Social Classes

Last Thursday Dr. Biskner asked if nowadays society cares about social classes as much as Europe's society in the nineteenth century. Well, I think it depends in the development of each country or city. I really think that in third world countries, people that have money or just an important last name have way more opportunities than the rest. I don't think this situation applies to developed countries, or at least, not as much.

In third world countries it is very easy to see the differences between social classes because the distribution of resources is extremely uneven. In these countries there are more people in the extremes, either they are very rich or very poor, and the middle class is smaller. Also, the elite is very close, people that belong to it does not want to accept other people. Just to say an example, in Colombia, if someone that is very poor and works very hard to get money, achieves a high economic position, people in the high class will call him a “new rich”, which is a pejorative adjective. They will say that even if he has money, he doesn’t have culture or education and he will be rejected. Some other people will just start gossiping about how he got that money, at least someone may say: he must have been dealing with drugs. It is sad, but it is just the way it is. This situation will not occur if you are in a big city of the country, but it can be seen a lot in smaller places.

Last name and economic class can influence a lot of decisions, like getting into a school, getting a job, among others. There is this thing that we call “palanca” and it really does not have any meaning in English, but it is used to identify this type of situation. If for example, someone wants to get into the best medical school in Colombia, and the person’s family is very prestigious or some of the person’s relative is an important doctor, then that person is said to have palanca and he better use it in order to get there. It is kind of like “moving your influences.”