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156 PLANET OF SLUMS
structural adjustment, according to local researchers, manufactured 1.1
million "new poor," most out of the decimated ranks of the public
sector.16 In Abidjan, one of the few tropical African cities with an
important manufacturing sector and modern urban services, submission
to the SAP regime punctually led to deindustrialization, the
collapse of construction, and a rapid deterioration in public transit and
sanitation; as a result, urban poverty in Ivory Coast - the supposed
"tiger" economy of West Africa - doubled in the year 1987-88.17 In
Balogun's Nigeria, extreme poverty, increasingly urbanized in Lagos,
Ibadan, and other cities, metastasized from 28 percent in 1980 to 66
percent in 1996. "GNP per capita is about $260 today;' the World Bank
reports, "below the level at independence 40 years ago and below the
$370 level attained in 1985."18 Overall, geographer Deborah Potts
points out, wages have fallen so low in African cities that researchers
can't figure how the poor manage to survive: this is the so-called "wage
puzzle."19
In Latin America, beginning with General Pinochet's neoliberal
coup in 1973, structural adjustment was closely associated with
military dictatorship and the repression of the popular Left. One of
the most striking results of this hemispheric counter-revolution was
lc the rapid urbanization of poverty. In 1970, Guevarist flco theories of
rural insurgency still conformed to a continental reality where the
poverty of the countryside (75 million poor) overshadowed that of the
cities (44 million poor) . By the end of the 1980s, however, the vast
majority of the poor (1 15 million) were living in urban colonias, barn'adas,
and villas miserias rather than on farms or in rural villages (80
million) , zo
According to ILO research, urban poverty in Latin America rose by
an extraordinary 50 percent just in the first half of the decade, 1980 to
1986.21 The average incomes of the working population fell by 40
percent in Venezuela, 30 percent in Argentina, and 21 percent in Brazil
16 Adil Mustafa Ahmad and Atta El-Hassan El-Batthani, "Poverty in Khartoum,"
Environment and Urbanization 7:2 (October 1995), p. 205.
17 Sethuraman, "Urban Poverty and the Informal Sector", p. 3
18 World Bank, Nigeria: Country Brief, September 2003.
19 Potts, "Urban Lives," p. 459.
20 UN, World Urbanization Pro.rpects, p. 12.
21 Potts, "Urban Lives," p. 459.
SAPING THE THIRD \,{'ORLD 157
and Costa Rica.22 In Mexico informal employment almost doubled
between 1980 and 1987, while social expenditure fell to half its 1980
leve1.23 In Peru the 1980s ended in an SAP-induced "hyper-recession"
that cut formal employment from 60 to 11 percent of the urban workforce
in three years and opened the doors of Lima's slums to the occult
revolution of Sendero Luminoso.24
Meanwhile, broad sections of the educated middle class, accustomed
to live-in servants and European vacations, suddenly found
themselves in the ranks of the new poor. In some cases, downward
mobility was almost as abrupt as in Africa: the percentage of the urban
population living in poverty, for example, increased by 5 percent in a
single year (1980-81) in both Chile and Brazi1.25 But the same adjustments
that crushed the poor and the public-sector middle class offered
lucrative opportunities to privatizers, foreign importers, narcotrqfficantes,
military brass, and political insiders. Conspicuous consumption reached
hallucinatory levels in Latin America and Africa during the 1980s as the
nouveaux riches went on spending sprees in Miami and Paris while their
shantytown compatriots starved.
Indices of inequality reached record heights in the 1980s. In Buenos
Aires the richest decile's share of income increased from 10 times that
of the poorest in 1984 to 23 times in 1989. In Rio de Janeiro, inequality
as measured in classical GINI coefficients climbed from 0.58 in
1981 to 0.67 in 1989,z6 Indeed, throughout Latin America, the 1980s
deepened the canyons and elevated the peaks of the world's most
'extreme social topography. According to a 2003 World Bank report,
GINI coefficients are 10 points higher in Latin America than Asia;
17.5 points higher than the OECD; and 2004 points higher than
Eastern Europe. Even the most egalitarian country in Latin America,
22 Alberto Minujin, "Squeezed: The Middle Class in Latin America," Environment
and Urbanization 7:2 (October 1995), p. 155.
23 Agustin Escobar and Mercedes Gonzalez de la Rocha, "Crisis, Restructuring
and Urban Poverty in Mexico," Rmironment and Urbanization 7:1 (April 1995), pp. 63-64.
24 Henry Dietz, Urban Poverty, Political Participation, and the State: Lima, 1970-1990,
Pittsburgh 1998, pp. 58, 65.
25 A. Oberai, Population Growth, Employment and Poverty in Third World Megaities,
p. 85.
26 Luis Ainstein, "Buenos Aires: A Case of Deepening Social Polarization," in
Gilbert, The Mega-City in Latin America, p. 139.