Programa Familias en Acción: una tensión entre neoliberalismo y neoestructuralismo

Abstract

Objective: To understand the macro institutional conditions of "Families in Action Program" of the municipality of Manizales, between the years 2005-2010, and the concepts of development and poverty that underlie the program.

Methodology: Two sources of information were used as a way to obtain this knowledge: firstly via the stories of social and institutional actors obtained through semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation, and secondly through reviewing secondary information. The development, poverty and the macro and micro realities were the analyzed categories. They emerged from the theoretical discussion and grounded the design of instruments for collecting information.

Results: Families in Action is a program of social assistance in which a neoliberal vision of development and poverty with some neo-structuralism influence prevails. It was evidenced that the concepts of poverty and development as linked to discourse on income and economic growth have been the solution for neither global poverty nor national poverty. Discourses such as neo-structuralism, which intends to claim the responsibility of the State intervention within the market and in societal affairs, were found.

Conclusions: The effectiveness of conditional grant programs in order to overcome poverty in Colombia is questioned. Likewise, there is a lack of institutional coordination to face poverty and there is no correspondence between state programs and social demands for the improvement in the quality of life and in the satisfaction of needs. In other words, there is no connection between the macro and micro realities of society. Families in Action program ends up being an assistant program that does not structurally improve the living conditions of families attached to it.