Las Colonias: “America’s Third World” W “ e wanted to have something for ourselves,”explains Olga Ruiz, who has lived in the border community of College Park, Texas, for eleven years. There is no college in College Park, nor does this dusty stretch of rural land have sewer lines or even running water. Yet this town is one of some 2,300 settlements that have sprouted up in southern Texas along the 1,200-mile border with Mexico that runs from El Paso to Brownsville. Together, they are home to roughly 500,000 people. Many people speak of las colonias (Spanish for “the colonies”) as “America’s Third World” because these desperately poor com- munities look much like their counterparts in Mexico or many other middle- or low-income nations. But this is the United States, and almost all of the people living in the colonias are Mexican Americans, 85 percent of them legal residents and more than half U.S. citizens. Anastacia Ledsema, now seventy-two years old, moved to a colonia called Sparks more than forty years ago. Born in Mexico, Ledsema married a Texas man, and together they paid $200 for low-income Countries a quarter-acre lot in a new border community. For months, they camped out on their land. Step by step, they invested their labor and their money to build a modest house. Not until 1995 did their small community get running water—a service that had been promised by developers years before. When the water line finally did arrive, however, things changed more than they expected. “When we got water,” recalls Ledsema, “that’s when so many people came in.” The population of Sparks quickly doubled to about 3,000, overwhelming the water supply so that sometimes the faucet does not run at all. The residents of all the colonias know that they are poor, and with annual per capita income of about $6,000, they are. The Census Bureau has declared the county surrounding one border community to be the poorest in the United States. Concerned over the lack of basic services in so many of these communities, Texas officials have banned new settlements. But most of the people who move here—even those who start off sleeping in their cars or trucks—see these communities as the first step on the path to the American dream. Oscar Solis, a neighborhood leader in Panorama Village, a community with a population of about 150, is proud to show visitors around the small but growing town. “All of this work we have done ourselves,” he says with a smile, “to make our dream come true.” What Do You Think? 1. Are you surprised that such intense poverty exists in a rich 
 country like the United States? Why or why not? 2. Have you ever had experiences with poverty such as that described here in other parts of the United States? If so, where? 3. What do you think the future holds for the families living in las colonias? Explain your prediction. Source: Based on Schaffer (2002) and The Economist (2011). Low-income countries, where most people are very poor, are mostly agrarian societies with some industry. Forty-nine low-income countries, identified in Global Map 9–1 on page 283, are spread across Central and East Africa and Asia. Low-income countries cover 17 percent of the planet’s land area and are home to about 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of humanity. Population density is generally high, although it is greater in Asian countries (such as Bangladesh) than in Central African nations (such as Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In poor countries, 35 percent of the people live in cities; most inhabit villages and farms as their ancestors have done for centuries. In fact, half the world’s people are farm- ers, most of whom follow cultural traditions. With limited industrial technology, they cannot be very productive, one reason that many suffer severe poverty. Hunger, disease, and unsafe housing shape the lives of the world’s poorest people. Those of us who live in rich nations such as the United States find it hard to understand the scope of human need that exists in much of the world. From time to time, televised Global Stratification Chapter 9 285 In general, when natural disasters strike high-income nations, property damage may be great, but loss of life is low. Hurricane Sandy, which was characterized as a “superstorm,” (left) struck the East Coast of the United States in 2012, resulting in more than $60 billion in damage and seventy-two deaths. The earthquake that hit Haiti (right) in 2010, by contrast, resulted in more than 300,000 deaths. pictures of famine in very poor countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh give us shocking glimpses of the poverty that makes every day a life-and-death struggle for many people in low-income nations. Behind these images lie cultural, historical, and economic forces that we shall explore in the remainder of this chapter.
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