80
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL CHANGE IN COLOMBIA
all of Latin America – a status that has for the most part remained consistent (Avilés, 2006: 91; see also Coghlan, 2004: 153; Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 2004; Contraloría General de la República, 2004: 43, 44). During the first few years of the 2000s Gini coefficients averaged 0.570 (World Resources Institute, 2003: 2). The current figure is between 0.591 and 0.576 (Rojas, 2006: 3). Brazil holds the greatest rate of economic disparity in Latin America, but its distribution figures have remained stable (Sachs and Santarius, 2007: 15). Meanwhile Colombia’s rates of inequitable income distribution continue to rise, resulting in ever greater disparities between rich and poor. Aside from monetary divergences, people in rural Colombia have experienced extremely inequitable distribution of land ownership (and of natural resources) for decades. During the 1950s, 0.7 percent of latifundios controlled an estimated 41 percent of arable lands, with 0.06 percent consolidating 63 percent a decade later (Shaw, 1976: 27, 112; see also Powelson, 1964: 36). John Gerassi (1965: 154) documented, over four decades ago, that “3.5 percent of landowners control 65 percent of the land” (see also Duff, 1968; Smith, 1967; Fluharty, 1957; Smith, Rodríguez, and García, 1945). In 1966, only 1.1 percent of all agricultural-based families controlled more than 45 percent of the nation’s arable lands (Christodoulou, 1990: 27). When looking at land concentration based on plots of land less than 10 hectares, Sanders (1981: 90) discovered that in the 1960s roughly 76.5 percent of the population (small producers and/or peasants) had access to a mere 8.8 percent of available land. This inequitable distribution saw a minimum shift during the 1970s, when 73.1 percent had access to only 7.2 percent of arable land (see also Powelson, 1964: 36). If we exclude farm size from the ratio, 6.9 percent of large landowners had access to roughly 75.8 percent of land during the 1960s, with the 1970s seeing the ratio equal 8.4 percent to 77.7 percent (Sanders, 1981: 90). The 1980s saw a rise in land concentration, with roughly 3 percent of the landed elite owning over 71 percent of arable land, while 57 percent of the poorest farmers subsisted on less than 3 percent (Washington Office on Latin America, 1989: 9; see also Taussig, 2004a: 13; Giraldo, 1996: 14). In 2003, Clark wrote that: in the midst of this vast potential for social and economic justice, the human condition in Colombia is desperate. Per capita income is barely over $2,000 Table 4.2 A quarter-century of Colombian Gini coefficients Time period
Gini coefficient
1980 1989 1994 1999 2004 2006
0.518 0.532 0.505 0.566 0.562 0.584
Source: Rojas, 2006: 3; Ramírez, 2005: 83; Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 2004; Korzeniewicz and Smith, 2000: 10–11.
