Search

This article presents a decolonial feminist geopolitics of Venezuelan migration to Colombia, with Venezuelans fleeing the socialist Bolivarian Revolution and then facing discrimination and violence upon settling in capitalist Colombia amid its failing peace process context. Conflicts over migration and nationality permeate our global order of sovereign nation-states, both in north-south migrations and across the global south, while the feminisation and racialisation of migrants divides the subaltern class and facilitates capitalist exploitation. However, this paper elucidates migrants’ inter-national solidarities and grassroots peace struggles. Community organisers along the Colombia-Venezuela border – the women’s empowerment organisation Tejedores de Paz and youth leadership foundation Horizonte de Juventud – unite impoverished internally-displaced Colombians and Venezuelan immigrants to create resistance territories against xenophobia, patriarchy, and poverty. Illustrating the utility of the methodology of decolonial feminist geopolitics, I trace the reconfiguration of the spirit of sociopolitical revolution in South America through migrants’ emergent form of feminist non-state socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the political and institutional legacies of rebel governance in a context in which, after the demobilization of the FARC-EP, there was no reconfiguration of the dynamics of presence and violence developed by legal and illegal armed actors. I argue that from the rebel governance built by the insurgency and the local community boards (JALS) there emerged social processes that held, even after the signing of the Peace Agreement, and influenced the way in which local orders were reconstructed following the farc’s exit from the area. The paper presents a case study of San Andrés de Tello—a rural locality in the north of Huila, Colombia, with historic FARC presence--based on ethnographic fieldwork that privileged contact with key informants and concrete observations. This work contributes to the understanding of the legacies of rebel governance and how it is possible to use them to generate participatory processes of state formation that incorporate communal institutions as protagonists in the configuration of community governance in regions with a differentiated presence of the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the formation and survival of presidential cabinets in Colombia between 1958 and 2018. We compare two periods in the country's political history: During the first period, 1958 to 1990, Colombia operated with a two-party system. The second period, 1991 to the present, is characterized by the opening of the political regime to new parties and the formation of coalition governments. For this purpose, we use semi-parametric models and Cox regressions that allow us to estimate the survival of 581 ministerial appointments and identify the predictors of survival in their positions from both individual characteristics of the ministers and the institutional characteristics of the system. The study shows that the stability in the position of ministers during the bipartisan era is lower than the duration of ministers during the period of coalition governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a description of the labour market in Valledupar for the period 2007-2017. We find that after the fall of coal prices, the labour market has presented a significant deterioration, reflected in the increase of unemployment rate, especially for the most educated, women and youth. The econometric results confirm that changes in coal prices have a positive and significant effect in labour participation and real wages. Moreover, we find that the return of higher education in Valledupar is lower, compared to the rest of cities in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to build a review to the correspondence between the discourse of political ideology, the discourse of urban ideology and its manifestation in architectural realization. The text generally consists of two main bodies. The first, reviews the process of building the modern movement in architecture and urbanism and then subsequent transit and implementation in Colombia, specifically in Bogotá. It is necessary to note that the political speech to revise is Colombian, although the Modern Movement has a European origin and American developments, the context to review is specifically limited by the interaction of these ideas with the historical-geographical space of Bogotá, embodied in the urban development of the city. Under these rules, the European political considerations are hardly references to contextualize the modern movement itself and its vicissitudes. Also, the definition of the time period of study, which is due to the appearance in the country of the need to consider the problem of urban planning through intellectual exercises grounded in architecture, urbanism and medicine; the latter as a driver of the concepts of modern ideology of healthy living and social hygiene (Ramírez, 2000b). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes women's roles in the processes of territory construction and the Colombian Caribbean coast regionalization. First, we present women participation in the adaptation of the first inhabitants, through their contribution to creating the most important cultures that emerged in that region, such as Tairona and Sinu. This paper also considers native women's resistance actions against Spanish invasion; women participation in African, native, mestizo, zambo, mad criollo freeing fights against colonialism and ha the consolidation of the Republic; along with their contribution to building the social fabric that consolidated the social life of new born towns and cities; which transformed women into family group integrators, new generation socializing forces, and sponsors of the family structure performance. The second line of argument addressed in this article refers to women involvement in the regionalization of the Colombian Caribbean, by establishing and concluding that, although regionalization