The official Symbol of the Zero Hunger program. A quote from official documents from the Ministry of Social Development and Combat against Hunger (www.mds.gov.br): Projeto Fome Zero places primary importance on the reduction of hunger, malnutrition and extreme poverty. Such an approach is inspired by the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals, which call for cutting hunger and extreme poverty by half by 2015. Extreme poverty – inadequate resources to produce or to acquire enough food – is estimated to affect 9.3 million households or 44 million people in Brazil. While a national problem, occurring throughout the country (with an incidence of 19% in metropolitan zones, 46% in non-metro urban centers and 35% in rural areas), extreme poverty has certain regional “pressure points”, with a concentration of the poor in the North East Region (50%) and the South East Region (26%). ... Hunger robs far too many Brazilians of a full life, infringing the most fundamental of human rights, the right to adequate food. Hunger thwarts children’s learning abilities, reduces the productivity of working adults, makes people susceptible to illness and provokes early death, perpetuating poverty and detracting from economic growth. Hunger passes from one generation to another, as undernourished mothers beget underweight children. And hunger provokes desperation, providing a fertile breeding ground for crime, insurrection and terror.
Hunger and poverty are, of course, distinct but related - to a certain extent. Not having money in your pocket (poverty) is usually the main reason for not having food in your stomach (hunger). This is simple, but soon the problem becomes more complicated. First, there is no clear link between hunger and crime, or terror, contrary to any official justification by politicos (ie, I am hungry therefore I must steal, or I rob and steal because I am hungry) and a million academic papers from the field of Sociology. Anyway - not only did the Brazilian Government define hunger with a strong ideological content, but it started with very uncertain statistics. As if this were not bad enough, those officials responsible for managing the program then put the whole issue into a political slash ideological context. There was no way in the world that certain people were going to let an opportunity as good as this to pass them by - why just feed the hungry when you can add cheap politics? Most of the people managing the program are from the far left side of the political spectrum, so why bother with the boring, mundane problem of actually getting food to the hungry when you can use the program to make a political statement. In the end, based upon the speeches by 'Zero Fome' officials at the World Social Forum (WSF), hunger is a Capitalist conspiracy and the only reason that people in Brazil are hungry is because George W. Bush (of course) wants it that way. I kid you not, in so many words this is what they were saying in the 2005 Forum Social Mundial conference in Porto Alegre. So a good idea quickly becomes just another pawn in the game of cheap politics. This is why I despise them all! (note of disclosure: I have a certain interest in the World Economic Forum that usually occurs in Davos, but I really don't like it much either.)
They have a saying in Brazil: Tudo acaba em samba. Translation: Everything ends in samba - which means that sooner or later it all becomes one big samba (not very serious ) dance. Perhaps the whole idea here would be better is expressed as Tudo acaba em piada... or, it all ends up as a joke. This is what happens even with the most serious things in Brazil - nothing is forgiven (perdoada): death, crime, sex or even hunger - it all become a full plate (prato cheio) for humor. The cartoonists lay down and roll (deitam e rolam) as they say. This is why I love Brazil. Here we go....
As is so often true, the best and most realistic view of something can be seen through humor. There are three basic positions here: the first is that the government isn't doing enough, as seen on the thumbnails here. This is, of course, from the left side of politics. More quotes from them: "Brazilian society, however, is united in its determination to banish hunger and has sufficient wealth to be able to afford it. The Project faces two main challenges: first that of strengthening, with the full engagement of civil society, the institutional capacity to implement what is necessarily a complex multi-faceted program; and secondly that of mobilizing the required resources in ways which are consistent with economic and fiscal stability".
The fact that the man initially chosen to run the program was Carlos Alberto Libanio Chisto, better known as Frei Beto makes it clear that the Fome Zero program is not really about feeding the hungry. I quote from Mr. Frei Beto: "O Fome Zero não é um programa assistencialista. É um programa de inclusão social, onde mais importante do que distribuir alimentos é gerar emprego renda, resgatar auto-estima e promover a cidadania" (Zero Hunger is not an assistance program. It is a social inclusion program, where more important than distributing food is generating job income, recovering self-esteem and promoting citizenship). Oh yes, people who are hungry always prefer a dose of self-esteem to a bowl of rice and beans. Everybody knows that. Just in case you are in doubt, I am on record as not being Frei Beto's best friend - check this link and look for him here: 
. I am also adding a paragraph at the end of this page with a couple of lines from the PT (Worker's Party) website with Frei Beto's own words...
The second position is that the Zero Fome is not only flawed, but it is only a political maneuver. Many people see the Zero Fome program as a tool to expand radical influence in Brazil. Frei Beto started this by talking about setting up neighborhood committee to the monitor and control the program. This reminds one of his own left-wing church related "Comunidades de Base" set up under the ideological umbrella of 'Liberation Theology' movement. These, of course, had very little to do with the "bases" (the common people) or even the Catholic Church, but everything to do with Marxism. Many people thought these local 'control' organizations sounded too much like Cuba's "Revolutionary Neighborhood Councils" that Fidel uses to control and spy on everybody. So, a lot of people didn't like the direction Zero Fome was going. Worse than the ideological problems were the technical issues: the fact is that the statistics and numbers didn't add up. The 44 million 'hungry' number was just a wild guess, based upon one measure of the poverty level. The government really had no idea of how many people were actually hungry (being poor is not the same as being hungry!) or even who these people were. Soon the Federal Government began talking about 22 million hungry people. I guess that half of the original number found something to eat, even before food distribution began. Oh yes, let me introduce the term Bolsa Familia here. This means "family purse", literally, but try "family allowance" or maybe "food bag" to get a better idea. This was to be the end mechanism for feeding the hungry. They would either receive a bag of food, or a cash allowance to buy a bag of food. Of course, people began to worry not only about the politics, but also about corruption and if the Bolsa Familia money a family received would actually be used for food, and not cigarros, pinga or loteria. I have no comment here!
