ABSTRACT
Safe, adequate housing has been a perennial problem in the Latin American region. Spaniards arrived in America by 1492 and had their own conception of housing: their “cities” were designed for civilized people, and were built on a standard grid-pattern. Naturally, John F. Kennedy was reacting to the success of Fidel Castro’s revolution and part of the Alliance’s objective was to build adequate housing for people who lived and worked in and near big cities. Natural disasters create housing crises in Latin America, but man-made crises affect where and how people live in their own countries. The original plan, with Alliance funding, provided housing for about 80,000 middle-class Colombians though, Ciudad Kennedy is a sprawling middle class “barrio” with more than a million residents. The economic collapse contributed to the growth of slums around the capital city of Buenos Aires; perhaps as many as 2 million people lived in dire conditions.