has happened, the recognition of its practical and strategic interests has not been guaranteed to allow changes in the social, economic, and political position. The reason is that, even though such interests were expressed in some forums held to reach an agreement on the vision and the requirements of the region, the social movement has not had any access to decision making, though this has not prevented its gaining strength in the last decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment has been an important issue in Colombia because of the high rates observed since the 1980's, yet few studies have addressed the problem taking into account the differences between regions and cities. This paper examines the disparities and long-term relations between the unemployment rates of the seven largest cities in Colombia. First, a dispersion index is calculated to measure cross city disparities. In the second part of the analysis, the Johansen cointegration test is used to evaluate the existence of long-term relations. The paper identifies a procyclical behaviour of the unemployment rates disparities. When the economy slows down (grows) the disparities tend to decrease (increase). The cointegration analysis supports the idea of long-term relations between the unemployment rates of each city and the average, as well as a stable relation between the seven cities as a group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows a wide picture of the educational sector in Colombia with emphasis on public education. The paper starts off with a brief description of the main policy measures implemented during the last decades, which is then followed by a detailed evaluation of the norms on educational decentralisation as well as those ruling the teaching profession in the country. The paper evaluates the recent performance of some sectoral indicators on public expenditure, coverage, efficiency and quality; also, it analyses the scheme of remuneration and incentives facing teachers. In recent years, the analysis of the behaviour of sectoral indicators suggests that government policy on education has mainly focused on the increase in coverage rather than on the improvement in quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is grounded on an ethnographic investigation on the "Diana Turbay" neighborhood in Bogota. Its objective is to analyze certain aspects that favored the formation of this neighborhood of illegal origin, the organization of its inhabitants in their daily struggle to get better life conditions and the dynamics of change in their social relationships as part of the process of incorporation of the neighborhood to the city. This paper is inscribed on the debates about right to city and urban marginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this present paper i make a comparison between the coffee landscape represented under the discourse of "Coffee Cultural Landscape-World Heritage" and the territory reproduced territorially by the local actors. This is expressed by the contrast between a certain type of patrimonial landscape built from an institutional sight, and a real landscape produced by the locals through economic practices in the different types of farms of the rural area of the municipality of Chinchiná, which are conceived as socio-spatial units of analysis. The methodology used in this work has a qualitative nature with and ethnographic approximation founded in the direct observations in a passive and active mode, structured and semi-structured interviews, and works in focal groups with the local residents. In the conclusions of this discussion it is showed that the declaratory is an strategy for developing a sort of mixed territory, coffee and tourism; alike, it is ethnographically displayed a territorial and economic configuration and reconfiguration of the rural area of the municipality of Chinchiná-Caldas, expressed in the socio-spatial units, proving an approaching or a distancing from the discourse of the declaratoy of Coffee Cultural Landscape -World Heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a first approach to a state of the art on public space in Colombia. For this purpose, this article analyze the production of research groups from several universities and institutions, both, public and private. The reviewed studies are organized from the spatial, social, historical and educational perspectives and analyzed from their influence on the urban management. Finally, it is proposed to continue the traking of the development of research on the field in order to fill the gap between research and urban decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the assessment that inhabitants of some Colombian cities did on the conditions that contribute to the livability of public space. Seven hundred and forty people, inhabitants of Yopal, Villavicencio, Valledupar, Popayán, Pereira, Pasto, Neiva, Montería, Medellín, Fusagasugá, Cúcuta, Cartagena, Cali and Bogotá participated in the study. The assessment of the conditions that contribute to the livability of public space was carried out using an instrument composed of 48 items that inquired about the level of contribution that can have different conditions on the quality of public space, from a scale five points ranging from: Does not contribute at all (-2) to: Contribute significantly (+2). The results show the conditions that most affect the habitability of public space in Colombia, as well as the differences between cities according to the assessment made by participants about the general state of public space in cities. Multidimensional analysis (SSA) evidence a structure that reflects the function that public space plays in people's assessment on Colombian cities. It is discussed the implications of the findings for urban planning and management and the designed instrument is proposed as a tool to assess the quality of urban public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach to the relationship between land use planning and socioeconomic residential segregation, from the location of social housing in Medellin, Colombia, during the period 