Protesters demanded immediate actions such as reducing high food and fuel prices. | Photo: @mtst
Brasilia, November 14 (RHC)-- Convened by the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) and the People Without Fear Front, social organizations held this Saturday the March Against Hunger through the main streets of Brazil.
Thousands of people gathered in the capitals of Aracaju, Belo Horizonte, Goiânia, Maceió, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, in addition to Ceilândia (DF) and Montes Claros (MG), demanded actions to mitigate the inflation in food prices and the situation of hunger suffered by millions of Brazilians.
According to the National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, elaborated by the Brazilian Research Network on Food Sovereignty and Security and Nutrition (Rede Pensan), in two years the number of people suffering from hunger increased from 10.3 million to 19.1 million Brazilians.
The studies also add the fact that almost 117 million people suffer some degree of food deprivation, including both those who do not have access to food and those who can only buy ultra-processed, non-natural and therefore very low quality products.
Research carried out in the South American country shows that so far this year the price of food has risen by more than 30 percent. Hence, among the demands of the demonstrators are to reduce the price of food and fuel, to resume the emergency aid, and the Bolsa Familia plan (a program which contributes to fight poverty and inequality), in order to get the people out of the state of crisis they are going through.
In this regard, the coordinator of the MTST, Josué Rocha, remarked that "it is unacceptable that one of the largest food producers in the world has to face part of its population going hungry."
The union leader added that "all this is the responsibility of a genocidal government like that of President Jair Bolsonaro, which has not solved the problem of the pandemic and has starved the people," while maintaining that "in addition to the class solidarity actions that we have been doing since the beginning, it is time to call attention to this issue."