The third position is that of quiet skepticism - wait and see, or sit back and enjoy the show. Even so, the 'Zero Fome' program goes forward and the jokes fly! On the left Lula is seen girando bolsa, a common term for soliciting on street corners by 'ladies of ill repute' (ie, piranhas). In other words, Lula is using the Fome Zero program to entice or buy the voters. Oh well. And the that fact that Lula is missing a finger cut off in his metal shop days is fair game for a joke, of course. Nothing is forgiven or forgotten. But when things are bad, in Brazil they only get worse. Two things happened that added gasoline to the 'Zero Hunger' comedy fire...
Well, actually what was added was not gasoline, but alcohol. The New York Times reports that Lula has a drinking problem. This made the President somewhat unhappy and he suspended the American reporter's credentials. I am sure that, like many things in the New York Times, the facts were either exaggerated or plain wrong. Yes, Lula likes cachaça, I think, but he is not a drunk! Remember US Grant, if you will. Anyway, the 'Zero Hunger' program became the 'Zero Thirst' program (Zero Sede). The cartoonists had a field day, even coming up with an official 'Sede Zero' emblem. In the second picture Lula is kicking off the 'Zero Thirst' program in the Octoberfest. This is bad, but it gets even worse...
In mid 2004, the IBGE (the official government organization for statistics) released a report saying that 40% of Brazilians are overweight, and only 4% are undernourished. Now if Brazil has about 180 million people, that means 7,2 million are not getting enough food. Bad, sad, but 8 million is not 22 or 44, and so, of course, the piadas (jokes) fly even thicker. Hundreds of jokes and political cartoons (called charges) make fun of 'Fome Zero'. The humorists immediately create a "Diet Ten" program to replace the old "Hunger Zero" one. In Brazil, there is always a lighter side to everything.
At this time, after 2 or so years after it began, the "Fome Zero" program is still in force, trying to reach its high ideals, and falling short, of course. Yes, there is corruption; and yes, some of the hungry are being fed. Nobody - right or left - is really happy with it. Well, at least Frei Beto has left the program, so maybe 'Zero Fome' will really be about food and hunger.
Not one to give up, Lula went to the UN and proposed a worldwide version of the 'Zero Hunger' program. He was received with polite silence and blank stares. Even the left was skeptical: José Saramago, Nobel Prize winner and certified Portuguese leftie radical, said the 'Zero Hunger' program had failed. Lula doesn't understand the words 'no' or 'quit' - remember this is the guy that ran for President four times before being elected. For several years he has also been pushing 'Zero Hunger' type programs at the World Economic Forum (in New York and Davos) and the World Social Forum (in Porto Alegre). Call it the 'Zero Success' program, if you will. This year (2005) in Porto Alegre he was booed (vaiado) by left-wing radicals from his own PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Worker's Party). But still he tries, like Don Quixote on a mission... Go luck, Mr. Lula.
The humor never ends, and the best is yet to come....
Probably about 2/3s of the 'Zero Fome' jokes were sexual in nature, playing on the meaning of the word comer or the concept of fome. Remember, as seen on the first image above, the official slogan of the campaign is "O Brasil que come ajudando o Brasil que tem fome" (The Brazil that eats helping the Brazil that is hungry). That was really asking for it! One thing that I haven't mentioned yet is that the Brazilian National Government tried hard to get state and local governments, as well as schools and private corporations, involved in this anti-hunger program. They were encouraged to participate and to use the 'Fome Zero' logo as much as possible. As you can see in the third image, even the 'girlie' poster people are participating. I don't think this is what Lula intended! Another note: some images here have been blurred and/or censored; this is a family safe "all ages are welcome" site, I hope.
To give you an idea of the extent of the "sex as food" mentality, here are two older cartoons making fun of the concept. The fact is that this idea - which goes back about 500 years - is very much a part of the historical and social fabric of Brazil, and is can be traced to the very common practice of cannibalism occuring in Brazil when the first European explorers came ashore to explore (and be eaten...). So if I every write a page about Macunaima (the Brazilian National Epic about a mythical 'hero without character') or antropofagia as culture, I will explain the whole food, sex and cannibalism thing, until then you will just have to take my word for it. For those that are ignorant of the basics of Brazilian culture, anthropophagous can de defined as 'relating to eaters of human flesh'. That is why we see academic papers about Brazil with titles like 'antropologia como resistencia cultural' or 'antropologia e capitalism selvagem'. Go figure...
Page updated: January 2005.
A little research project... This page was posted on January 31. In the next days and weeks I am going to check three search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo) to see if this page is found, entering the following key words in this exact format: Zero Fome Lula hunger humor sex.