2006-2011. The first part introduces the land use regulations regarding the location of social housing, identifying ambiguities in the current spatial plan. Next, we present the intersection of regulatory information and the location of the projects that were under construction during the study period, highlighting the need to consider the location as an important characteristic of social housing and residential segregation as a phenomenon that must be recognized and worked on land use planning in our cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is mainly a discussant paper on measurement criteria upon sector's investment and capital services and the way these composition and measurement issues come to have an impact on growth figures for some major sectors of the Colombian economy. The main focus is on distinction matters regarding the measurement of capital stock and capital services in the production process. The availability of appropriate data, widely discussed throughout the document, implies that major affirmations are more hypothetic than indicative or descriptive in style. Most statements are established as a motivation device for studies on sector's activities with a focus on consistency with aggregate figures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the immigration networks in the configuration of three informal settlements around Río de Oro in the urban sector of the municipality of Girón, Santander (Colombia). The study distinguishes the importance of bearing in mind the socio-natural basis at planning of the city and, at the same time, it shows the need to study the dynamics of migration to high flood risk areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the relationship between the executive and legislative branches during the first government of Alvaro Uribe Vélez. We will focus on reviewing the legislative output of each branch of power, along with the effectiveness and efficiency they showed as promoters of this production. We will review the impact they had on the legislative agenda setting and on the control of the legislative process itself, making a diachronic analysis in which each legislature is used as a unit. Thus, we will try to identify the presence (or not) of some kind of pattern interactions, and we will evaluate, at one hand, the existence of hierarchical and transactional trends, and, on the other, the different types of balances produced between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many other regions in Colombia, Nelson Mandela's district has created a new social order in the absence of the state, with its own rules and regulations created and sanctioned by illegal groups. In this context, this article tries to analyze how the networks and phenomenology of the actors, agents and residents of this particular district reflect and unfold the whole department of Bolivar. The role played by paramilitary groups in this region along with the genesis of their combatants and supporters are analyzed through different emotions and basic concepts related with the ideas of revenge, loyalty, success and order. This research shows that the absence of justice, the presence of different cycles of violence and paranoia, along with the permanent referent of success and a local context of cultural impoverishment, are the main factors that explain why part of the population turns into mafias. In the midst of a troubled notion of order, this paper notes that the oppressed and subordinate residents of the district are able to reproduce structures of patronage which manipulate the armed group for community affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper makes an assessment of the factors behind corporate margin. Corporate margin is defined as the difference between the public debt spot rate and the corporative debt spot rate graded AAA and AA. Following Elton et al (2001), in corporate margin is defined as the sum of three factors: issuer default risk, issuance costs and systemic risk. The data used contains daily trading data from the Colombian Electronic Market (MEC) since January 2005 to November 2009. The default probabilities are estimated from a transition matrix calculated by the two main risk rating agencies within the Colombian market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a survey of 1.305 Colombian firms to explore wage setting mechanisms, the nature and sources of wage rigidities, and the link between wages and prices. Existing literature has focused on European and North American countries, and this is perhaps the first study that uses a wage survey for a Latin American country. Our findings indicate that more than 95% of firms increase wages once a year, mainly in January, suggesting that wage increases are time dependent. In addition, the most important factors when deciding wage increases are the firm's financial situation, the level of productivity and the performance of the labor force. The results support the view that nominal wages are downward rigid. Interestingly, it appears that the most important factor for not reducing base wages during a crisis, is to avoid the loss of the more experienced and productive workers, which is related to the efficiency wage theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes part of a research effort regarding the impact of oil prices over Colombian economic growth. Time series estimates for sector and aggregate activity are set which allow thinking of an asymmetrical relationship between price shocks and overall economic growth. Price dynamics would have impacted real exchange rate thus favoring imports of intermediates and capital goods, but also had jeopardizing effects for sector exports. Nevertheless, these main effects do not allow drawing conclusion for production at the sector level nor are identical between different sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of bank failures, and mergers and acquisitions (M & A) in Colombia have been thoroughly studied ill the literature. However, there is limited evidence regarding microeconomic determinants of these events. This paper fills that gap by