{"id":54083,"date":"2019-06-25T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=54083"},"modified":"2019-07-05T10:32:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:32:06","slug":"hunger-is-a-feminine-noun-part-1-sleeping-to-forget-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=54083","title":{"rendered":"Hunger Is a Feminine Noun, Part 1: Sleeping to Forget Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For the original article in Portuguese by Elvira Lobato published by Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica click here<\/a> and here<\/a>. Angelina Nunes, Claudia Lima, and Cristina Alves contributed reporting. Photographs by Ana L\u00facia Ara\u00fajo. <\/em>This is the first article in a four-part series<\/a> produced through Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica’s journalism grants contest focusing on hunger in Brazil in partnership with Oxfam Brasil<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

This series reveals a form of violence enacted against Brazilian women.<\/h4>\n

In a reality that can\u2019t be represented in statistics, they go without food in order to feed their small children as they confront violence both inside and outside the home. They clutch their loved ones as they live in areas where drug traffickers exchange fire at all hours of the day. This is the situation in pockets of poverty in Rio de Janeiro\u2014the state with the second largest GDP in Brazil<\/a>. Despite its high ranking in this measure of aggregated wealth, hunger exists and has been perpetuated for generations in Rio de Janeiro. Today, cuts to social programs<\/a> rob women of their recently realized autonomy, pushing them back into poverty and domestic violence.<\/p>\n

The contrast is apparent just 80 kilometers from the capital, in the municipality of Japeri<\/a> in Greater Rio’s Baixada Fluminense<\/a>. In the municipality with the lowest Human Development Index figures in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region<\/a>, women are the protagonists in a story of everyday misery. They recount their lives slowly, stories punctuated by brief silences. In extreme poverty, they divide the indivisible: the leftovers of a prison guard\u2019s packed lunch\u2014transformed into lunch and dinner for the family\u2014or grilled chicken feathers served with grits and grass.<\/p>\n

Many of these women find support in solidarity networks formed by religious centers, but this assistance is not enough to allow their children to overcome their tragic inheritance in a municipality where the public sector offers few alternatives. The mayor is in prison<\/a>, accused of involvement with drug trafficking; government food assistance is limited; school dropout rates are high.<\/p>\n

Similar realities pervade and at the same time are obscured in other regions of the state. Ninety-five miles away, in the Vargem Grande<\/a> district of Rio\u2019s West Zone<\/a>, women from a quilombola<\/em> community also struggle to provide daily food and schooling for their children. There, hope lies in\u00a0<\/span>traditional agricultural practices<\/a> passed down from ancestors that can help to end hunger, and in experiments with community schools.<\/p>\n

In a country haunted by the threat of returning to the World Hunger Map<\/a>, it is women who confront this ghost and attempt to break the cycle of poverty\u2014invisible in statistics and enduring for generations.<\/p>\n

Check out this special series…
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Sleeping to Forget Hunger<\/h2>\n

Mothers from Japeri, in the Baixada Fluminense, recount their struggles raising children in the midst of poverty, unemployment, and daily confrontations between drug trafficking factions.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Hunger creates fatigue. Hunger imparts trauma upon its victims for the rest of their lives. And for many impoverished families from the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, hunger spans generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some mothers describe hunger as a pain that hurts the stomach like a punch to the gut. For others, hunger comes with immeasurable emotional suffering when they are unable to adequately feed their young children, or when they have to trick their children into eating something that is not real food. When a household is short on food, it is the mother who goes without in order to ensure that her children have enough to eat.<\/span><\/p>\n

These stories of female heads of household struggling to raise and feed their children take place in the municipality of Japeri\u2014just 80 kilometers from the center of Rio de Janeiro. Here, in the second richest state in the country, lie pockets of poverty and hunger. The municipality has the worst Human Development Index score in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Violence and unemployment exacerbate the misery. Three drug factions\u2014Amigos dos Amigos (“Friends of Friends,” or ADA), the Comando Vermelho (“Red Command,” or CV), and Terceiro Comando Puro (“Pure Third Command,” or TCP)\u2014dispute control over the surrounding territory, hampering the availability of employment opportunities. Journalists who come to Japeri are advised to drive with their car windows down and hazard lights on so they aren\u2019t mistaken for police or members of rival factions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of this violence, two of the city\u2019s seven Social Assistance Centers (CRAS) remained closed throughout the second half of 2018. Shots can be heard at all hours of the day, with no neighborhood in Japeri considered safe. Even the district of Engenheiro Pedreira, home to the majority of the municipality’s residents as well as its commercial and banking center, is dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n

