A FAO num mundo faminto: nro. especial da International History Review

H-Diplo Article Review 949 on “Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective.”

by George Fujii

H-Diplo Article Review 949
7 May 2020

“Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective.”  Special Issue of International History Review 41:2 (2019): 345–458.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2018.1460386.

https://hdiplo.org/to/AR949

Review Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Cindy Ewing | Production Editor: George Fujii

Review by Kaete O’Connell, Southern Methodist University

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was the first of several permanent international organizations established in the postwar period.  The organization’s constitution asserted that members were “determined to promote the common welfare” and pledged to improve nutrition, raise standards of living, enhance food production and distribution, and “[ensure] humanity’s freedom from hunger.”^[1] Since food insecurity was a catalyst for conflict, eliminating hunger and rural poverty was believed to be a necessity for peace. The enormity of the task that lay ahead was not lost on contemporaries who envisioned the program as a key component in the postwar international order.

Regardless of the real or perceived significance of the organization, histories of the FAO remain sparse.  Existing scholarship offers an overview of the FAO’s founding, but few historians explore the organization’s many missions, contributions, or controversies.^[2] It is this “paradox” that contributors to this special issue, “Confronting a Hungry World: The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in a Historical Perspective,” seek to address (345). The result is a thought-provoking issue that offers both a top-down and bottom-up perspective on the organization’s early years. Editors Corinne A. Pernet and Amalia Ribi Forclaz offer a collection that breaks with the one-dimensional institutional histories of the past and instead examines the “FAO’s role in the articulation of policies and practices of ‘development’” (346). By focusing on the 1950s, the articles underscore how postwar promises and desires for international cooperation were quickly eclipsed by Cold War politics. The lofty goals of eradicating hunger and poverty remained out of reach, but the FAO’s early projects, which collected information on production and consumption, laid the foundation for later global governance and food safety standardization.

Pernet and Forclaz’s introduction, “Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)”, sets the tone for an ambitious issue.^[3] They believe the general “reluctance” of historians to engage with the FAO is largely a result of archival difficulties, since access to the organization’s papers has been limited in recent years (347). Yet the contributors impressively marshal a diverse array of sources, combing local archives and personal papers scattered across the globe alongside the FAO archives in Rome. One of the great strengths of this collection is the variety of perspectives incorporated in the analyses. Actors from within and beyond the purview of FAO’s administration enrich the narratives, offering valuable insights into the organization’s role in facilitating cooperation among different nations and interest groups.

The first three essays in the issue examine how knowledge was produced and circulated by civil servants and experts in the FAO’s early programs. Amalia Ribi Forclaz’s article, “From Reconstruction to Development,” focuses on the work of the Rural Welfare Division under the leadership of economist Horace Belshaw.^[4] Relying on correspondence, Forclaz traces the origins of rural development planning in the late 1940s, highlighting Belshaw’s sensitivity to local cultures and skepticism towards expert intervention. Belshaw “focused on how to develop people rather than resources,” believing economic development was a social process (364). His holistic approach was abandoned, however, in favor of technical assistance programs and short-term interventions. This shift is important, Forclaz argues, because it deepens our understanding of the intellectual history of development. The FAO offered a platform for experimentation in the early postwar period, demonstrating that “development was never a homogenous set of ideas” (365).

Sarah W. Tracy’s article, “A Global Journey–Ancel Keys, the FAO, and the Rise of Transnational Heart Disease Epidemiology,” similarly examines the contributions made by a single individual working for the FAO.^[5] Keys, who was a physiologist, served as chair of the FAO Committee on Caloric Requirements and the Expert Committee on Nutrition. These experiences piqued Keys’s interest in regional dietary habits, and “led him to think globally about the relationship between diet and cardiovascular health” (372). Tracy argues that Keys’s FAO service profoundly shaped his research agenda. In addition to thinking in broad comparative terms, he developed new techniques for conducting research on a global scale and built a social network of like-minded scientists. Tracy’s article explores the theoretical, interpersonal, and technical changes in Keys’s work as he transitioned from a nutritional physiologist to a chronic disease epidemiologist. She concludes that the relationship between the experts and the FAO’s global mandate was “dynamic and synergistic…with each party influencing the other, sometimes in mutually beneficial ways” (374).

Adopting the perspective of a fieldworker, Corinne A. Pernet focuses on Emma Reh, a staff member of the Nutrition Division assigned to Central America in her article, “FAO from the Field and from Below”.^[6] Pernet relies on Reh’s correspondence and field reports to explore issues of marginalization surrounding the FAO’s work in Central America during the 1950s. These challenges included difficulties establishing a strong presence in the region, structural inequalities within the organization, a growing tendency to privilege medical science over field work, and a gender imbalance that affected Reh’s ability to conduct field work and navigate bureaucratic circles. Reh’s food surveys drew direct correlations between poverty and malnutrition, yet, her emphasis on socio-economic factors was swept aside in favor of nutritionism. For Pernet, this shift toward medicalization is indicative of “gendered power asymmetries” (392).

