DANE and its figures: the other face of racism and statistical genocide in Colombia
Photo: @PartidoFARC
By Glenda Palacios
Published in November 29, 2019
National population and housing censuses represent the largest statistical operation in a country, since they are the primary source of information. The results are the basis for the design and implementation of public policies and programs, for investment decisions and private studies (Tacla, 2006).
Recently, Colombia's National Administrative Department of Statistics (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estatística, DANE) published the National Population and Housing Census (Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda, CNPV) of 2018. This effort suposedly implemented the ethnic differential approach with ethnic peoples as a methodological and analytical tool with the objective of generating inclusion and avoiding skewing in the estimates. It should be noted that, in the previous censuses, there was evidence of underreporting of the black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population and the lack of disaggregated statistics that allowed for differential analyzes.
In general terms, the Colombian government spent $18,565,277,600 pesos to guarantee the quality of the data generated by the census on the Afro-Colombian population. This figure, in per capita terms, was approximately 3,891 pesos per black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquero inhabitant in the country. Indeed, it is a low investment if you think about the challenges of the ethnic approach, which seeks to cover dynamics and unexplored territories. However, this investment could have been cost-efficient if they had worked, in an articulated manner, with the population under analysis and other institutions with experience in the field.
According to the 2018 Census, of the total of 48,258,494 inhabitants of Colombia, only 6.8% self-identify as black, Afro-Colombian, mulatto or Afro-descendant. This result has been the subject of debate for four main reasons. First due to the sharp decline in the black population both in absolute and relative terms. This ethnic group went from having 4,711,659 inhabitants in 2005 to 2,982,234 in 2018, that is, a sub-registry of at least 1,729,425 inhabitants. This figure is not negligible when we notice that the population of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is 1,619,000 inhabitants. In this way, Colombia's black population decreased its participation by more than 5 percentage points, from 11% in 2005 to 6.18% in 2018.
This decrease, according to the country's demographic experts, cannot be explained by immigration reasons because immigration has not been a recent phenomenon in Colombia. From the perspective of ethnic leaders and communities, this population loss makes no sense in the face of the strong mobilization and massive campaigns for self-recognition that have been taking place since 2000. For DANE, the fault lies with people who did not want to recognize themselves, while historical sources show that the reduction of the black population in the country is due to old laws of "improving" the nation, thus applying whitening policies and putting the black population as the military target. In any case, this result has negative implications in the construction of a multicultural and multiethnic nation. The systematic continuity of the statistical invisibility of a population victimized by racism, violence and inequality aggravates their life situations and increases distrust and low credibility in government entities. These results have crucial implications for government investments since they weigh the amount of resources allocated based on population size.
Second, there is a significant difference between the ethnic population estimated by the CNPV (1,729,425 inhabitants) and the results of the Quality of Life Survey (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida, ECV) (4,671,160 inhabitants) carried out by the same institution. This indicates that estimates depend on how they are done and by whom, rather than on objective conditions such as the settled population. What draws attention primarily is that the census, by its nature — it surveys all individuals in a selected area — should yield more reliable and accurate data than the ECV since the latter is based on household sampling, that is, it selects certain individuals from an area and not all. Therefore, unlike what the director of DANE said, the ECV data does not solve the under-reporting, because the official population figures are those of the CNPV and constitute the main source used by the institutions to make public policy decisions.
Third, DANE, as the governing body of generating the country's main statistical information, does not design efficient or articulated collection methods such as the use of administrative records. Countries like Ecuador have solved their census problems using administrative records, which consist of taking advantage of information available to individuals in other sources of information such as Sisben (System of Identification of Social Program Beneficiaries), ICFES (Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education) and public service receipts. DANE has already been aware of this methodology for more than 10 years, so that it could have used the information from Sisben, which also has objective measures such as photos of ID cards. With this, not only would a significant amount of resources have been saved, but an efficient, quality and credible census would have been implemented, strengthening the inter-institutional articulation, implementing the ethnic approach and generating credibility. However, it would be hard to believe that an entity like DANE did not know about this. As economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson show in the book Why Nations Fail, these are deliberately cases of corruption and misuse of resources, since they ensure higher incomes and the continuity of those who have historically been in power.
