World Hunger and Food as a Human Right Day 4: Latin America and the Caribbean

And so begins day four of my World Hunger journey. I awoke this morning from a very heavy sleep, a sleep that had taken me longer than usual to achieve. It seems that mimicking the diet of the world’s hungriest people and eating less than 1,000 calories a day leaves me exhausted all the time, in a strange twist it also renders me unable to sleep. In fact, last night after dinner I felt wired and jittery, bursting with energy, a strange contrast to the listless and groggy feeling I had experienced all day. Now that I am awake, it is all I can do to keep my eyes from drifting shut as I write today’s post exploring the causes of hunger and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the need to recognize food as a human right.

Just as my body and energy levels seem off kilter, my thoughts are also disjointed and sluggish. I find myself losing track of what I’m doing and just gazing off into the distance, eyes unfocused, and my brain at a standstill. Trying to regroup and refocus seems to take an extraordinary effort and I usually give up and put my head down on my desk for a few minutes. The ability to craft just one coherent sentence eludes me and I wonder if anything I’m writing makes sense. Words bunch and jumble on the page as my eyes slowly inch shut, sleep seems so easy now. It’s hard to believe I’m this tired after only four days of this journey and I live a soft life, with an air conditioned, comfortable house, no children to take care of, and no manual labor to perform. If I can barely stay awake while sitting on the couch reading a book, it is inconceivable to me how people eat this little and work all day, every day. It is not fair that I have lived the life that I have; I did nothing to deserve this luxury, just as millions of people do not deserve their hardship. As always, the same thought rings endlessly through my head: It does not have to be like this.

It feels almost futile to try to cover a topic like world hunger in seven days, let alone the hunger in South America and the Caribbean in one post. I could spend weeks analyzing and writing about chronic hunger and poverty in any one country and I worry that I’m doing a disservice by trying to wrap up whole swathes of the globe in a few short articles. The problem with chronic hunger is it is growing around the world, but it is especially severe in Latin American and the Caribbean where 53 million people face food insecurity and 40 percent of the region’s population lives in poverty. Latin America faces the largest wealth inequality in the world and has experienced some of the worst effects of neo-liberal restructuring and the insistent destruction of ‘free’-trade globalization. Through actions that Naomi Klein refers to as ‘shock therapy’, Latin America has seen its democratically elected leaders undermined or overthrown, its social policies eviscerated, and its economies plunged into a tailspin of instability. Perhaps it is because of this unique history as the test subject for many of the West’s harshest ‘free’-market experiments, that this region of the world continues to create unique strategies for dealing with their poverty. I wrote in a previous article that one of the reasons for the current state of global food insecurity is the misguided policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  In this article, I would like to cover some of Latin American’s political economic history that led to this food insecurity.

As Naomi Klein illustrates so clearly in her book The Shock Doctrine, the nation of Chile was one of the first casualties in the neo-liberal restructuring experiments carried about by the United States. In 1973, after many decades of peaceful democratic rule, Chile underwent the so-called ‘Chicago School Revolution’ that ended in the death of the Socialist President Salvador Allende and the beginning of the brutal regime of Dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Advised by the American economist Milton Friedman and without the support of the Chilean people, for the next 16 years General Pinochet adhered to neo-liberal dogma and decentralized and dismantled the nation of Chile by privatizing social programs, liberalizing trade, deregulating the financial market, curtailing or eliminating trade unions, and overhauling the country’s laws and constitution. Chile experienced drastic instability, plunging between periods of growth and extreme loss, before settling on a course of almost non-existent growth, the slowest of any Latin American country. Inflation reached 375 percent, almost double the level experienced under Allende, while income inequality grew to out of control levels. Chilean workers in 1989 ended up earning even less than workers did in 1973, after adjusting for inflation. The people of the country were given no say in any of this, as wide spread state sponsored brutality silenced all dissent.

Similar strategies were underway in varying degrees throughout many countries in Latin America. In Uruguay the military staged a coup in 1973 and the subsequent adoption of neo-liberal tactics guided by American economists saw real wages drop 28 percent, and the number of people living in extreme poverty soar.

