Appearances can be deceptive

Even though the economy in the capital cities is usually better, poor families can also be found both in the cities' outskirts and inside the city. To set a good example, let's analize the living conditions in Cartagena. As it is a historic and touristic city of Colombia, you would probably expect it to be the city with the lowest rate of social inequality. Nevertheless, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is very common to hear about violent, tragic and moving happenings there. According to a research, approximately two quarters of the population have financial problems there and it has been forcasted that the numbers will stay the same at least until the end of the year 2014. 

Religious foundations

For several decades, Colombia has been a country with a strong catholic tradition. Hence, the church is one of the most important institutions nowadays. Thanks to its influence it has managed to reunite integrants of different social classes with the purpose of giving a hand to everyone who needs it. This is how throughout the years, plenty religios foundations have arosen all over the country. In order to ensure social equality an a brighter future for every Colombian, they have embarked on endeavors not only to collect goods like food, clothes and money, but also to build houses and educate the children of families with low incomes. 

What should the government do to abolish poverty in these cities?

What the government should do is building new schools for those children who can`t pay education. In Cauca and Chocó the government built some schools so that way children who lived there could have a very good education for their future.
Besides that the same idea is to be done in another cities such as Córdoba, La Guajira and Magdalena.
As a matter of fact government should abolish the private universities because for those students who graduate from school can`t study a career to become a professional and then to find the way to get a good job and like this building his/her own future.

Another point to have in mind is to give home to those family who are more in need of it, to be fair the family could pay monthly an average of money to get the house in a legal way. Like this poverty would decrease the amount of people in need. 


Finally, what government should do is to give a better health supports, medicine and hospitals, because it is a need for everyone and some people don`t have the chance to get a good service when they are sick.

The most poor places in Colombia

Chocó, Cauca, Córdoba, La Guajira and Magdalena are the most poor cities in Colombia, which suffer the worst situations about food, money and job opportunities. These cities are like this because of violence, lack of food, lack of education and the lack of will to work.

The average of poverty in every city is:

-Chocó (40.7 per cent)
-Cauca (34 per cent)
-La Guajira (27.7 per cent)
-Córdoba (27.3 per cent)
-Magdalena (17.4 per cent)

Besides that there are other places in Colombia that are involved in bad situations such as:

-Bogotá (2 per cent)
-Santander (4.6 per cent)
-Atlántico (4.7 per cent)

The rise of drug dealing

There was a time when the drug dealing became the only way for people with low incomes to earn money. After the civil war some citizens lived below the poverty line because they were unemployed or had lost everything because of the war. Simmultaniously, the drug dealing was acquiring importance so that they wanted to get into it. In this way, the number of drug dealers rose and the country was soon 

infested with drug traffickers.

The respective supperters fought most battles in the rural countryside. Consequently, a large number of peasants migrated to cities. Thus, leaving only violence, tragedies and desolation in the countryside.

Throughout the years the cities prospered, the number of industries there gradually grew up and they became the main source of the country's incomes. On the contrary, the situation in the countryside worsened, not only due to the civil war, but also because now the cities had turned into the goverment's inversions focus. For that reason, the industrialization took place almost exclusively in the urban zones, whilst there was a growing lack of resources in the villages.

Death of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán

Tragically, he was murdered during his second presidential campaign. It is rumored that the killer was a member of the Conservative Party and the motive of the homocide was that Gaitán was very likely to the win the upcoming presidential elections. As a result of his assassination, an uprising was set off; leading to a civil war between the Colombian Conservative Party, the Colombian Liberal Party and plenty groups of citizens who had their own political ideals and considered violence to be the only way to grab the goverment's attention and be finally heard. (It is importand to point out that several of these groups gave rise to the communist guerrillas later. However, we want to avoid wandering off the subject, so that we will come back to this in a future entry.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Eli%C3%A9cer_Gait%C3%A1n

http://www.cisnerosmediadist.com/media/bogotazo

The sources of Colombians poverty

To get to fully understand a dilemma, it is essential to know its origin. Therefore, we are going to deal with the history of Colombia in the course of this week.

The Consertvative Party

The Liberal Party

The root of the unequal economic development among the cities and the country side has it sources approtimately in 1948. Back then, there were only two official parties: the Liberal and the Conservative. Since it was nearly implausible to found an own party which was recognized by the goverment, a widespread dissactisfation was characteristic for this period. Nonetheless, the appareance of a Liberal party presidencial candidate named Jorge Eliecer Gaitán calmed down the multitudes because he inspired them hope that there would be change in the system. It was the first part of the history.

Our politicians and representatives

We heard the statement we want to talk about today two years ago. Nevertheless, it is still fresh in our memory and we remember every single word the person who told us said. It happened in an ordinary Spanish class. Supposedly, the primary aim of this class is to help us improve our writing and analysis skills. However, we do not know why, but we frequently end up discussing issues in class which are not related to the subject. Anyway, that day we wondered off the subject again and this time we talked about Colombian’s politics. At first, we did not pay much attention. Nonetheless, the teacher managed to grab everybody's attention with one single statement. He told us that the son of a very influential Colombian politician had said to the media that the first time he had heard a song in Spanish was when he was in his early twenties as his education had been mainly based on the North American culture. We all were amazed, disgusted and concerned to find it out since the first thought that crossed our mind was that if not even the politicians we entrust our country, culture and national identity to care about their own motherland, then why sould the general population do?

Interview

What do people think about poverty in Colombia?

Everyone in this country has a different opinion about the poverty. Some of them think that it is an issue that all of us are involved in; others think that it is the fault of those who don't want to do an effort, and others think that it is the government's fault.

We interviewed some people to support this topic.

The poverty is a reason of the war

In our point of view poverty is a reason of war, because sometimes people with low incomes don't receive help and that people must search alone money. In many companies job opportunities aren't available for those kind of people who aren't in a high society position. So that people look for another chance to get money, that's when they do bad things, that aren't good for the citizens. However this people don't get enough money. For example robberies, kidnapping and murders. A result of these actions is the damage within any kind of society, rich society, medium society and even poor society.

poverty is a reason of war

Today an acquaintance of us told us a shoking story that we would like to share with you: she is sick, so she went to the hospital and while she was in the waiting room, there was a woman who was asking for money to all the patients. She han an expresion of melancholy on her face and said she needed money to pay an operation for her son. Everyone in the room was touched by her words, so that they gave her some money away. After two months, our acquaitance came back to the hospital and she was very amazed when she saw this woman again who was telling the same story to the other patients.

What do we learn about that?

Since we begin school we are taught to tolerate and respect the differences regarding the economic situation of each person. At our school there is a broad variety of social classes that live together in a respectful and peaceful way. For example, the principal, teachers and maids.

It´s surprising that when you go out, you can see how people from different social classes interact with each other the whole day, but simmultaniously they don´t care about the other. We have lived in Colombia our whole life and we have experienced many situations that have made us wonder how a society can survive when 

there is such a big social inequity.