Fourth and last, DANE did not evaluate the inappropriateness of grouping the majority of the black population into a single category: “Question 37: According to your culture, community, or physical features... are you or do you recognize yourself as: Black, mulatto, Afro-descendant, Afro-Colombian?”. To generate greater self-recognition, this entity should know that there is an important difference between recognizing oneself as moreno, mulatto, Afro-descendant or black. It has been shown that in societies with persistent effects of the white-European invasion, whitening and lighter skin tones generate privileges whether symbolic or material compared to people of dark skin tones. Consequently, the ungrouping was necessary, generating a category for each one (black, mulatto, Afro-descendant, Afro-Colombian).
Given the above, some of the technical and operational problems that the CNPV had are detailed below. This would help to understand why the results generated by DANE are not reliable, since they lack coverage, quality and representativeness. These points were constructed using the Report Committee of Experts for the Evaluation of the National Population and Housing Census of Colombia 2018. This committee is made up of Carlos Ardila, Yolanda Bodnar, Carmen Elisa Flórez, Ciro Martínez, Álvaro Pachón, Magda Ruíz and Piedad Urdinola. This report was funded by DANE.
1) The guiding principles of a national population and housing census are universality, simultaneity, periodicity and individual enumeration. Universality indicates that a census must include all persons residing in the area to be surveyed regardless of their type (nationality, religion, ethnic group, etc.). However, DANE had a very important census omission in the non-central departments of Colombia, or where the black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population has historically settled, such as Valle del Cauca (15.3%), the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina (21.2%), Nariño (18.1%), Chocó (14.5%) and Cauca (15.1%); while in places like Bogotá, Caldas and Antioquia this percentage of omission did not even exceed 8%. There is a systematic error, which indicates that the omission was not random but that it is concentrated in the historically excluded departments and with the largest black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population.
Regarding simultaneity, it is said that all people should be surveyed at the closest possible dates. However, DANE took ten months in the process, although the operation was planned to be done in six months and the international recommendation proposes three months of collection as a maximum period. To clarify the problems that this generates, let's think about the coffee growing axis where more than 44,000 workers from other parts of the country arrive in the region in order to take advantage of the agricultural boom. If the census takes time to take place simultaneously, these workers who migrate mainly from places like Tolima, Valle del Cauca and Chocó will not be surveyed in their place of origin, or in the place where they now reside temporarily. So the population sizes of those cities or places where they migrate from are reduced.
In relation to periodicity, it is indicated that a census must have comparable information. In Colombia, given that the last census was carried out in 2005, the CNPV should've been carried out in 2015, in order to have comparable information on a fixed sequence. According to national experts Ardila, Bodnar, Flórez, Martínez, Pachón, Ruiz and Urdinola (2019), such a high collection period is affected by internal migration.
So far it has been observed that DANE violated the three basic and fundamental principles for conducting a quality census, such as universality, simultaneity and periodicity.
2) The expert report shows that DANE played a passive role during the operation, meaning that high coverage was not achieved. For example, contracts with office hours prevailed, preventing flexible times to survey during weekends, holidays and night hours. This system did not cover the experiences learned in previous censuses or international recommendations.
3) DANE did not carry out a cartographic update, which implied a greater number of visits than those scheduled, thus extending the time of the operation.
4) The report shows the weakness in the pilot tests and in the training of personnel. For example, only 38.2% of those attending the learning process passed the requirement to survey (931 total attendees), which led to low census yields and to extend the collection period over and over again.
5) There were technical problems for the training of personnel from ethnic villages, such as low internet access, intermittent connections and reduced spaces for training. Additionally, the required staff was not hired: of 3,291 people needed for indigenous peoples, only 3,130 were hired and, in the black communities, of the 3,634 people required, only 3,494 were hired.
6) The report emphasizes that in the municipal capitals, especially in large cities or regions such as Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cesar, Valle and Los Santanderes, the question of self-recognition was not asked or only applied according to the census taker's criteria. A case in Cali is highlighted in which the CNPV supervisor, after having spent 2 months of collection, told census takers that now they would ask the person if they belonged to any ethnic group.
