Brasília, July 9, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Maria de Fátima Cardoso Jesus, of unknown age, left her house early - around five or five-thirty in the morning - to earn a maximum of R$ 6, depending on the production in the coffee field. Her husband, Sebastião Chagas de Jesus, who estimates his age to be 60, followed the same path through the São João da Mata farm, in the municipality of Malacacheta, 432 kilometers from Belo Horizonte, in the Mucuri valley, on the border of a more famous valley, the Jequitinhonha. Even though the old sexist tradition guarantees him two or three reais more, on this day he received the same amount as his wife. What he earned was "only for salt," as he says.
The children, João, Adélia, Leonardo, and Dario, remained sleeping alone, there alongside the road that leads to the municipal seat. They woke up with nothing on the fire. There are ten children in all. The six oldest already fend for themselves, between farm tasks and domestic service in the houses of people who are better off in the neighboring farms and cities. "One of the girls lives in a house with a television and refrigerator, people who live in luxury," says the mother.
The Chagas de Jesus family will soon have birth certificates. Almost all of them with ages decided by the municipal public prosecutor's office, which warned them about their clandestine condition.
João, the youngest, is around two. The oldest, Leonardo, is no more than six.
Since they woke up without food and no fire either - it had become just a pile of ashes - the youngest decided to scratch the ground for something to eat, like a wild beast, in the vicinity of the house. He tried to obtain some nourishment from an old stalk of sugarcane. From its appearance, the stalk had already been sucked by pigs. He did his scratching naked, without a stitch of clothing on, his skin showing signs of old dirt. "Like a little animal, my God," exclaimed Flávia Hilário Cassiano, 28 years old, a social worker from Malacacheta who already knew the family.
The expression of the girl, from São José dos Campos, situated in a more prosperous valley in the state of São Paulo, repeated, involuntarily, an old poem by Manuel Bandeira. The poet was shocked the first time he saw a man lick food scraps from an urban trash can, something that occurred over 50 years ago.
Vexed, Flávia grabbed some twigs, with the help of João, Adélia, Leonardo, and Dario, slice a squash, and put it on the fire. In the same water, she mixed a handful of rice. She prepared a "rebengo," the term used by many backlands dwellers in the region for food made of left-over left-overs.
The children leaped at the pot and besmeared themselves. It was close to midday. They hadn't eaten for 23 hours.
"Ah, my child, God keep you and light your way forever, amen." It was the children's mother, Maria de Fátima, thanking the social worker for her act. "The children of poor people are just like that, they eat here, they eat there," she comments, in the middle of the coffee field.
The Chagas de Jesus family - below everything that can be classified as a poverty line - were never successful in being part of any government social program. For want of documents, for thinking that they really don't have the right to anything. "This isn't for our beak, no, my sir," the mother emphasizes.
LADAINHA
The last time he sat down to listen to the radio, at the beginning of the year, the father, Sebastião, who comes from the municipality of Ladainha, in the same valley of extreme poverty, says that, without really understanding it, he heard a mention of "something called Zero Hunger." In his reserved manner, the expression on his face is of someone who no longer bets on any inclusion. "It's something from the government, no? If it comes, that's good." And he returns to the field.
Malacacheta is one of the 38 municipalities in the Muruci and Jequitinhonha valleys chosen to inaugurate the activities of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Administration's program based on the government's policy of food security. Zero Hunger began, in June, in the backlands of Minas. The agreement between federal, state, and municipal governments was signed in Belo Horizonte. The program's management committees, made up of representatives of the local government, unions, the Catholic church, and civil society are ready to go to work. (DAS)
