“The poor don’t need compassion; they need more and better opportunities,” says Dr. Maria del Carmen Ledo Garcia, of the Faculty of Architecture.
She identified the distribution of urban poverty and patterns of land use in Bolivia, using her hometown, Cochabamba, as her case study, because it’s a place where urban poverty, segregation and social isolation are major issues.
Situated between the capital La Paz and Santa Cruz, Cochabamba-the city of eternal spring-has experienced an incredible amount of migration in the past thirty years. The city is a popular place for Bolivians because of its wonderful climate, averaging 20C° year round. Moreover, Cochabamba’s is centrally located, making it the perfect place for the confluence of different groups. Today, immigrants account for more than half the population. Nearby is Chapare, a stunningly beautiful tropical rain forest, where the production of cocaine takes place. In the early 1980s, following the expansion of coca and cocaine industry, the consequent massive migration to the region was directly and indirectly linked to the production of coca leaf.
Cochabamba is a deeply segregated place: poor people live in the south of the city, and the rich live in the north. “It’s hard for Dutch people to imagine what poverty involves. It’s even hard for me,” Ledo says. “But in the poor areas there are no sewers, no jobs, hardly any hospitals and schools, and no running water. People use trunks to get their drinking water, and it cost several times more than the official tariffs and it’s polluted.”
Existing models and indexes that show and measure poverty lack the dynamics of the problem that comes with spatial and social inequalities. This means that they do not clearly show where the opportunities and perspectives for poor people should be. Ledo used special correlation analyses to process the national data. With the help of Eeke van der Burg, from Leiden Univerisity, she constructed a model. In fact, Ledo’s new model applies to the urbanization of all of Latin America, but since Cochabamba is growing very fast — and with it the distance between rich and poor – it was an interesting city to test her model on. “The new faces of poverty are females and children,” Ledo says. “The women who work in Bolivia do so not because of emancipation, like here. It’s because the family has no income. The women and also their children, are in retailing, they sell food, mostly vegetables or other small and cheap things in the streets. They have no prospect of changing their job into better jobs. Their children cannot go to school, and will never reach better jobs. It’s a vicious circle.”
Rights
Ledo, who lives in the wealthier section of Cochabamba, will return to Bolivia next month and begin giving lecturers at the Mayor de San Simon University in Cochabamba and running workshops for the local government.
“I want to explain the results of my research and talk about the possibilities to change the situation,” Ledo says, adding that shealso hopes to motivate her future students to go into the poor areas of the city and educate the people. “In addition to good opportunities to change their miserable living situations, poor people lack the proper information about their rights, sex education, etc. They don’t even know they have the right to have drinking water. On the other hand, they don’t know about their own obligations, like, for example, to be careful with their own environment. If this is clear to them – what their rights and duties are – they will stand up for their rights and, hopefully, go to the local government and, in this case, demand that they be given water.”
In 1986, Ledo completed Masters degree in ‘Social Studies of the Population’ in Santiago, Chile. It is then that she became involved in and concerned about poverty. “I found out that the infant mortality rate in developing countries is eight times higher in poor areas than in richer areas. Just because of living conditions! When I realized that, I was frightened, and kept thinking, ‘This is impossible, this is terrible%.'” Ledo admits that it might be her Catholic faith that makes her feel guilty. But nevertheless, she hopes the poor will eventually get some benefit out of her work. Her next step, once she returns to Cochabamba, is establishing contacts with international organizations that will hopefully finance her plans and dream: to integrate Cochabamba poor southern side with the rest of the city.
“The poor don’t need compassion; they need more and better opportunities,” says Dr. Maria del Carmen Ledo Garcia, of the Faculty of Architecture. She identified the distribution of urban poverty and patterns of land use in Bolivia, using her hometown, Cochabamba, as her case study, because it’s a place where urban poverty, segregation and social isolation are major issues.
Situated between the capital La Paz and Santa Cruz, Cochabamba-the city of eternal spring-has experienced an incredible amount of migration in the past thirty years. The city is a popular place for Bolivians because of its wonderful climate, averaging 20C° year round. Moreover, Cochabamba’s is centrally located, making it the perfect place for the confluence of different groups. Today, immigrants account for more than half the population. Nearby is Chapare, a stunningly beautiful tropical rain forest, where the production of cocaine takes place. In the early 1980s, following the expansion of coca and cocaine industry, the consequent massive migration to the region was directly and indirectly linked to the production of coca leaf.
Cochabamba is a deeply segregated place: poor people live in the south of the city, and the rich live in the north. “It’s hard for Dutch people to imagine what poverty involves. It’s even hard for me,” Ledo says. “But in the poor areas there are no sewers, no jobs, hardly any hospitals and schools, and no running water. People use trunks to get their drinking water, and it cost several times more than the official tariffs and it’s polluted.”
Existing models and indexes that show and measure poverty lack the dynamics of the problem that comes with spatial and social inequalities. This means that they do not clearly show where the opportunities and perspectives for poor people should be. Ledo used special correlation analyses to process the national data. With the help of Eeke van der Burg, from Leiden Univerisity, she constructed a model. In fact, Ledo’s new model applies to the urbanization of all of Latin America, but since Cochabamba is growing very fast — and with it the distance between rich and poor – it was an interesting city to test her model on. “The new faces of poverty are females and children,” Ledo says. “The women who work in Bolivia do so not because of emancipation, like here. It’s because the family has no income. The women and also their children, are in retailing, they sell food, mostly vegetables or other small and cheap things in the streets. They have no prospect of changing their job into better jobs. Their children cannot go to school, and will never reach better jobs. It’s a vicious circle.”
Rights
Ledo, who lives in the wealthier section of Cochabamba, will return to Bolivia next month and begin giving lecturers at the Mayor de San Simon University in Cochabamba and running workshops for the local government.
“I want to explain the results of my research and talk about the possibilities to change the situation,” Ledo says, adding that shealso hopes to motivate her future students to go into the poor areas of the city and educate the people. “In addition to good opportunities to change their miserable living situations, poor people lack the proper information about their rights, sex education, etc. They don’t even know they have the right to have drinking water. On the other hand, they don’t know about their own obligations, like, for example, to be careful with their own environment. If this is clear to them – what their rights and duties are – they will stand up for their rights and, hopefully, go to the local government and, in this case, demand that they be given water.”
In 1986, Ledo completed Masters degree in ‘Social Studies of the Population’ in Santiago, Chile. It is then that she became involved in and concerned about poverty. “I found out that the infant mortality rate in developing countries is eight times higher in poor areas than in richer areas. Just because of living conditions! When I realized that, I was frightened, and kept thinking, ‘This is impossible, this is terrible%.'” Ledo admits that it might be her Catholic faith that makes her feel guilty. But nevertheless, she hopes the poor will eventually get some benefit out of her work. Her next step, once she returns to Cochabamba, is establishing contacts with international organizations that will hopefully finance her plans and dream: to integrate Cochabamba poor southern side with the rest of the city.
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