Argentina’s new junta followed suit soon after, eliminating financial market regulations, opening up the economy to foreign investors, lifting price controls, limiting social programs and banning union strikes. Within a year the results were undeniable: wages lost 40 percent of their value, factories shut down and poverty increased. Before these policies began Argentina had less people living in poverty than in the U.S. or France. After the disastrous effects of the newly adopted strategies had taken their toll, the country slid backwards and dragged it’s citizens into the grip of extreme poverty.

In 1985, in a move completely opposed by the people, the government of Bolivia implemented catastrophic changes to the country’s economy. They eliminated food subsidies, canceled price controls, froze government wages, cut government spending, downsized state run companies, and opened the borders to unrestricted imports. The results were devastating: inflation was brought under control, just as they had hoped, but at the same time the unemployment rate increased 10 percent, real wages dropped 40 percent, and tens of thousands of people lost their job security and pensions.

During the 1980’s when U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker raised U.S. interest rates, developing nations in Latin America (and throughout the world) that had been saddled with huge debts saw their economies crumble as their inability to repay their loans demolished what little stability they had. Brazil, in particular, was hit hard and their debt exploded from $50 billion to $100 billion in just six years, which was one of the precipitating factors in the inevitable collapse of the Brazilian economy. In the Caribbean, after decades of U.S. supported dictatorship by the Duvaliers, Haiti went from being a self-sustaining rice exporter to a rice importer, and became one of the poorest nations in the world.

The effects of this instability, economic restructuring, and social upheaval lasts for a long time and are not mitigated by short term improvements, or superficial changes. Crises of this magnitude etch deeply into a nations’ ability to thrive, and leave them vulnerable to predation from powerful multinational corporations. In Uruguay today 33 percent of the population lives in poverty, while eight percent live in extreme poverty. As of 2007, 23.4 percent of Argentina’s population was living below the poverty line. Brazil has one of the largest income gap disparities in the world; the poor are incredibly impoverished while the rich are astronomically wealthy. Bolivia remains one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, with 2/3 of its population living below the poverty line. 2.4 million Haitians face food insecurity,  and their country is now filled with sweatshops, providing slave labor for the West, while they owe over a billion dollars in debt. In a world flush with food, millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean are going hungry because they are too poor to afford their share.

Efforts to combat food insecurity in the region are unique and wide ranging, but one emerging trend is the recognition of food as a human right. Food as a human right means that all individuals have the right to feed themselves and their families; not just ‘be fed’. Access to food should not be seen as a privilege or charity, but as an inalienable right. The right to food is intrinsically linked to other basic rights such as the right to health care, education, social security and work. It is important to understand that meeting a person’s biological need for food is different than honoring their right to food.

The people in many Latin American countries are putting their belief in food as a human right into action. In 2008, with a referendum vote of 64 percent of the population, Ecuador established food sovereignty in their constitution. The people have the right to good living and an environment kept healthy to guarantee the right to food. The Ecuadorian government is supposed to support this right by providing food aid when food prices rise, and by supporting small and medium farmers in sustainable development. It  has also committed to transforming the national food system by introducing organic and sustainable technologies, promoting eco-friendly practices, and implementing fiscal strategies to protect the national economy from food import dependency. They have also banned the use of biotechnology and genetically modified seeds deemed harmful to human and environmental health, and have declared their land free of genetically engineered crops and seeds.

“Food Sovereignty constitutes an objective and strategic obligation from the State to guarantee its people, communities, pueblos and nationalities self-sufficiency in healthy food, culturally appropriate in a permanent form.” ~ Translation of the Ecuadorian Constitution

Brazil, under the leadership of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in 2003 implemented the Zero Hunger Plan. The plan is designed to combat poverty and hunger by providing food aid, literacy training and family farming incentives to the poorest Brazilians. Hunger in Brazil is especially egregious because the country is one of the top five food producers in the world. The Zero Hunger Plan has seen considerable success, with child malnutrition and mortality rates dropping throughout the country. The plan is not without its flaws, but most agree it is a significant step in the right direction as a move towards broad based structural development, as opposed to merely food aid. On February 3, 2010 the Brazilian Congress approved the Constitutional Amendment Project which will include the right to food as a fundamental right in the national constitution, alongside the already included rights to work, health, education, and social security.

