Famine Spreads To Latin America

No Meat, No Milk, No Bread: Hunger Crisis Rocks Latin America

• James Attwood
• Valentina Fuentes
• Jonathan Gilbert
• Michael D McDonald

He couldn't feed his family. Matilde Alonso knew it was true but couldn't believe it. The pandemic had just hit Guatemala in full force and Alonso, a 34-year-old construction worker, was suddenly jobless.

He sat up all alone till late that night, his mind racing, and fought back tears. He had six mouths to feed, no income and no hope of receiving anything beyond the most meager of crisis-support checks -- some $130 -- from the cash-strapped government.

Today, Alonso said, breakfast, lunch and dinner all look about the same in his house in El Jocotillo: maybe a tortilla with salt; maybe a tortilla with beans; maybe a bowl of rice and beans. "We used to eat meat. Now, there's no meat. We used to eat chicken. Now, there's no chicken. We used to drink milk. Now, there's no milk." Even bread, he said, is off the menu. 

For tens of millions like Alonso, the pandemic has exposed just how fragile economic status is worldwide. In many ways, nowhere has that been more apparent than in Latin America, where a resurgence of poverty is bringing a vicious wave of hunger in a region that was supposed to have mostly eradicated that kind of malnutrition decades ago. From Buenos Aires to Mexico City, families are skipping on meals and swapping fresh produce for starchy and sugary items. Even in Chile, a developing-world success story, some neighborhoods are turning to community cook-ups in a throwback to the dictatorship era of the 1980s.

• • Latin America stands out because most of the region’s governments don't have the financial might to deliver the huge amounts of aid that's been seen in places like the U.S. and Europe. Then there are the millions of workers who labor in the informal economy, selling mangos from a street cart or cleaning homes for cash, who are often locked out of assistance programs. 
     
    The United Nations’ World Food Programme estimates that the Latin American and Caribbean nations in which it operates will see a  surge of roughly 270% in the number of people facing severe food insecurity over the coming months. That rise -- to 16 million from 4.3 million before the pandemic -- is likely to be the steepest in the world and more than twice the estimated global growth rate, Norha Restrepo, a WFP spokesperson in Panama, said by telephone.“The difference between being poor and going poor is brutal,” said Jose Aguilar, founder of Reactivemos La Esperanza, which supports 100 families in Costa Rica and is trying to reach more people. “When you’re middle class and you have food, access to education and are accustomed to a certain quality of life and all of a sudden it’s taken away from you through no fault of your own, that hits families really hard.”

    The region is on track for its worst recession in a century with a 9.1% contraction forecast for this year and unemployment set to reach 13.5%, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, or Eclac. With half the working population living outside of formal economies, job numbers don’t tell the whole story. Regionally, Eclac expects an additional 28 million to enter the ranks of extreme poverty this year, with women overrepresented in poor households.

    “This economic and health crisis is just starting, and it’ll result in the largest number of people living in food scarcity in recent times,” said Maria Teresa Garcia, who heads Bancos de Alimentos de Mexico, a food charity. “This crisis is going to leave a mark for a long, long time.”