Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population, Poverty & SDGs

ARGENTINA: Hunger Is a Crime in this Food-Rich Country, Say Child Activists

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 1 2005 (IPS) - "How is it possible that we could see so many cows and so many fruit trees from the bus when there are so many hungry children?" asked 13-year-old Cristian Beliz, upon arriving in Buenos Aires to protest the fact that in a country so rich in food, millions of youngsters have so little to eat.

The March for Life of the Movement of Children of the People, organised by the Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA) trade union federation and some 300 social organisations throughout the country, left the northeastern Argentine province of Tucumán on Jun. 20 and arrived Friday in the Plaza de Mayo, the massive downtown Buenos Aires square facing the presidential palace.

"Who wouldn’t want to see an end to hunger in Argentina?" Julio Rojas, 12, commented to IPS. When asked what he hoped the protest would achieve, he replied, "It would be good if this march could help to change things."

Cristian and Julio are two of the 500 boys and girls aged 10 to 14 from every province in Argentina who arrived in the capital after travelling by bus and on foot along 4,500 km of streets, roads and highways.

Along the way, they passed through the poorest neighbourhoods in Tucumán, La Rioja, Catamarca and Córdoba in north and central Argentina, Santa Fe, Corrientes and Entre Ríos in the northeast, and finally Buenos Aires.

When the march first set out, the children were accompanied by the representative in Argentina of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Jorge Rivera Pizarro. They were joined en route by church representatives and human rights activists, including Nobel Peace laureate Paz Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the president of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini.

UNICEF’S participation was inspired by the fact that "all of these children together have tremendous energy and enthusiasm to express a problem that many of us adults merely theorise about," said Rivera Pizarro, who called on the country’s political leaders to think of ways to better distribute its wealth.

The children travelled by bus accompanied by teachers who gave classes along the way, to keep them from falling behind in their schoolwork. They spent the nights in schools, cafeterias and other facilities that provided them with shelter, food, music, games and sports activities.

Twenty kilometres outside each city they passed through, the children got off the buses to more effectively spread the message emblazoned on their blue vests: "Hunger is a crime." Hundreds or thousands of people came out to greet them in every town and city along the way.

Sociologist Alberto Morlachetti, the coordinator of the march, praised the support and solidarity shown by the general public, and lamented the fact that the political leaders "fled" from their offices before the children arrived. Not a single government authority came out to welcome them, but their message got through anyway, he said.

"Now we can only hope that the emotion and solidarity expressed by the people along our route will be translated into government actions to eradicate poverty," Morlachetti remarked to IPS.

Governors and mayors in the provinces and cities visited by the young protesters passed up the opportunity to meet with them. When the children reached Buenos Aires on Friday, President Néstor Kirchner chose to meet instead with Argentine basketball star Emanuel Ginóbili, who captured his second U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) championship with the San Antonio Spurs last week.

Kirchner then departed for his home province, Santa Cruz, and delegated Interior Minister Aníbal Fernández to welcome the children. The marchers opted to hold a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo instead.

In Argentina, a country of 37 million, 56.4 percent of the population under the age of 18 live in poverty, and 23.6 percent live in extreme poverty. There are a total of 7.7 million poor children and adolescents, of whom over three million suffer from hunger, according to a report prepared by the CTA Studies and Training Institute, based on official statistics.

In 2002, at the height of a devastating economic crisis, the poverty rate overall reached an all-time high of 57.5 percent, although official figures indicate that it had fallen to 40.2 percent in 2004.

But these national averages hide the "aberrant" realities of some provinces, according to the CTA study. For example, poverty afflicts 75.2 percent of children in the northeastern province of Chaco, while 42.8 percent of minors under 18 face extreme poverty in the northern province of Santiago del Estero.

The children who arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday symbolise the millions of "children mired in poverty in a country that exports tons of food," said Morlachetti.

"It is inconceivable, but we have walked through the prosperous soy farming provinces where Ferraris are sold for 200,000 dollars just a few kilometres from towns where children are emaciated from hunger," he remarked.

The authors of the study, economists Claudio Lozano, Ana Rameri and Tomás Raffo, said there is no justification for this state of affairs in Argentina, whose economic capacity far outstrips that of the poor countries of Africa or Asia.

The problem of child poverty in Argentina does not stem from a lack of resources, but rather, "it is the consequence of a profoundly unequal economic and social structure," they maintain, while advocating a universal basic income for each family and child living in poverty.