Suchergebnisse

In the life of Latin American cities the rapid expansion of slum neighborhoods has emerged as a compelling problem. The inability of city authorities to provide adequate and inexpensive housing for rural-to-urban migrants, as well as for those economically poor persons born and raised in the city, has clashed with the tremendous growth of the population and its drive toward urbanization. The impoverished families must settle wherever they can. Scattered throughout Mexico City, for instance, on vacant lots adjoining factories or on the periphery of the metropolitan area are shack homes built of miscellaneous materials, known as jacales, or the rows of single-story concrete, brick, or adobe dwellings called vecindades. Beyond Mexico City, there are the villas miserias of Buenos Aires, the favelas on the rocky promontories of Rio de Janeiro, the barrios clandestinos of Bogotá, the barriadasmarginales of Lima, the ranchos of Caracas, and the callampas (mushrooms) of Santiago.

The remarkable change in the United States attitude toward family planning was symbolized last October by President Johnson's acceptance of the Margaret Sanger Award for his "vigorous and farsighted leadership in bringing the United States Government to enunciate and implement an affirmative, effective population policy at home and abroad." Less than a decade before, when the very mention of Margaret Sanger's name in official circles was considered risque, President Eisenhower had made it clear that family planning was not the business of the U.S. government. Few could have predicted that in 1966 the President of the United States would say, "It is essential that all families have access to information and services that will allow freedom to choose the number and spacing of their children within the dictates of individual conscience."