7) They made statistical imputation of the missing figures in determining variables such as school attendance, fertility and housing. With regard to housing, the report indicates that in all cases the vast majority of imputed homes are assigned to the category of best condition. This means that the households that did not respond or did not have information about their homes, were given the same information of the homes with better roofs, floors and walls. This skewing indicates that there was an over estimate of living conditions, attributing better conditions than they actually have. This of course has an impact on public policy decisions since artificially it could be considering a decrease in poverty levels measured through household conditions and access to public services. In relation to the question on fertility, the highest concentration of responses ‘does not inform’ happened in Vaupés and Chocó, with more than 30%.
It is important to highlight then that the problems not only fall on the ethnic variable, but also that there are errors in other fundamental variables for the calculation of poverty, life expectancy and human capital formation.
The Director of DANE, knowing about this whole scenario, affirms that it is the people's fault for not recognizing themselves. Indeed, these results are an act of racism against the black population, which despite so much effort and mobilization to generate a change, were marked by negligence and lack of rigor in this entity. The truth is that this is not a new phenomenon, on the contrary it is old and has been implemented by white elites throughout the national territory. The book Rutas de Libertad (2010) teaches us that at the time of Independence one of the most urgent needs was the control of the Afro-descendant population. That population had to be decimated by any means. So they were sent to war to die, in the plantations were hidden by their masters and to the palenques they ran for refuge and freedom. The present time is the same: they are still being killed, the masters of the government hide them and they are not counted because they are far away, located in palenques where the census takers do not arrive.
For history it has already been written that no matter how many efforts are made for self-recognition, ethnic statistical invisibility prevailed and the opportunity to build trust between the government and the community — to strengthen the rigor in the sources of information and to advance in the inclution — was denied. DANE could turn a “blind eye” and continue to blame the invisibilized for not knowing their true living conditions, in the end they are killing them and the credibility they have does not add up. However, if DANE wants to change the course of this story, there is still an open window: first it must recognize that it violated the technical and community agreements, and second it must implement the methodology of compensated and adjusted population, this implies going to the territories it has never gone to, ask the questions it has never asked and work horizontally with the community. None of this would be necessary if it had heard them from the beginning.
Photo: @PartidoFARC
By Glenda Palacios
Published in November 29, 2019
National population and housing censuses represent the largest statistical operation in a country, since they are the primary source of information. The results are the basis for the design and implementation of public policies and programs, for investment decisions and private studies (Tacla, 2006).
Recently, Colombia's National Administrative Department of Statistics (Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estatística, DANE) published the National Population and Housing Census (Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda, CNPV) of 2018. This effort suposedly implemented the ethnic differential approach with ethnic peoples as a methodological and analytical tool with the objective of generating inclusion and avoiding skewing in the estimates. It should be noted that, in the previous censuses, there was evidence of underreporting of the black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population and the lack of disaggregated statistics that allowed for differential analyzes.
In general terms, the Colombian government spent $18,565,277,600 pesos to guarantee the quality of the data generated by the census on the Afro-Colombian population. This figure, in per capita terms, was approximately 3,891 pesos per black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquero inhabitant in the country. Indeed, it is a low investment if you think about the challenges of the ethnic approach, which seeks to cover dynamics and unexplored territories. However, this investment could have been cost-efficient if they had worked, in an articulated manner, with the population under analysis and other institutions with experience in the field.
According to the 2018 Census, of the total of 48,258,494 inhabitants of Colombia, only 6.8% self-identify as black, Afro-Colombian, mulatto or Afro-descendant. This result has been the subject of debate for four main reasons. First due to the sharp decline in the black population both in absolute and relative terms. This ethnic group went from having 4,711,659 inhabitants in 2005 to 2,982,234 in 2018, that is, a sub-registry of at least 1,729,425 inhabitants. This figure is not negligible when we notice that the population of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is 1,619,000 inhabitants. In this way, Colombia's black population decreased its participation by more than 5 percentage points, from 11% in 2005 to 6.18% in 2018.
