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