ARGENTINA: Soup Kitchens – a Permanent Fixture

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 19 2002 (IPS) - Soup kitchens are mushrooming in crisis-stricken Argentina, and are gradually becoming a permanent fixture due to the growing number of people falling through the state’s weakening safety nets, a phenomenon that worries social activists.

The number of schools, parish churches and community organisations that at the very least provide one hot meal a day to children and adults has skyrocketed in Latin America’s third- largest economy over the past decade, and especially in the past four years of recession that led to outright economic collapse and default in December.

Unemployment in what was long known as the breadbasket of South America has soared from 6.5 percent in 1991 to 23 percent today. In addition, over half of Argentina’s 36 million people are living below the poverty line, including 8.3 million minors under 18, while 7.7 million people are classified as “indigent.”

The people and organisations running soup kitchens have gained experience and prestige, and currently run a huge network that provides a safety net for millions of families who are waiting in vain for a response from the state to their problems of unemployment, ridiculously small pensions, and the overall disruption of the social fabric.

María Luisa Ageitos, an adviser on nutrition and breastfeeding to the Argentine Pediatrics Society, told IPS that the multiplication of soup kitchens is not a definitive solution to the spread of malnutrition and hunger.

“In the early 1990s, people said soup kitchens were an undesired response to an emergency. But 10 years later, we see that the ones that existed then have become a permanent fixture, while new ones are cropping up,” she added.

“The state should guarantee the possibility for children to eat in their own homes with their families,” said Ageitos.

There are no reliable statistics on the number of soup kitchens currently operating in Argentina, or on how many people depend on them to stave off hunger. But the Roman Catholic Church humanitarian organisation Caritas alone operates 5,000, which feed 600,000 people a day, compared to 300,000 just two years ago.

A growing number of free cafeterias are also run by schools, other religious denominations, non-governmental organisations, trade unions, neighbourhood and community groups, organisations of the unemployed – known as pickets for their frequent roadblocks – and even artists and other personalities.

The school cafeterias especially reflect the gravity of Argentina’s crisis. They have left aside their traditional role of providing meals to a small group of slum-dwellers or children whose parents work all day long, and are now feeding just about all children enrolled in public schools, even delivering food to the homes of some students.

According to the teachers’ union, “instead of schools with cafeterias, today there are cafeterias with schools” in some districts.

Many children are weak when they show up for school on Monday, due to the lack of food over the weekend, teachers point out, while they complain that the education budget can no longer be stretched to provide seconds or additional nutrients.

Publicity for the new soup kitchens emerging in the midst of Argentina’s worst crisis ever fills the “solidarity services” pages of newspapers and magazines, and spots are aired on TV.

Due to the emergence of such a broad network of volunteers who provide solidarity in a wide range of services, concern over the lack of public policies to address the dire situation of millions of Argentines who have fallen through the cracks is waning, and demands that the state do its share have quietened.

“Society has gotten so used to seeing teachers and school principals taking care of the purchases and other aspects of the cafeterias, that sometimes people don’t realize what they’re doing, and even complain about things like the quality of the food, that there isn’t enough, or that we don’t open the schools over the weekend,” Beatriz Quesada, a schoolteacher, told IPS.

One of the best illustration of the growth of soup kitchens in Buenos Aires is Los Carasucias, whose founder, Mónica Carranza, is a homemaker from a poor part of the capital who began 10 years ago to offer plates of food in her own kitchen to hungry neighbourhood children, and later to their parents.

From its humble beginnings, Los Carasucias has grown into a foundation with four telephone lines, several dozen volunteers or employees who earn minimal salaries, three shelters that house 140 minors and 60 mothers, a day care centre that looks after some 100 small children, and soup kitchens that feed 10,000 people a day.

“In the soup kitchens we feed children and adults, and we also hand out rations to people who bring us plastic containers, for them to take home,” Romina Finognare, who works in the foundation, told IPS.

But Los Carasucias receives little support from the state, “just 1,000 pesos (around 280 dollars) a month from the government of Buenos Aires for each child in our shelters,” said Finognare. The rest comes from donations of money, food and clothing from private individuals or companies.

As of this year, the foundation has a databank registering the malnutrition levels of regular visitors, as certified by public health system doctors or health professionals who provide their services to the foundation free of charge. Among the 10,000 people who eat at the soup kitchens, 2,000 are malnourished.

“For those 2,000 people, who are mainly children and women, we provide a special reinforced ration to last the entire week, which is handed out once a week, at a specific time outside the normal meal schedule,” said Finognare.

The activist said it was sad the soup kitchens had to exist, but underlined that they were necessary to cover a gap left by state institutions.

“Someone has to start, and if they don’t do it from top to bottom, we’ll do it from the bottom up, because if we continue waiting for money from the state, people will die of hunger,” she said.

Carranza, the founder of Los Carasucias, is one of the best- known faces in the “soup kitchen movement.” Another is Margarita Barrientos, who provides assistance to 920 children and nearly 500 mothers, besides running a home for the elderly and a day care centre in another poor neighbourhood in the Argentine capital.

Barrientos, Carranza and Catholic priest Luis Farinello, who has founded 14 soup kitchens and two homes for youngsters, are the most visible names in this movement of solidarity that is growing like wildfire in Argentina while society awaits in-depth solutions and a rebuilding of the state’s safety net.