International civil society and more than 120 states recognize the right to food as a basic human right, however most countries do nothing to honor this fact. Food is not generally viewed as a necessity for life, but as a commodity, something that is available only for those who can afford it. In most countries, when people are starving and unable to afford food, it is not seen as a failing of their country or government, but as a fact of life that should only be addressed by charitable giving. Viewing food as a commodity and not as a right allows the status quo to stay in place and does nothing to address the fundamental problem of hunger. Incorporating the recognition of the human right to food into existing strategies combating world hunger is vital to the movement’s longevity and reach.

In an effort to share knowledge and experience and create a global movement towards food as a human right, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations maintains a database collecting the national strategies being implemented by people in various countries in their struggle to gain the right to food.

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“When we create a food system that relies on heavy inputs of pesticides and fertilizers and depletes the soil and the water, making it more difficult for small farmers to raise crops, that undermines the right to food. When we make it more difficult for farmers to save their own seeds for a new year, that undermines the right to food. When small, local farms fail and we don’t think about increasing the capacity of communities to grow their own food, that undermines the right to food. When we try not to think about those who are struggling and how to change the social inequalities and systemic problems that lead to lack of food, that undermines the right to food.” ~ Tricia Edgar

Life and Debt – a wonderful documentary examining the effects International Monetary Fund policy has had on the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. I highly recommend this film to everyone I know, as one of the best of its kind.

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I keep returning to the same fact throughout this journey: there is more than enough food for everyone. This thought has been on permanent repeat in my mind. That 1.2 billion people are struggling to find food to live, in a world that produces more than enough for everyone, breaks my heart every time. The fact that so many people know this and do nothing saddens me. The fact that for so long I have known this and done nothing angers me.

I feel absolutely worn down after only four days on this diet and sometimes I wonder if I can even continue for another day, let alone three more. I truly have no idea how Kenda managed for 21 days. It still seems hard to believe that 1 out of 6 people feel like this every single day. It actually seems surreal. I compare this feeling to what I experienced when I first became vegan, several years ago. I had the sensation of wanting to scream my new-found knowledge from the rooftops, to shake everyone I met by the shoulders, and demand they listen to the truth. That so much pain and suffering was occurring on such a monumental scale, and people were not rebelling against it in droves, blew my mind. This journey into world hunger feels the same way. How can the world be so divided, and how can those of us who are well off be so silent? This afternoon as I flipped through the channels on the T.V. I came across the Food Network, an entire channel devoted to celebrating food and the pleasure of eating. It made my skin crawl to realize I couldn’t even remember the last time I had heard world hunger mentioned on the news.

Today was filled with ups and downs, highs and lows that were both emotional and physical. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed with helplessness that I couldn’t feed every single child dying this very minute from hunger. Minutes later I would feel invigorated by the prospect of change, of the true, sustainable transformation of our global food industry that so many people are fighting for right now. Hours of exhaustion spent sprawled on the couch were punctuated by frenetic periods of activity and energy. All of this, of course, was framed by my constant watching of the clock. I could not wait until dinner.

The meal I made tonight might just be my favorite one yet. A simple dish containing many Latin American staples, it was filling and scrumptious, although, I ate it so fast on an empty stomach that the initial pleasure it provided has now faded to a dull belly ache. It had rice, black beans, an onion, a tomato, a small piece of avocado (my favorite!), and olive oil.

Total Calories: 1,078
Total Fat: 47.3
Total Carbohydrates: 139.9
Total Protein: 25.2

To support the organizations I write about in this series, purchase a World Hunger: Be the Solution Tee.  Proceeds from the shirt will go to the Small Planet Institute Fund and the International Fund for Africa.  All tees are sweat free and available in organic cotton.  To see the selection of World Hunger tees at Conducive’s Humanitarian & Human Rights Tee store, click here

Natasha’s World Hunger Journey

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 1

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 2

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 3

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 5

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

7 Days for World Hunger: Day 7

To follow Kenda Swartz Pepper’s World Hunger series from the beginning, you can click the links below:

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 1

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 2

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 3

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 4

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 5

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 7

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 8

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 9

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 10

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 11

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 13

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 14

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 15

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 16

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 17

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 18

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 19

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 20

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 21

Solutions for World Hunger: Part I

Solutions for World Hunger: Part II

Sustainable giving programs dedicated to providing solutions that help eliminate poverty and world hunger.

• Food For Life
• Trees for Life
• Community Action Fund for Women in Africa

• Fruit Tree Planting Foundation

• Women’s Bean Project

• Sustainable Harvest International

• Plenty International