Devastated by coronavirus, Brazil plunges into hunger epidemic

Skinny teenagers hold up signs on cruise ships that say “fome” (hungry) in big letters. Children, who in many cases have not attended school for more than a year, they beg for food outside supermarkets and restaurants. Entire families are crammed into fragile camps on the sidewalks of St.Paul And they’re asking for baby milk, cookies, or whatever.

One year after the start of the pandemic, millions of Brazilians are hungry.

The scenes, which have proliferated in recent months in the streets of various cities in Brazil, are stark proof that President Jair Bolsonaro’s bet – to avoid public health policies to control the virus in order to protect the country’s economy – is failure.

Since the start of the epidemic, the Brazilian president has been skeptical of the impact of the disease and despises the advice of health experts, arguing that the economic damage from the closures, the suspension of business activities and the restrictions on mobility which they recommended being a greater threat than the pandemic to the weak economy of the country.

This sacrifice caused one of the highest death rates in the world but he also failed in his goal: to keep the country afloat.

The virus is affecting the social fabric by setting painful records as the health crisis worsens and pushes companies into bankruptcy, destroying jobs. The advance of an economy which for more than six years has hardly progressed.

Last year, the government’s emergency cash grants helped put food on the table for millions of Brazilians. But when this money was reduced this year in the face of a looming crisis of doubt, many cupboards are left empty.

More than half of the country is hungry

Last year, some 19 million people are hungry, nearly double the 10 million who experienced a similar situation in 2018, the most recent year for which there is data, according to the Brazilian government and a study by a network of Brazilian researchers on deprivation during the pandemic.

The report showed that around 117 million people, or about 55 percent of the country’s population face food insecurity with uncertain access to nutrition in 2020, a huge jump from the 85 million people who were in this situation two years ago.

“The way the government has handled the virus has exacerbated poverty and inequality,” said Douglas Belchior, founder of UNEafro Brasil, one of the organizations that came together to raise funds to bring food to communities. vulnerable. “Hunger is a serious and incurable problem in Brazil,” he noted.

Record unemployment

Luana de Souza, 32, was one of the mothers lining up outside a makeshift food bank one recent afternoon in hopes of getting a bag of beans, rice and oil.

Her husband had worked in an event planning company but was unemployed last year because eight million people who have joined the ranks of unemployment in Brazil during the pandemic and pushed the rate above 14 percent, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

At first, the family carefully handled government aid, De Souza said, but this year when they cut payments they struggled.

“There is no work,” he said. “And the bills keep coming in.”

A battered economy

In 2014, the Brazilian economy entered recession and had not recovered when the pandemic struck.

Bolsonaro has often referred to the reality of families like De Souza who cannot afford to stay at home without working to argue that lockdowns imposed by governments in Europe and other wealthy countries to stop the spread of the virus n were not viable in Brazil.

Last year, governors and mayors across the country decreed the suspension of activities of non-essential businesses and ordered mobility restrictions, measures Bolsonaro called “extreme” and warned that they would cause malnutrition.

The president also dismissed the threat of the virus, cast doubt on vaccines, which his administration began to procure late, and often cheered on crowds of his supporters at political events.

A second wave of cases this year has led to the collapse of the health care system in several cities. Local officials reimposed a number of harsh measures and found themselves war with Bolsonaro.

“People need freedom, the right to work,” the president commented last month, saying that the new quarantine measures imposed by local governments were like living in a “dictatorship”.

This month, as the daily death toll from the virus surpassed 4,000, the far-right president acknowledged the gravity of the humanitarian crisis facing his country. But he did not take responsibility and instead blamed local officials.

“Brazil is at the limit,” he said, arguing that the fault was “whoever closed everything”.

But economists claimed it was “A false dilemma” say the restrictions to control the virus would worsen the economic crisis in Brazil.

The demand of economists and businessmen

In an open letter sent to the Brazilian authorities at the end of March, more than 1,500 economists and businessmen They called on the government to impose tougher measures, including a lockdown.

“It is unreasonable to expect economic activity to recover from a rampant epidemic,” they wrote.

Laura Carvalho, an economist, published a study which showed that restrictions can have a negative impact on a country’s economic health in the short term, but that in the long term it would have been a better strategy.

“If Bolsonaro had put containment measures in place, we would have left before the economic crisis,” said Carvalho, a professor at the University of São Paulo.

Bolsonaro’s approach has had a broad destabilizing effect, said Thomas Conti, a professor at Insper, a business school.

“The Brazilian real was the most undervalued currency of any developing country,” Conti said. “We are at an alarming level of unemployment, there is no predictability for the future of the country, fiscal rules are violated and inflation continues to rise.”

The Covid-19 crisis in the country, which is worsening, leaves Bolsonaro politically vulnerable.

This month, the Senate launched an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic. The investigation is expected to document errors, including government support for ineffective drugs to treat COVID-19 and a shortage of basic medical supplies, such as oxygen. Some of these failures will likely be blamed for causing preventable deaths.

Creomar de Souza, political analyst and founder of the consultancy firm Dharma Politics in Brasilia, said the president underestimated the threat the pandemic posed to the country and failed to put in place a comprehensive plan to deal with it. .

“They thought it wouldn’t be something serious and assumed the health system could handle it,” he criticized.

De Souza said Bolsonaro has always campaigned and ruled with a combative style, presenting itself to voters as an alternative to dangerous rivals. Its response to the pandemic has been in accordance with this operations manual, he noted.

“The great loss, in addition to the growing toll of this tragedy, is an erosion of governance,” he said.

“We are facing a very volatile scenario, with many political risks because the government has not respected public policies.”

Advocacy groups and human rights organizations this year launched a campaign called “Tem Gente Com Fome”, (There are people who suffer from hunger), with the intention of raising funds. with businesses and individuals to provide food to people in need across the country.

Belchior, one of the founders, said the campaign is named after a poem by writer and artist Solano Trindade. He describes scenes of misery seen in Rio de Janeiro, he toured the poor neighborhoods where the state was absent for decades.

“More and more families are asking for food to be delivered earlier,” Belchior said. “And they depend more on the actions of the community than on the government.”

Inflation and inequality

Carine Lopes, 32, president of a community ballet school in Manguinhos, a popular neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, responded to the crisis by transforming her organization into a makeshift help center.

Since the start of the pandemic, the price of raw materials has increased dramatically in stores nearby, he said. The cost of cooking oil has more than tripled. A kilo of rice has doubled. With meat becoming more and more prohibitive, Sunday meals have become a rarity in the neighborhood.

For a long time, Lopes was used to receiving calls from parents who desperately wanted a place for their children in ballet school, but now he has become used to something very different.

Every day old acquaintances and strangers send you text messages asking you food baskets that the dance school distributed every week.

“These moms and dads are just thinking about the basics now,” she said. “They call and say, ‘I’m unemployed, I have nothing else to eat this week. Can you give us something?

When the virus finally clears, poorer families will have a harder time recovering, he predicted.

Lopes despairs thinking of students who were unable to connect to online courses from home because they do not have an internet connection, or when the only display device belongs to a working parent.

“No one will be able to compete for a scholarship with a middle-class student who managed to take the classes with their internet voucher and tablets,” he said. “Inequalities are getting worse.”

By Ernesto Londoño and Flávia Milhorance

CB