finding evidence about the significant determinants that take a financial institution to participate in such processes, using survival analysis techniques. Two important conclusions derive from our study: (i) the probability of participating in an M & A event is decreasing on banks' financial health; and, (ii) the included macroeconomic variables matter, as well as market concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Constituent Assembly in 1991 devoted a chapter to the subject of Public Duties. For the first time in the National Colombian history a subject of vital importance to the lives of Colombians, i.e. the consolidation of the State and modernization of the Public Administration, is raised in such detail to a Superior mandate. This book concentrates on the analysis of this topic and with this aim the following hypothesis is formulated: only with the active presence of solidly trained Human Resources who are systematically kept up to date and ethically committed to the management of public resources can the processes of transformation of our reality and its consequent projection towards better development stages be safely developed. The book contains five chapters: the first develops the general aspects of Human Resource management; the second deals with public duty; the third with constitutional and legal framework; the fourth develops the public management topic and the fifth refers to the public officer's code of ethics. This paper is registered on the CEPI's "Institutionalism and Democracy" line of research and is product of the permanent thought and discussion of the topic at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as the various years of experience in administration of public entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining Human Capital and Signaling theories and a previously unavailable data source, this paper seeks to explain recent graduates' labor income in Colombia. Data from a National Education Ministry survey is used given its comparative advantages on providing specific information such as field of study and features of the education institution. The main result is that some specific features as male gender, residence in Bogotá, having parents with higher levels of education, or a degree obtained from a private institution, enhance the probability of obtaining a higher labor income. Some regularities as field of study and occupational position also explain higher wage levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high rate of participation in Ibagué has brought forth the highest unemployment rate among the main cities in Colombia during the last years. This paper reports some evidence about the determinants of the labor participation in Ibagué for the period 2001-2005 and then compare it with the determinants of participation in thirteen cities. Based on the information of the Continued Housing Survey three probit models are estimated: one for the thirteen cities, one for Ibagué and another for all of them. In general, the signs of the coefficients are the expected ones. A major influence is the participation of people between 12 and 17 as well as between 18 and 23. Among the explanations are the low labor income in Ibagué and the drop in the formal employment (covered by Household Subsidy System) with a consequence in monetary subsidy paid by firms to the families which is part of the non-income labor of secondary workers. However, it remains the question, given such a high unemployment rate, why people do not leave Ibagué? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the way in which the Colombian Tax Code determines the taxable base of the value added tax (VAT). Our analysis shows that the Colombian legislation fails to exploit some of the theoretical advantages of the tax, as it induces cascading and distortions of input prices in production. We carry out a numerical simulation to illustrate the magnitude of these inefficiencies and show that while the Colombian VAT is clearly superior to a general sales tax, it is inferior to the theoretical implementation of the VAT. Additionally, we show that under a VAT applied across the board the Colombian and the theoretical implementation yield equal real tax revenues but different price level adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the understanding of inflation forecasts as an intermediate policy objective, this paper evaluates forecasts of different inflation models in Colombia during the inflation targeting (IT) period. The evaluation is done using three different statistical methodologies. The results suggest that the best models, in terms of precision, are the Food's Relative Price and the traditional P* models. Additionally, a multiplier analysis is performed over these models, in which the sensitivity of short and medium term forecasts to shocks in the exogenous variables is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a description and results of the estimation of the Colombian term structure using cubic B-spline functions. The results of this methodology are compared with those presented in Arango, Melo and Vásquez (2002). The performance of the B-spline estimation and the Nelson and Siegel method are similar, and both methods outperform the polynomial methodology of the Bolsa de Valores de Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, in spite of the changes carried out with the reforms of 1994, m the sector of drinking water the structural problems persist in many municipalities. They arc associated to the quality, efficiency, continuity, coverage, and availability of the resource; beside, the goals of reducing costs, enlarging investments, promoting competition, and expanding coverage have not been achieved satisfactorily. It was thought that with the participation of the private sector there would be an enormous advance, but the result not the expected on. However, the national government's proposals keep digging blindly in this direction without assessing the errors of the present system. This paper studies in depth this reality: it presents the resets obtained in five municipalities