Food crisis, the fight against hunger in the Bañados and the lack of government support

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By Al­helí González Cáceres.*

The pop­u­la­tion of the wet­lands area of Asun­ción has long been the sub­ject of study in var­i­ous re­search stud­ies, both those re­lated to the so­cio-en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of agribusi­ness, as de­scribed by Wari in Paraguay: los pre­sos y as­esina­dos del agrone­go­cio, as well as those re­lated to ur­ban is­sues af­fect­ing the pe­riph­eral neigh­bor­hoods in vul­ner­a­ble con­di­tions, such as the study Bañado Sur: vi­das ur­banas ex­clu­idas, de re­sisten­cia y dig­nidad (Bañado Sur: ex­cluded ur­ban lives of re­sis­tance and dig­nity).

Specif­i­cally with re­gard to the com­mu­nity potlucks, or ol­las pop­u­lares, the re­search Ol­las pop­u­lares en el Paraguay de la pan­demia, of­fers a glimpse into the net­works of or­ga­ni­za­tion, in­te­gra­tion and so­cial­iza­tion in the Baña­dos in the midst of so­cial and eco­nomic con­tain­ment dur­ing the health cri­sis. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the Baña­dos shows us the fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance of com­mu­nity or­ga­ni­za­tion in re­sist­ing ex­clu­sion in gen­eral, and in the case of this analy­sis, hunger in par­tic­u­lar, with its ter­ri­ble ob­jec­tive and sub­jec­tive ef­fects.

The re­sis­tance of the wet­lands was pro­jected to other ar­eas of the coun­try with the pan­demic, which led the gov­ern­ment to gen­er­ate laws to sup­port pop­u­lar ini­tia­tives and, al­though this sup­port has been ex­tremely lim­ited, this sit­u­a­tion has not yet been made fully vis­i­ble, de­spite the fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance of do­ing so.

With the ad­vent of the pan­demic in 2020, a long-stand­ing prob­lem in Paraguay wors­ened, such as food in­se­cu­rity and re­stric­tions to ac­cess qual­ity food that af­fect a large part of the pop­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­larly the ur­ban pop­u­la­tion with low-in­come lev­els. This sit­u­a­tion is not lim­ited to lim­ited ac­cess to food, but also en­com­passes the qual­ity and va­ri­ety of the food con­sumed. Hence, dis­eases such as obe­sity and mal­nu­tri­tion rep­re­sent two sides of the same coin: the food cri­sis.

How­ever, to as­so­ci­ate the food cri­sis only to its ex­pres­sion in the bod­ies of in­di­vid­u­als would be a re­duc­tion­ist view of the prob­lem, ab­stracted from the so­cial is­sue that ac­com­pa­nies it, since food is, at the same time, a his­tor­i­cally de­ter­mined so­cial fact.

“Cap­i­tal­ism also en­ters through the mouth,” Holt-Giménez aptly ex­presses, in his study on the po­lit­i­cal econ­omy of food, un­der­lin­ing the fact that food in­flu­ences the so­cial well-be­ing of the pop­u­la­tion, while con­tribut­ing to the con­struc­tion of sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and the self-per­cep­tion of in­di­vid­u­als.

the hunger of the poor has not been a priority during the pandemic, much less afterwards. In the cooking pots that persist and resist, subsidizing an inefficient State, “we have chicken stew, which is the rest of the stew, and we eat little. For one hundred people, we usually have three kilos of stew. This terribly affects the quality of what is consumed. As we say, this is a py’a joko, to stave off hunger, and sometimes not even that.”

This is what is sug­gested by the women mem­bers of the Pykui or­ga­ni­za­tion, Ar­tic­u­lación de Ol­las Pop­u­lares, which brings to­gether the women re­spon­si­ble for the cook­ing pots of food in Baña­dos Norte, Sur, Tacumbú and Caacu­pemí. The Ar­tic­u­lación Pykui emerged dur­ing the pan­demic seek­ing to face the se­ri­ous food cri­sis af­fect­ing the com­mu­nity.

We were able to in­ter­view these women through the Young Con­trol for Bet­ter Pub­lic Man­age­ment pro­ject, one of the ini­tia­tives within the frame­work of the More Cit­i­zen­ship Less Cor­rup­tion pro­gram, which is sup­ported by the CIRD Foun­da­tion. The in­ter­views not only sought to un­der­stand the com­plex­ity of the food cri­sis but were also in­tended to serve as a sound­ing board ca­pa­ble of ex­pos­ing the claims against a State that has done lit­tle to fight hunger.

The women of Pykui re­ported, for ex­am­ple, that lim­ited ac­cess to food has ef­fects on the bod­ies and psy­che of the pop­u­la­tion, as well as af­fect­ing the de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren and ado­les­cents. How­ever, the women also pointed out that the food cri­sis is a threat to their dig­nity, as it places them in a po­si­tion of beg­ging not only to­wards the State and so­ci­ety, but also to­wards their own com­mu­nity. This is what they call the “py’a joko” (stop hunger) pol­icy, which forces them to ac­cept prod­ucts in poor con­di­tion, of poor qual­ity and al­most at ex­pi­ra­tion date, which, in other con­di­tions, they would never ac­cept. But this “py’a joko” pol­icy is, rather, a pol­icy of in­dig­nity to which they are sub­jected by the State through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment (MDS).