This decrease, according to the country's demographic experts, cannot be explained by immigration reasons because immigration has not been a recent phenomenon in Colombia. From the perspective of ethnic leaders and communities, this population loss makes no sense in the face of the strong mobilization and massive campaigns for self-recognition that have been taking place since 2000. For DANE, the fault lies with people who did not want to recognize themselves, while historical sources show that the reduction of the black population in the country is due to old laws of "improving" the nation, thus applying whitening policies and putting the black population as the military target. In any case, this result has negative implications in the construction of a multicultural and multiethnic nation. The systematic continuity of the statistical invisibility of a population victimized by racism, violence and inequality aggravates their life situations and increases distrust and low credibility in government entities. These results have crucial implications for government investments since they weigh the amount of resources allocated based on population size.
Second, there is a significant difference between the ethnic population estimated by the CNPV (1,729,425 inhabitants) and the results of the Quality of Life Survey (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida, ECV) (4,671,160 inhabitants) carried out by the same institution. This indicates that estimates depend on how they are done and by whom, rather than on objective conditions such as the settled population. What draws attention primarily is that the census, by its nature — it surveys all individuals in a selected area — should yield more reliable and accurate data than the ECV since the latter is based on household sampling, that is, it selects certain individuals from an area and not all. Therefore, unlike what the director of DANE said, the ECV data does not solve the under-reporting, because the official population figures are those of the CNPV and constitute the main source used by the institutions to make public policy decisions.
Third, DANE, as the governing body of generating the country's main statistical information, does not design efficient or articulated collection methods such as the use of administrative records. Countries like Ecuador have solved their census problems using administrative records, which consist of taking advantage of information available to individuals in other sources of information such as Sisben (System of Identification of Social Program Beneficiaries), ICFES (Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education) and public service receipts. DANE has already been aware of this methodology for more than 10 years, so that it could have used the information from Sisben, which also has objective measures such as photos of ID cards. With this, not only would a significant amount of resources have been saved, but an efficient, quality and credible census would have been implemented, strengthening the inter-institutional articulation, implementing the ethnic approach and generating credibility. However, it would be hard to believe that an entity like DANE did not know about this. As economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson show in the book Why Nations Fail, these are deliberately cases of corruption and misuse of resources, since they ensure higher incomes and the continuity of those who have historically been in power.
Fourth and last, DANE did not evaluate the inappropriateness of grouping the majority of the black population into a single category: “Question 37: According to your culture, community, or physical features... are you or do you recognize yourself as: Black, mulatto, Afro-descendant, Afro-Colombian?”. To generate greater self-recognition, this entity should know that there is an important difference between recognizing oneself as moreno, mulatto, Afro-descendant or black. It has been shown that in societies with persistent effects of the white-European invasion, whitening and lighter skin tones generate privileges whether symbolic or material compared to people of dark skin tones. Consequently, the ungrouping was necessary, generating a category for each one (black, mulatto, Afro-descendant, Afro-Colombian).
Given the above, some of the technical and operational problems that the CNPV had are detailed below. This would help to understand why the results generated by DANE are not reliable, since they lack coverage, quality and representativeness. These points were constructed using the Report Committee of Experts for the Evaluation of the National Population and Housing Census of Colombia 2018. This committee is made up of Carlos Ardila, Yolanda Bodnar, Carmen Elisa Flórez, Ciro Martínez, Álvaro Pachón, Magda Ruíz and Piedad Urdinola. This report was funded by DANE.
1) The guiding principles of a national population and housing census are universality, simultaneity, periodicity and individual enumeration. Universality indicates that a census must include all persons residing in the area to be surveyed regardless of their type (nationality, religion, ethnic group, etc.). However, DANE had a very important census omission in the non-central departments of Colombia, or where the black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population has historically settled, such as Valle del Cauca (15.3%), the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina (21.2%), Nariño (18.1%), Chocó (14.5%) and Cauca (15.1%); while in places like Bogotá, Caldas and Antioquia this percentage of omission did not even exceed 8%. There is a systematic error, which indicates that the omission was not random but that it is concentrated in the historically excluded departments and with the largest black, Afro-Colombian, raizal or palenquera population.
