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Colombia The Lower Class and the Masses
The lower class and the masses together constituted the
largest
sector of rural and urban society--about 75 percent. The
line
between the lower class and the masses was fine; it was
based more
on an increased awareness of the social, economic, and
political
systems among members of the lower class than on any other
criterion. Those at the upper levels of the lower
class--organized
labor, small farmers, merchants, and some white-collar
workers--
were in a transitional stage and possessed some attributes
of
middle-class status.
The lower class was more politically aware than the
masses,
although the levels of participation were uniformly low.
Feelings
of common identity were generally lacking among groups in
the lower
class, although class consciousness existed within such
groups as
organized labor and landowning campesinos. Generally,
members of
the lower class were regularly employed with some degree
of
security, although they were frequently unskilled and
unorganized.
Included in this category were domestic servants,
construction
workers, taxi drivers, barbers, repairmen, and small
shopkeepers.
The rural lower class included small independent
landholders,
called minifundistas, and even some day workers,
sharecroppers, and tenant farmers, who provided some
security for
their families.
In contrast, the masses were composed of the illiterate
and the
impoverished who lived on the margin of subsistence and
possessed
little or no security, skill, or stable employment. They
included
Indians and blacks as well as many other dark-skinned
persons. They
resided on the sociopolitical periphery of the society and
maintained their traditional way of life; most of their
energies
were consumed in the struggle for survival. Although the
masses
possessed some political potential and some awareness of
the
political system, they lacked an effective, evaluative
understanding of it as well as sufficient class cohesion
to
articulate their desires.
At the top of the lower-class hierarchy and merging
into the
middle class were the regularly employed industrial
workers. Often
distinguished from white-collar employees only by their
blue-collar
occupations, unionized factory workers received relatively
high
wages and were protected by labor legislation
(see The Labor Movement
, ch. 3). They were better organized than other
employed
members of the lower class and were sometimes able to
exert a
degree of pressure on employers and political parties to
obtain
their demands. In general, they were conservative
politically and
opposed government initiatives to change the status quo.
This
conservatism existed because, despite their stability
relative to
other members of the lower class, their status in the
society was
fairly tenuous, resting solely on maintenance of their
occupation.
Loss of job would seriously impair a factory worker's
ability to
maintain his status.
Social life in the lower class was less structured and
more
informal than in the middle and upper classes. There was
less
restraint and concern with the rigid standards of behavior
that
regulated the social activities of those higher on the
social
scale. Participation in religious activities, particularly
celebrations of saints' days and festivals, was an
important part
of social life, as were spontaneous neighborhood and
family
gatherings.
The rapid growth of the urban sector since the 1940s
resulted
primarily from the influx of migrants from the
countryside.
Agricultural workers continued to leave the rural areas
and come to
the towns and cities, hoping to improve their way of life.
Most
were uneducated--at best barely literate--and unskilled,
two
attributes that considerably limited their prospects for
employment
and their ability to adjust to urban life. Consequently,
there was
a high rate of unemployment and underemployment in this
migrant
population, particularly among the men
(see Inflation and Unemployment
, ch. 3). Women often found jobs as domestic
servants
or cooks, but the continued flood of unskilled labor into
the
cities made it increasingly difficult for men to find even
the most
menial jobs.
Movement to the city did little to change the relative
social
status or way of life of most migrants, who merely
exchanged rural
unemployment and poverty for the same conditions in an
urban
environment. Many became residents of the shantytowns that
surrounded the larger cities. Housing in a lower-class
barrio was
frequently no more than a shack without running water and
often
without electricity, not too different from what the
migrant had
left behind.
Despite the apparent hopelessness of the migrant's
condition,
there was the expectation of some future improvement, if
not in his
own life at least in that of his children. One survey
taken in a
lower-class community in a larger city found that parents
believed
that the future would be better for their children.
Usually this
belief was tied to the greater availability of education
and the
other institutions of urban life. Migrants perceived
themselves as
closer to the mainstream of national life with a greater
chance of
becoming economically, socially, and politically a part of
it than
those who remained in the countryside.
In the mid-1980s, the rural lower class was outnumbered
by the
urban lower class. Migration had rapidly reversed the
traditional
balance; the proportion of the rural population continued
to
decline steadily as it had since the 1920s. In the past,
the lower
class was primarily an agricultural sector, its position
in society
dictated by dependence on the land. Whether
minifundista,
semipermanent squatter, sharecropper, tenant farmer, or
day
laborer, the campesino's small parcel of land or lack of
land kept
him at a near-subsistence level of existence for
generations. There
were slight distinctions among the various groups making
up the
rural lower class: generally, the living standard of the
minifundista, squatter, and tenant farmer was
somewhat
higher than that of the sharecropper, who in turn lived a
little
better than the landless day laborer.
Data as of December 1988
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