The poor prepa­ra­tion of the DSM to sup­port these pop­u­lar ini­tia­tives can­not, how­ever, be ex­cused. This prob­lem is nei­ther new nor lim­ited. On the con­trary, it is wide­spread. Ac­cord­ing to find­ings ob­tained from the first mea­sure­ment of food in­se­cu­rity in Paraguay, 26 out of every 100 Paraguayans suf­fer or have suf­fered from food in­se­cu­rity in the last twelve months. In other words, over a quar­ter of Paraguayans do not have ac­cess to a daily plate of food. And in the face of this, the State has no solid and ef­fec­tive pol­icy that seeks not only to con­tain hunger, but to re­verse it. For this to be pos­si­ble, it is nec­es­sary to re­cover our food sov­er­eignty, which is un­likely in the face of the un­stop­pable ad­vance of the pri­mary ex­port model.

In a coun­try where the agribusi­ness elite boasts of pro­duc­ing food for the world, of ex­port­ing pre­mium meat, it is prob­lem­atic that in the lo­cal mar­ket high food prices pre­vent a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion from con­sum­ing it. It is a hor­ri­fy­ing con­tra­dic­tion!

This para­dox is re­flected in low-in­come fam­i­lies who can only im­pov­er­ish their own di­ets. They con­sume in­creas­ing amounts of car­bo­hy­drates, ul­tra-processed prod­ucts of low nu­tri­tional and eco­nomic value. The dy­nam­ics of sub­sis­tence to hunger in­duces the low-in­come pop­u­la­tion to “feed” them­selves based on prod­ucts they have at hand, with­out pub­lic poli­cies of care, which leads them to in­cor­po­rate into their di­ets greater quan­ti­ties of sug­ars and flours, leav­ing aside meats, fruits, and veg­eta­bles, which are in­creas­ingly ex­pen­sive and there­fore in­ac­ces­si­ble to a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion.

As Cira No­vara, from the “Pykui” or­ga­ni­za­tion of ol­las pop­u­lares de­scribed it to me in an in­ter­view, “the chil­dren spend their time eat­ing junk. The mid-morn­ing snack at school is chipita, (sa­vory cheesy bread) which you look at and it is pure col­or­ing. Or a cookie with milk. Good for the milk, but at this age chil­dren no longer need milk, they need other nu­tri­ents”.

The agri­food sys­tem has im­posed its costs on the most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, trans­form­ing not only the en­vi­ron­ment but also the so­cial re­la­tions that sus­tain it. Cap­i­tal­ism has had a strong im­pact on rural, peas­ant and in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tions, who are sub­sumed in the mer­can­tile logic of liv­ing and un­der­stand­ing the world.

This has also been ex­pressed in the im­po­si­tion of new sub­jec­tiv­i­ties on the pop­u­la­tion, re­in­forc­ing the dy­nam­ics of ex­clu­sion, de­pen­dence, and sub­or­di­na­tion of the most vul­ner­a­ble sec­tors. As No­vara claims, the ob­jec­tive is­sue of ex­clu­sion is as re­gret­table as the sub­jec­tiv­ity con­structed in that sit­u­a­tion. “That so­cial and eco­nomic vul­ner­a­bil­ity of the pop­u­la­tion of Caacu­pemí is re­flected in the qual­ity of the prod­ucts con­sumed. In the com­mu­nity, they col­lect food from the garbage, then wash and con­sume it. It is sad that they must re­cur to prod­ucts that have been thrown away. In short, this re­al­ity vi­o­lates the dig­nity in the con­struc­tion of the sub­jec­tiv­ity of these sec­tors.

Given this sce­nario, the or­ga­ni­za­tion and strug­gle of the “olleras“, that is, the women who formed groups to col­lec­tively re­sist hunger, is not sur­pris­ing. With the pan­demic, mul­ti­ple or­ga­ni­za­tions were formed and forced the gov­ern­ment to make Ol­las Pop­u­lares a pub­lic pol­icy.

How­ever, as was to be ex­pected, the gov­ern­men­t’s ef­fort was un­der-re­sourced and, above all, poorly man­aged. Con­firm­ing what was al­ready in­tu­ited, the hunger of the poor has not been a pri­or­ity dur­ing the pan­demic, much less af­ter­wards. In the cook­ing pots that per­sist and re­sist, sub­si­diz­ing an in­ef­fi­cient State, “we have chicken stew, which is the rest of the stew, and we eat lit­tle. For one hun­dred peo­ple, we usu­ally have three ki­los of stew. This ter­ri­bly af­fects the qual­ity of what is con­sumed. As we say, this is a py’a joko, to stave off hunger, and some­times not even that.”

The sit­u­a­tion is wors­ened by the fact that, in a sce­nario of food cri­sis, the ac­tion of the MDS has been not to ex­e­cute the funds des­tined to the ac­qui­si­tion of food sup­plies for the soup kitchens, or to do so only once, giv­ing pri­or­ity to the ac­qui­si­tion of of­fice equip­ment and pay­ment of per diems. And at this point it is im­por­tant to high­light that, if it were not for the pop­u­lar or­ga­ni­za­tion, the pots would re­main empty, since so far in 2023, the MDS has only sent sup­plies once.

In ad­di­tion to the de­fi­cient man­age­ment, the al­lo­cated bud­get has been ex­tremely scarce. The re­sources al­lo­cated to the pro­ject of as­sis­tance to com­mu­nity kitchens in 2023 is al­most six times less than the amount al­lo­cated to the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) for the pay­ment of sub­si­dies to po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the frame­work of the elec­toral process. In a fol­low­ing re­lease, we will an­a­lyze the qual­ity of the bud­get ex­e­cu­tion of the MDS, which ex­presses the con­tent of an un­wor­thy pol­icy that does not seek so­lu­tions to the food cri­sis.

* Mas­ter in So­cial Sci­ences. PhD Can­di­date in Eco­nom­ics, In­sti­tuto de In­dus­tria, Uni­ver­si­dad Na­cional de Gen­eral Sarmiento, Buenos Aires.

Cover im­age: Yuki Yshizuka