Regarding simultaneity, it is said that all people should be surveyed at the closest possible dates. However, DANE took ten months in the process, although the operation was planned to be done in six months and the international recommendation proposes three months of collection as a maximum period. To clarify the problems that this generates, let's think about the coffee growing axis where more than 44,000 workers from other parts of the country arrive in the region in order to take advantage of the agricultural boom. If the census takes time to take place simultaneously, these workers who migrate mainly from places like Tolima, Valle del Cauca and Chocó will not be surveyed in their place of origin, or in the place where they now reside temporarily. So the population sizes of those cities or places where they migrate from are reduced.
In relation to periodicity, it is indicated that a census must have comparable information. In Colombia, given that the last census was carried out in 2005, the CNPV should've been carried out in 2015, in order to have comparable information on a fixed sequence. According to national experts Ardila, Bodnar, Flórez, Martínez, Pachón, Ruiz and Urdinola (2019), such a high collection period is affected by internal migration.
So far it has been observed that DANE violated the three basic and fundamental principles for conducting a quality census, such as universality, simultaneity and periodicity.
2) The expert report shows that DANE played a passive role during the operation, meaning that high coverage was not achieved. For example, contracts with office hours prevailed, preventing flexible times to survey during weekends, holidays and night hours. This system did not cover the experiences learned in previous censuses or international recommendations.
3) DANE did not carry out a cartographic update, which implied a greater number of visits than those scheduled, thus extending the time of the operation.
4) The report shows the weakness in the pilot tests and in the training of personnel. For example, only 38.2% of those attending the learning process passed the requirement to survey (931 total attendees), which led to low census yields and to extend the collection period over and over again.
5) There were technical problems for the training of personnel from ethnic villages, such as low internet access, intermittent connections and reduced spaces for training. Additionally, the required staff was not hired: of 3,291 people needed for indigenous peoples, only 3,130 were hired and, in the black communities, of the 3,634 people required, only 3,494 were hired.
6) The report emphasizes that in the municipal capitals, especially in large cities or regions such as Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cesar, Valle and Los Santanderes, the question of self-recognition was not asked or only applied according to the census taker's criteria. A case in Cali is highlighted in which the CNPV supervisor, after having spent 2 months of collection, told census takers that now they would ask the person if they belonged to any ethnic group.
7) They made statistical imputation of the missing figures in determining variables such as school attendance, fertility and housing. With regard to housing, the report indicates that in all cases the vast majority of imputed homes are assigned to the category of best condition. This means that the households that did not respond or did not have information about their homes, were given the same information of the homes with better roofs, floors and walls. This skewing indicates that there was an over estimate of living conditions, attributing better conditions than they actually have. This of course has an impact on public policy decisions since artificially it could be considering a decrease in poverty levels measured through household conditions and access to public services. In relation to the question on fertility, the highest concentration of responses ‘does not inform’ happened in Vaupés and Chocó, with more than 30%.
It is important to highlight then that the problems not only fall on the ethnic variable, but also that there are errors in other fundamental variables for the calculation of poverty, life expectancy and human capital formation.
The Director of DANE, knowing about this whole scenario, affirms that it is the people's fault for not recognizing themselves. Indeed, these results are an act of racism against the black population, which despite so much effort and mobilization to generate a change, were marked by negligence and lack of rigor in this entity. The truth is that this is not a new phenomenon, on the contrary it is old and has been implemented by white elites throughout the national territory. The book Rutas de Libertad (2010) teaches us that at the time of Independence one of the most urgent needs was the control of the Afro-descendant population. That population had to be decimated by any means. So they were sent to war to die, in the plantations were hidden by their masters and to the palenques they ran for refuge and freedom. The present time is the same: they are still being killed, the masters of the government hide them and they are not counted because they are far away, located in palenques where the census takers do not arrive.
For history it has already been written that no matter how many efforts are made for self-recognition, ethnic statistical invisibility prevailed and the opportunity to build trust between the government and the community — to strengthen the rigor in the sources of information and to advance in the inclution — was denied. DANE could turn a “blind eye” and continue to blame the invisibilized for not knowing their true living conditions, in the end they are killing them and the credibility they have does not add up. However, if DANE wants to change the course of this story, there is still an open window: first it must recognize that it violated the technical and community agreements, and second it must implement the methodology of compensated and adjusted population, this implies going to the territories it has never gone to, ask the questions it has never asked and work horizontally with the community. None of this would be necessary if it had heard them from the beginning.
