Social class in Colombia
Since the sixteenth century, Colombian society has been highly stratified, with social classes generally linked to racial or wealth distinctions, and vertical mobility has been limited.
In the nineteenth century, Colombia's rugged terrain and inadequate transportation system reinforced social and geographic distance, keeping the numerically superior but disunited masses fragmented and powerless.
Except in certain instances of urban artisans and some Amerindian communities, the elite was the only social group with sufficient cohesion to articulate goals and make them known to the rest of the society.
The social structures that were put into place during the colonial era left a legacy of hierarchy that continued to shape Colombian society even after the fall of the chattel slavery system in 1851.
[2] Because of the social-economic dynamic that has to exist in order for the institution of slavery to flourish, it is a heavy burden to completely modify cultural standards that have been firmly established for many years.
So when the practice of slavery ended, the attitude of whites was still to maintain control over economics and politics, thereby ensuring that they would remain at the top of the nation's power structure.
The confusion over classification has affected most Colombians because most of them do not define themselves as being white, black, or Amerindian, which are distinct and mutually exclusive groups, but as belonging to one of the mixed categories.
In addition to racial and wealth factors, Colombia's classes are distinguished by education, family background, lifestyle, occupation, power, and geographic residence.
This was by design, as the Colombian government sought to phase out racial dimensions with the use of mestizaje; this was a purposeful intermixing of Africans and Natives with white Spaniards in efforts at creating a new race.
The difference with Colombia is that there were never any systematic legal designations put in place in order to divide society along racial lines like the Jim Crow system of the U.S.
[9] Conservative factions regained control of Colombian politics in 1885, effectively erasing some of the gains that women had made socially (such as the right to divorce).
[11] The upper class is very successful in maintaining exclusivity and controlling change through a system of informal decision-making groups called roscas—the name of a twisted pastry.
[1] Colombia has an abundance of families that belonged to the middle-class sector of society and are struggling between the need to survive and the desire to give their children a good education.
A 1994 law provides "an instrument that allows a municipality or district to classify its population in distinct groups or strata with similar social and economic characteristics".
There are several reasons for these coexisting disparities, the main one being perhaps the strong upward mobility allowed by the illegal-drug industry wealth that did not necessarily lead to a change in self-perception.