With a population of 103,000, Japeri had 10,323 residents enrolled in the federal social welfare program Bolsa Fam\u00edlia<\/a> in December 2018. Our reporting identified women living in extreme poverty who have not received their benefits due to lack of documentation or blocked payments. According to M\u00e1rcio Rosa, head of the municipality\u2019s Social Action<\/span> Secretariat, the federal government suspended nearly 6,000 benefits in 2018 because the families did not meet program requirements such as re-registering and completing child weight checks, or because of discrepancies in household income discovered when cross-referenced with official data.<\/span><\/p>\n

Itinerant Registration<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Rosa recognizes that there are very few beneficiaries relative to the poverty that is visible in the streets. For this reason, he decided to establish an itinerant <\/span>system to register the impoverished population that is not part of Bolsa Fam\u00edlia. \u201cWe believe that many do not register due to misinformation, fear, or lack of funds for transportation to City Hall,\u201d he said. According to Rosa, the City of Japeri will rent a bus to serve poor neighborhoods and register residents. <\/span><\/p>\n

Families are eligible to receive Bolsa Fam\u00edlia when they are considered to be living in extreme poverty. Adult beneficiaries receive a monthly allowance of R$89 (US$23), while children up to age 15 receive R$41 (US$10.50, limited to five children per family) and adolescents ages 16-17 receive R$48 (US$12, limited to two adolescents per family). To maintain their benefits, families must prove that their children up to six years of age have been vaccinated, weighed, and measured.<\/span><\/p>\n

The City of Japeri offers little assistance to mitigate hunger. The Social Action Secretariat only distributes 600 baskets of staple foods, personal hygiene items, and household goods per year. Rosa clarifies that this number represents the units distributed, not families served. In other words, this service does not reach every family living in extreme poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to violence, the City suspended public events typically organized to administer vaccines and provide haircuts and other services. \u201cHow can we put public workers in the streets with three warring drug factions?\u201d Rosa asked. At the beginning of the interview, he played audio clips of gunshots recorded that morning and night before. <\/span><\/p>\n

For Generations, Sleep Has Been an Escape from Hunger<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Sleep is one way to fool an empty stomach, says S\u00f4nia Regina Campos, 61, as she recounts her story. Born in the neighboring municipality of Mesquita<\/a>, in the Baixada Fluminense, Campos has ten children and 14 grandchildren. She abandoned her studies in the third grade, as her mother had done before her.<\/span><\/p>\n

The similarities between Campos and her mother do not end there: both had ten children whom they could not adequately feed. Her father, an alcoholic, held various jobs. \u201cI remember the days without food in my parents\u2019 house. My mother would put us to bed as a way to ride out the hunger because hunger made us sleepy. This went on until I grew up. At 14, I went to live with my grandmother because there wasn\u2019t enough food in my mother\u2019s house,\u201d Campos says.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nCampos married at 19 against her grandmother\u2019s wishes and found herself repeating the plight experienced by her mother. Her husband took on odd jobs and frequently went without work. Campos would perform <\/span>domestic work<\/span> to put food on the table. But it wasn\u2019t enough. \u201cI put my children to bed hungry many times to forget the hunger, just as my mother had done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She remembers that her husband would become anxious when he was unemployed and there wasn\u2019t enough to eat, prompting him to unleash his anger on her. \u201cI would try to console him, but he would beat me a lot\u2014a lot. Beat me like he was hitting a man. He would even beat me while I was pregnant. I had my first child at 20. By 30, I already had six.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To feed her children, Campos would collect vegetables left over from the farmers\u2019 markets and expired foods discarded by supermarkets. \u201cThank God my children never got sick from it.\u201d She was widowed at 53 and since her husband didn\u2019t leave a pension, she began to survive off of her meager earnings from <\/span>domestic work<\/span> and the R$127 (US$30) that she receives from Bolsa Fam\u00edlia. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Campos rents a small room in the Engenheiro Pedreira neighborhood, sharing the space with her youngest son. She sleeps in a single bed and her son on the floor. There is no refrigerator or closet in the house, but there is a 14-inch analog TV and a battery-powered radio. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her daughters also struggle to feed their children. One lives in a room neighboring her mother with three children and also survives off of Bolsa Fam\u00edlia and donations from neighbors. Campos says that she <\/span>monitors<\/span> the situation of her daughter and three young grandchildren. \u201cI know that they\u2019re hungry because she comes asking for food. But I\u2019m little help because I also depend on the neighbors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Grits with Grass<\/h3>\n

