Poverty & Social Development: A Caribbean Perspective

One of the greatest challenges to development in Latin America is the prevalence of unequal social development. In this regard, descendants from Africa, or Afro-Latinos, are particularly burdened by political, economic, and social marginalization within Latin America. Afro-Latinos constitute approximately a third of the region’s population; yet, they are close to half of the region’s poor. Despite this cor-relation, Afro-Latinos have not received the recognition, attention and amount of targeted funding as indigenous peoples have. Afro-Latinos remain largely an “invisible” sector of Latin American society and many of the tools that the World Bank has identified as essential to poverty reduction – such as education, stable employment, and land titles – are inaccessible to many Afro-Latinos.