Alvaro Uribe

Lore & Background

Colombia in the 2000s was a country in the grip of a protracted armed conflict. The FARC insurgency, paramilitary groups, and narco-trafficking networks had destabilized entire regions for decades. Uribe's presidency was defined by his security doctrine, the controversial Plan Colombia partnership with the United States, and a hardline approach to counterinsurgency that drew both domestic and international debate. For a young Shakira growing up in Barranquilla and later building her career in Bogotá, this was the reality of the news cycle, the roads she traveled, and the communities her family knew.

Shakira's public identity as a Colombian artist was inseparable from this context. Even as her music reached global audiences, the social fabric of her home country—its poverty, its educational disparities, its resilience—remained a constant undercurrent. The political climate of the Uribe years, with its emphasis on state security and economic opening, also shaped the policy environment in which NGOs, foundations, and public-education reform would later operate.

By the time Shakira founded the Pies Descalzos Foundation in 2010 to build schools in underserved Colombian communities, the political landscape had already shifted, but the structural gaps in rural and urban education that her work addresses were legacies of the very era Uribe presided over. His tenure thus forms the historical substrate of the problems Shakira's philanthropy was designed to tackle.

In Their Own Story

The afternoon light in Barranquilla hung thick and golden, the kind that made the Caribbean air feel like warm water. Shakira sat on the balcony of a modest house in the barrio, watching a group of children kick a deflated ball across a cracked courtyard. A radio in the kitchen crackled with a political speech—Uribe's voice, booming and certain, promising peace through strength. She turned the volume down. The children didn't notice. They were building a small shelter out of cardboard and wire, laughing, arguing about who got the roof. She smiled, picked up a marker, and sketched the shape of it in her notebook. Not a song. Not yet. Just a shape. A school, maybe. A place where the laughter wouldn't have to compete with the radio.

Reader's Guide

Álvaro Uribe's presidency (2002–2010) did not constitute a philanthropy initiative in the traditional sense; rather, it defined the political and social environment in which Shakira's charitable work took root. During his tenure, Colombia's armed conflict, rural poverty, and educational inequality remained acute, particularly in the departments outside the major cities.

Shakira's personal involvement in philanthropy grew in parallel with this era. Her Pies Descalzos Foundation, launched in 2010, focuses on constructing and equipping schools in underserved Colombian communities, providing not just infrastructure but also technology, teacher training, and student support programs. Her involvement is hands-on: she has visited construction sites, participated in ribbon-cuttings, and used her public platform to draw international attention to rural education gaps.

Key milestones include the opening of multiple schools across several Colombian departments, partnerships with local governments and educational ministries, and the foundation's expansion to include digital-learning resources. The impact is measured in enrollment numbers, graduation rates, and the daily reality of children who previously walked hours to attend class or had no school at all.

While Uribe's government set the macro-policy stage, Shakira's work represents the grassroots, community-level response to the educational deficits that persisted regardless of the political administration in power.

Did You Know?

• Shakira's Pies Descalzos Foundation was established in 2010, the same year Uribe's second presidential term concluded, marking a transition in Colombia's political landscape that her educational work would continue acros
• Shakira grew up in Barranquilla, a Caribbean port city whose cultural vibrancy and economic challenges were part of the national picture during the Uribe years.
• The armed-conflict context of the 2000s meant that many rural Colombian communities lacked basic infrastructure, including schools—a gap that Shakira's foundation was later designed to address.
• Shakira has consistently used her international platform to highlight Colombian social issues, maintaining a public identity rooted in her home country's struggles and strengths.