Famine transforms grass into food, says F\u00e1tima Regina dos Santos, age 53, who was born into and grew up in poverty in the Baixada Fluminense: \u201cI sustained my children on maxixe<\/em> [wild cucumber], wild passionfruit, green bananas, <\/span>grits <\/span>with <\/span>grass<\/span>, and chicken feathers grilled over a wood fire. I’ve gone hungry\u2014and still do. There are days when I just want to eat bread, but I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Santos does not have positive childhood memories. Her mother was an alcoholic and a sex worker: \u201cMy childhood was awful. I was hungry and would dress in sacks,\u201d she recalled. She has six children from two different marriages, with neither father providing support. She survives on earnings from occasional domestic work, the R$320 (US$80) per month that she receives from Bolsa Fam\u00edlia, and support from neighbors that sometimes give her \u201cmeat scraps.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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Santos lives in a favela dominated by drug trafficking in the neighborhood of S\u00e3o Jorge\u2014her home an abandoned house whose owners fled to escape the violence. She lives with a granddaughter and her youngest daughter, age 14. Her other daughter also lives in an abandoned house in the same favela, and like her mother, raises children without the support of their fathers. They, too, frequently go hungry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prison Food<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Seeing Luzia Jesus Mendon\u00e7a walk down the streets of Japeri’s Jardim Belo Horizonte neighborhood, it is difficult to imagine the drastic situation in which she finds herself. At 41, she suffers from depression and has no source of income aside from the change that she earns selling flip-flops and perfumes to neighbors who are nearly as poor as she is.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mendon\u00e7a lives with a friend and two of her four children in an unfinished construction site bordered by a thicket along some railroad tracks. On the other side of the tracks lies the prison complex, where her family searches for bread for breakfast and for leftovers from guards\u2019 meals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her youngest son, age 10, searches for bread. From 7 to 8am, he takes a narrow and slippery path down the hill, crosses the railroad tracks, passes the public school where he studies, and walks up the hill to the Cotrim Neto Correctional Facility. The jail<\/span> is part of the Japeri Penitentiary Complex, home to the Milton Dias and Jo\u00e3o Carlos da Silva Prisons.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Mendon\u00e7a, not all of the guards eat the meal that is served at the jail. Most of the time, her son returns with bread and butter, but some days he also brings home Guaran\u00e1 soda or powdered chocolate milk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since her son eats lunch at school, it is up to him to wait for the packed lunches discarded by the prison guards, which are distributed around 2pm. Many families, she says, fill their stomachs with food from the prison. The packed lunch\u2014consisting of rice, beans, pasta, manioc flour, and meat\u2014is rationed for the family’s lunch and dinner.<\/p>\n

Living under these stresses, Mendon\u00e7a takes antidepressants. \u201cI lived in the Jacar\u00e9 favela [in Rio de Janeiro] as a child. I saw many deaths, many gunshots, and it got to my head,\u201d she recounted. Her family receives support from congregants at the Assembly of God Church, which she frequents. \u201cI get help from the church and from the prison. It\u2019s here and there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Excluded from Bolsa Fam\u00edlia<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mendon\u00e7a, who depends on food from the prison to survive, is one of six thousand whose Bolsa Fam\u00edlia benefits have been suspended. She has been without benefits since July 2018, when her 15-year-old son went to live with his father and dropped out of school. For families to receive Bolsa Fam\u00edlia payments, children under 15 must have school attendance rates of 85%, and children ages 16 and 17 must have attendance rates of 75%. Truancy results in the benefits being cut off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luciene da Costa Lima and her four children were suspended from the Bolsa Fam\u00edlia program in September 2018. According to Lima, their monthly R$525 (US$130) payment was blocked because the government cross-referenced the family\u2019s income data and found that her youngest daughter, age three, qualified to receive a social security pension equivalent to the monthly minimum wage because her father had been killed in a train accident.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In theory\u2014strictly looking at the numbers\u2014the R$950 (US$237) monthly pension brought the family out of extreme poverty. But reality is a different story. With the social security benefits, Lima pays the monthly rent of R$250 (US$62) and runs to the supermarket to do her monthly grocery shopping: 35 kilos of rice, eight kilos of beans, eight cans of cooking oil, 20 kilos of sugar, seven boxes of milk, and plenty of cornmeal for grits. To cut costs, she doesn\u2019t buy coffee. Meat eventually makes the menu\u2014but only the less desirable parts of the chicken, which are cheaper. \u201cThe kids beg for yogurt, but I can\u2019t give it to them,\u201d Lima said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her home is tiny\u2014a living room, bedroom, and kitchen\u2014but the rooms are clean and decorated with children\u2019s toys donated by the church. Lima is illiterate. She dropped out of second grade and only knows how to write the letters that form her own name.<\/span><\/p>\n