June 26, 2006

Colombia Could Learn from Venezuela’s Social Policies

by Garry Leech

After more than five years of the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia and four years of President Alvaro Uribe’s Democratic Security Strategy, the majority of Colombians remain mired in poverty. Both of these grandiose schemes are primarily military in nature with a small degree of social investment that amounts to little more than window dressing. The principal economic component of both policies consists of neoliberal structural adjustment programs that have led to impressive economic growth that has benefited a minority of the population while 64 percent of Colombians—85 percent in rural regions—remain impoverished. In sharp contrast, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has emphasized social investment that has not only improved the standard of living for poor Venezuelans, but also for Colombian immigrants now living in the country.

While the Colombian government has to contend with an armed insurgency that does not exist in Venezuela, its military commitment does not sufficiently explain its failure to implement an effective social project. The United States has funded Plan Colombia to the tune of $4.7 billion over the past five years with military aid constituting 80 percent of the money. As a result, Colombia has become the third largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt—not counting the occupied countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The architects of Plan Colombia consciously decided to focus on a militaristic fumigation campaign that has proven to be a failure while ignoring increasing evidence that more social and alternative development funding in remote coca-growing regions is essential if cultivation is to be reduced in a meaningful and sustainable manner. The economic component of Plan Colombia simply consists of IMF loans and their corresponding neoliberal policies that have had the same social and economic consequences in Colombia as in other Latin American nations. In other words, they have failed to alleviate poverty and resulted in a greater income inequality.

Plan Colombia’s lack of social funding and its emphasis on neoliberalism are not due to the fact that the Colombian government is combating an armed insurgency, but rather to the ideological make-up of both the Bush and Uribe administrations. After all, there has been little social investment under neoliberalism in other Latin America countries that do not have active armed insurgencies.

President Uribe’s Democratic Security Strategy mirrors Plan Colombia’s emphasis on military operations at the expense of social investment. While it is difficult to implement social and economic policies in regions of the country not under government control, the Uribe administration has shown an unwillingness to focus on social problems even where the state is firmly entrenched. Consequently, the government has failed to alleviate poverty in Colombia’s larger towns and cities that are clearly under government control.

At the same time, towns and villages in southern Colombia that have been under government control for two years as a result of the Colombian military’s Plan Patriota offensive have also yet to see any significant social investment. As Adam Isacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy has stated: “Uribe has done little or nothing to increase the sort of social investment most necessary to improve the country’s security situation.”

The low priority that the Uribe administration has placed on social investment to help the country’s most disadvantaged citizens is clearly evident when allocations in the government’s 2005 budget for demobilized paramilitaries are compared to those for internally displaced persons. According to the National Planning Department, the funding allocated to demobilized paramilitaries amounted to $2,800 per fighter. Meanwhile, aid to Colombia’s internally displaced population, many of whom are victims of the same paramilitaries now on the government’s payroll, averaged a meager $250 per person.

Evidently, Colombia’s displaced population, like the rest of the country’s impoverished citizens, is being forced to wait for the wealth generated by the country’s neoliberal-driven economic growth to “trickle-down.” But the prognosis is not good; most Latin Americans have been waiting in vain for more than 20 years for that “trickle-down” effect to occur.

In sharp contrast, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has made social investment the pillar of his government. These policies have not only benefited poor Venezuelans, but also many of the three million Colombian immigrants who have fled across the border. “Single, unemployed mothers have a place to go for help here. In Colombia we had nothing like that,” said one female immigrant from Colombia’s northern coast. According to Venezuelan political analyst Alfredo Anzola, “These immigrants are benefiting from the medical, nutrition and other programs offered by Chávez.” It is this type of social investment that led 42-year-old Freddy Berrio, an immigrant from the northern Colombian province of Sucre, to declare: “Colombia needs a leader like Chávez to end the social and political exclusion there.”

As a result of the Chávez government’s social investment, the percentage of Venezuelans living in poverty has declined from 50 percent at the end of 1998 to 43 percent in 2005. Furthermore, the standard of living for those remaining in poverty has improved dramatically due to government-funded social programs including subsidized food stores, healthcare, low-income housing projects and micro-credit. As the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) notes, “The reduction in poverty since 1999 measures only cash income. This, however, does not really capture the changes in the living standards of the poor in Venezuela, since there have been major changes in non-cash benefits and services in the last few years.”

The Venezuelan example not only illustrates how effective social policies can alleviate poverty, but also how such policies can empower the poor. As one previously unemployed Venezuelan woman from a poor barrio who is now working in an all female, worker-owned textiles cooperative established with a government loan told me last year, “We are no longer staying in the house; we are business women now.” In sharp contrast, residents in towns in southern Colombia that have been “liberated” by the Colombian army under Plan Patriota have repeatedly complained that, while the state now maintains a permanent military presence in their towns, there has been no social investment. Consequently, it is not surprising that the government is struggling to win the hearts and minds of Colombians living in rural conflict regions long neglected by the state.

The emphasis on militarism and neoliberalism by both the Bush and Uribe administrations has failed to improve conditions for the majority of Colombians living in poverty. While the Colombian government’s oil revenues pale in comparison to Venezuela’s—partly due to lower royalty rates implemented under neoliberal restructuring—it has received more than $10 billion in U.S. and IMF aid over the past six years. Washington, however, has ensured that this aid be used to fund the militaristic implementation of neoliberalism in Colombia.

In contrast, Venezuela has used its resources to fund social and economic policies that seek to empower the country’s poor and contribute to a greater democratization of society. The Venezuelan example is not a lesson that Bush and Uribe are willing to learn. After all, neoliberalism has never been about the empowerment of the marginalized and enhanced democracy; its principal objective is to achieve economic growth for the benefit of a few.

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