Animal Politico: Mexico's Famine Hidden by Government Obscurity Sebastian Aguirre and Saide Mobayed - Animal Politico/ARTICLE 19
go to original June 16, 2014

Over One year later, Mexico government's Crusade Against Hunger makes little impact (CCTV).

With a string of flowers around his neck, a poncho over his back and the staff of command of the Mazahua [indigenous] community of San Jose del Rincon in hand, Enrique Peña Nieto announced in early April that May would be the month of the “Crusade Against Hunger”. The symbolic placement of Peña Nieto’s adornments is a perfect analogy of how, for over 30 years, public policies revolving around the eradication of famine in our country have been useful only as timely decorations.

With the main objective of eradicating hunger, the crusade combined approximately 40 social service programs that claim to guarantee food and nutritional security for the seven million Mexicans that currently live in a state of extreme poverty.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America (Cepal) in a report on the social panorama in 2013, poverty in Mexico has increased from 36.3% in 2011 to 37.1% the following year. With this, Mexico was the only country to register an increase in its impoverished population, and hence finds itself above the average for Latin American countries which registers at 27.9%. Meanwhile, the study Poverty and Social Rights of Boys, Girls, and Adolescents in Mexico 2010-2012, published by Unicef and the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), indicates that 53.8% of the population between 0 and 17 years of age lives in poverty.

With an extravagant operation that included the “National Photographer's Contest: Mexico without Hunger”, in 2013, the rhetoric of collective imagination of famine in Mexico materialized in photographs.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx.

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