of Antioquia (Andes, Caucasia, Puerto Berrío, Rionegro, and Turbo) where the operation of the aqueduct systems was delegated, from 1997 on, to the private sector or to mixed-economy companies. The problems associated with the establishment of operation and management contracts are emphasized, in view of the fact that they are incomplete by nature and thus generate inertial and insufficient behaviours on the part of both the private agents and the municipalities that own these systems, something which hampers greatly the solution of the sector's structural problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the factors underlying the shift of public space management Bogotá's Historic Center from one neglect by presidentially appointed mayors to an aggressive public space recuperation campaign led by Bogotá's elected mayors from 1988 to the present. Faced with the high barriers to public space recovery-the potential loss of needed political support from vendors and the power of vendor unions to obstruct their removal-this article holds that two factors enabled elected Bogotá mayors to recuperate public space. These are: 1. a democratization of the Bogotá Mayor's Office which made elected mayors responsible to the electorate for their neglect of public space, and 2. the political-economic marginalization of traditionally obstructive Bogotá vendor unions. Field work was carried out in metropolitan Bogotá to determine the impact of the public space recuperation on vendors who were relocated by the Mayor's Office of Bogotá. When compared to data from the street, results of the randomized surveys illustrate improvements in working conditions but lower income and fewer clientele for relocated street vendors. The study similarly documents how more benefits accrued to relocated vendors in markets that specialize in the sale of one product instead of more generalized markets. The conclusion points to the importance of public space recovery for the reinstatement of public order and for downtown economic revitalization. These benefits are described parallel to the disadvantages of the intensification of vendor-government conflict and the large-scale abandonment of costly markets by relocated street vendors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and compares different ways in which urban and native people in some Colombian regions (Costa Atlántica, altiplano Cundiboyacense, warm regions in Cundinamarca and Boyacá and the Sabana de Bogotá) build and adapt themselves to the city. Going out from the knowledge about who we are (by means of building and re-building the city) an analysis is developed. It takes into consideration some ways of making the city suitable to peoples-needs concerning the development of their own identity. Such a process implies different forms in which people assimilate elements and values from their environment and contribute with other ones to developing an own identity. This study analyses, also, the influence of subjective representations on the building process of cities and regions. Besides, it points out different kinds of subjective representations depending on regional groups as well as on their social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the problem of productive development management in four small rural areas located in two different rural sub-regions of the departament of Antioquia, Colombia. The question is studied under the context of productive restructuring and state decentralisation. Based on issues provided by the theory of local productive systems, a comparison is made between two identified local development models, giving a special attention to the institutional aspects and showing perspectives and limits, difficulties and deficiencies of public administrations and other social agents in managing productive changes that are happening in the specialised regions concerning farming activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the behavior of manufacturing employment in the main metropolitan areas of Colombia. A decomposition of the emplo-yment is presented, using the shift-share model to describe the factors that explain its growth as well as its concentration, during the 1974-1996 period. The results indicate that it is in Bogotá where the largest increase in the employment is concentrated, with growth above the national average, and above cities like Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Manizales, Pereira and Bucaramanga, which because of regional competitiveness have not been able to generate much employment in the manufacturing sector. This has originated a clear dualism between the generation of employment in Bogotá, as opposed to the rest of metropolitan areas, increasing the urban primacy of the capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to demonstrate that there is a dearth of information on the outcomes of the decentralization process in Colombia. A majority of the studies and papers written on decentralization have focused exclusively on design evaluation or fiscal performance. These studies have devoted little attention to the analysis of the results reached in the main objectives of service improvement and democratization. As a consequence proponents and critics of decentralization base their views on limited evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the start of production in the Cusiana and Cupiagua oil fields, the "piedemonte llanero" region became Colombia's principal oil producer. This article evaluates the population impact of production in Casanare using the data available in censuses and data gathered in a 1996 survey on spatial mobility in the cities of Yopal, Aguazul and Tauramena. The article analyses three aspects: the demographic dynamics of these three cities, the features of migration flows and the process of migrant labor insertion. An innovative survey design allows for the study of residential and labor practices among the inhabitants of the region. With this analysis the paper should contribute to a better understanding of the transformations of these cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]