Otilia Ledesma, 48, arrived almost two decades ago to Argentina from Paraguay. While she was looking for work, a neighborhood soup kitchen in the neighborhood where she settled “saved” her: she went with her children, eight years old and six months old, to ensure at least one plate of food a day. Ella Ledesma stopped eating there when she got a job and today she is a cook in one of those community centers. Spaces like this have been operating for years throughout the country to feed people in vulnerable situations, but since the Government of Javier Milei took office, the neighborhood organizations that coordinate some of the soup kitchens criticize that the State has stopped sending them resources. This Monday they denounced the “food emergency” before the Ministry of Human Capital with a line of more than two kilometers. “Hunger is violence; abandoning children is violence,” Ledesma claimed.
Ledesma formed a line before ten in the morning that started at the doors of the Ministry of Human Capital, in Buenos Aires, and extended for 20 blocks on the sidewalk of one of the main avenues in the country, 9 de Julio. A week ago, the head of the portfolio, Sandra Pettovello, refused to attend to the representatives of social organizations who showed up there to ask for food for the neighborhood soup kitchens and sent them away in front of the television cameras: “Guys, are you hungry? Come one by one, I'll write down your ID. [documento de identidad nacional], the name, where they are from and they are going to receive help individually.” The organizations took the proposal literally and called on soup kitchen workers and beneficiaries to form a line this Monday to be received by the minister.
“I hope he answers us (…) The question is: how are he going to do it with the line that there is? The feeders are working precariously and we can no longer be responsible for their responsibility. [del Gobierno]“Ledesma said this Monday. The dining room where he works for 78,000 pesos per month [90 dólares a la cotización oficial] It is called Tacitas Poderas and it receives 200 people a day, a figure that has begun to grow in recent months, according to what he says. She and five other women pull it off. In addition to feeding the people who arrive, she sometimes has to face situations for which they are not prepared. She says: “They tell you what happens in the houses and that hurts me a lot.” In recent months, they have also started holding raffles and selling used clothing to buy the gas bottles they need for cooking. “The body doesn't give, the head doesn't give, the heart doesn't give, but we continue because if not, no one will,” she says.
AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (REUTERS)
In the country there are more than 40,000 community kitchens and picnic areas registered in the National Registry of Community Kitchens of Civil Society Organizations. They are managed by different organizations and help ensure that the situation in the country—with more than 40% of the population in poverty and more than four million children and adolescents in a situation of food insecurity—is not even worse. This Monday's protest was called by the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy, close to Peronism, which denounces that the Government suspended the delivery of food and the United Nations Development Program, which supplies and audits the canteens. community. The lack of food for community centers is not a new complaint, but it has “increased” due to the adjustment that the Milei Government implemented when it arrived at the Casa Rosada, according to the organizations, although the Government denies it.
Pettovello assured this Monday that he would not attend to them. “I did not summon the people to be under the sun, the leaders summoned them. The other day, I went down to attend to them due to a specific situation. But this time I am not going to receive them because I did not summon them,” said the minister. The ministry also warned that canteens “that request funds” must do so “through official channels and complying with the corresponding requirements.” “Our goal is to eliminate intermediation, in that process we are going to contain those who have the least by providing assistance in the most effective and transparent way,” she says in a series of messages spread on X (formerly Twitter). Hours after Pettovello's statements, a criminal complaint was filed by social leader Juan Grabois, who accuses her of failing to fulfill her “duties as a public official.”
The ministry headed by Pettovello was created by the new Government in its desire to cut public spending and concentrates the old portfolios of Education, Labor and Social Development under the orbit of a single minister. Pettovello intends to change the assistance model that existed until now and make “direct transfers” to the soup kitchens, instead of “distributing food” to the organizations that coordinate them. As part of the new strategy that he intends to implement, this Monday he signed a food assistance agreement with the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches for 177.5 million pesos [138.500 dólares al cambio oficial] to assist some 36,000 people and another with the Child Nutrition Cooperating Foundation. Behind the change that the Government intends, is the idea that is repeated in the Cabinet that social organizations do “business with poverty.”
The Argentine Episcopal Conference joined the complaint of the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy, which expressed in a statement that “food cannot be an adjustment variable” and highlighted “the value of the organized community response.” “All care spaces that provide food, all community kitchens, parishes, evangelical churches, and popular movements must receive help without delay,” claims the text signed by Bishop Oscar Ojea, president of the Episcopal Conference, which He adds: “In our country no one should go hungry.”
The signs held up this Monday by people queuing in front of the doors of the Ministry of Human Capital made similar claims: “Eating is not a privilege,” “You cannot think when hungry,” “There is no freedom when there is nothing in the world.” table”, “The pots are empty”, “We are hungry”. “We are eight siblings and since Milei took office we only eat once a day,” said the one held by Ivana Juncosa, 20, who told EL PAÍS: “My father was a licensed electrician and died in the pandemic. Now we all go out to work, even my youngest brother, who is 15 years old and works in a grocery store. “My sister, with her husband and her niece, recently moved in with us because they cannot pay the rent.”
The critical situation that Argentina was experiencing deepened after the first directives of the Milei Government, which, among other adjustment measures, devalued the currency by more than 50% and announced cuts in energy and transportation subsidies. Although the Government has said that “of course” that food “is not an adjustment variable”, the people present at the protest this Monday expressed the impact that the Executive's decisions have had on their homes. In January, monthly inflation exceeded 25% and retail consumption fell 28.5% compared to 2023, according to the Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises.
The protest occurs in a context of growing social conflict in the country. Since Milei took power, there have been spontaneous demonstrations by residents, concentrations called from different sectors – the last ones, organized by the left, were repressed – and a call for a general strike by the unions. The president, however, still retains good levels of popular support from his followers, who elected him in November with 56% of the votes.
“The political situation is affecting the neighborhoods, those who have the least,” lamented Agustina Acevedo, 29, who has worked at the Milagros dining room for six years. Acevedo describes what she observes around her on the western outskirts of Buenos Aires: “January is hard, but now much more so. The number of people living on the street has increased, unemployment has increased… Or those who have a job have little salary to provide for their family.” If they normally provide food three times a week, now they are doing it once to ration supplies. At their side, more women hold flags with the names of the soup kitchens where they work: Arcoíris, Los ibiyesEl arroyito, Granja de Helen… Acevedo already knows that the minister will not receive her that day, but if she did, she would offer her an invitation: “We are delighted to see you to tell you about the situation in the neighborhoods.”
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