Tim Johnson: Mexico Sets 'Crusade' to Ease Rural Poverty, But Will It Work? Tim Johnson - McClatchy
go to original September 2, 2013

VICENTE GUERRERO, Mexico — Maria Suarez Bonilla dwells in a thatched-roof hut with a dirt floor and no running water. She hopes one day to have a few pesos to build an outhouse.

“We just use a hole in the ground now,” Suarez Bonilla told social workers quizzing her about the impoverished conditions of her family.

She answered questions from her perch on a rock, too listless to swat away the teeming flies, resting an infected leg stretched in front of her.

President Enrique Pena Nieto is trying to end such conditions of destitution with the launch of the National Crusade Against Hunger. His government is channeling funds to 80 of the most impoverished of the nation’s 2,445 municipalities (akin to American counties) as the first stage of the crusade gets off the ground.

In a speech last month, Pena Nieto acknowledged that a government agency that measures poverty said 7.5 million Mexicans endure hunger.

“We neither like this nor take pride in this. But we must acknowledge this condition in order to form a common front and really revert (it),” Pena Nieto said.

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