country in Latin America in which the gap between rich and poor has increased in recent years, according to a report by the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America. The percentage of Colombians who are indigent also rose from 20.2 percent in 2007 to nearly 23 percent in 2008, nearly double the region's average.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041803090.html


Spin that.

"Colombia has been unable to significantly alleviate the misery that helps fuel a 46-year-old conflict and the drug trafficking behind it."

Step 1: Legalize the drugs, and you've taken a step to reduce policy and violence. All of Latin America could and should unite to tell the US to fark off, that they are not going to let their countries turn into failed states like Mexico so that US teenagers MAYBE smoke a joint a year later than otherwise.

is likely the only intended message of this article