The remaining articles explore issues of sovereignty, examining how local dynamics shaped the implementation of rural development programs. Oliver Dinius’s “Transnational Development on the Frontier” looks at the Brazilian government’s effort to promote social and economic development in the Amazon with the creation of a regional development agency, the Superintendency for the Plan of Economic Valorization of the Amazon (Superintendência do Plano para a Valorização Econômica da Amazônia, SPVEA).^[7] The Brazilian government requested FAO assistance to develop programs in fishery, agriculture, and forestry. Dinius offers a close analysis of competing visions of development that emerged in the Amazon Mission, demonstrating how these differences influenced the FAO’s planning and shaped Brazilian agendas. The FAO’s Amazon Mission failed, Dinius concludes, because the host nation lacked the administrative capacity to support the project (423). Surprisingly, the failure of the Amazon Mission cannot be attributed to resistance to foreign meddling or differences in strategy but rather was the result of a lack of resources that were then further undermined by existing economic circumstances and Brazilian politics.

Finally, Benjamin Siegel’s essay, “The Claims of Asia and the Far East”, focuses on newly independent India where the FAO’s agenda held great promise but failed to deliver.^[8] Siegel examines the converging interests of Indian experts, administrators, and politicians, concluding that the FAO “proved a greater boon to Indian careerism and the authority of Indian experts themselves than to the amelioration of hunger” (428). Siegel identifies a disconnect between FAO administrators and Indian representatives, highlighting the tension between national and international aspirations. The FAO offered a platform for international recognition and legitimacy but failed to provide adequate material assistance. The FAO’s marginal role in Indian agricultural development reflected a “winnowing scale of ambition” that importantly coincided with decolonization and an escalating Cold War (428).

For this reader, the greatest takeaway is the collective emphasis on interpersonal relations. The FAO encouraged collaboration across disciplines and state borders. It enabled Keys to forge important connections with scientists across the globe. Keys’s research paid close attention to similarities and differences in eating across cultures, reflecting field worker Reh’s interest in local custom and Belshaw’s holistic approach to rural welfare. Belshaw and Reh remained skeptical of top-down development programs and believed that greater attention needed to be paid to individual needs and establishing goodwill with local communities. In Brazil and India, government agents and experts manipulated FAO strategies to serve their own needs and interests, often at the expense of recipient populations.

Together these articles illustrate how different actors, agencies, and governments interpreted the FAO’s mission to eradicate hunger and combat rural poverty and adapted it to suit a range of long- and short-term objectives. The issue concludes with a thoughtful epilogue by Corinna R. Unger that reflects on the articles’ interventions and offers suggestions for future historical inquiry.^[9] Unger commends the issue’s focus on rural development, which she believes offers new insight into both the FAO’s history and the organization’s contributions to the field of international development (452). She also notes how the articles situate the FAO in the larger political context. The organization was not isolated or static, but adjusted strategies in response to a variety of external political and economic factors.

“Confronting a Hungry World” stresses the importance of the FAO to postwar histories of transnational cooperation, international organizations, development, and food and nutrition. The essays do an extraordinary job of breathing life into the early years of the organization, as it struggled to reconcile its idealism to meet practical demands and evolving geopolitical circumstances. Buoyed by postwar idealism, the FAO endeavored to make freedom from want a reality for populations across the globe. Yet almost 75 years later, food security remains elusive.^[10] Conflict, climate change, and poverty continue to stymie the U.N.’s efforts. Even so, this exploration into the early years of the FAO offers fresh insights on the renewed program to eradicate global hunger and malnutrition.

Kaete O’Connell is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.  Her research explores food diplomacy in the early Cold War, specifically looking at the political and cultural significance of U.S. food aid in post-WWII Germany.

Notes

[1] “Constitution,” in Basic Texts of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, vol. I (2017), 3, http://www.fao.org/3/K8024E/K8024E.pdf .

[2] Aside from organizational histories, such as Gove Hambidge, The Story of FAO (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 1955), the scholarship on the FAO is thin. See for example John Cave Abbott, Politics and Poverty: A Critique of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (New York: Routledge, 1992); Ruth Jachertz, “ʻTo Keep Food Out of Politics’: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 1945–1965,” in International Organizations and Development, 1945–1990, eds. Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel and Corinna R. Unger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 75–100; Amy L.S. Staples, The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945-1965 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2006).

[3] Corinne A. Pernet and Amalia Ribi Forclaz, “Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): International Histories of Agriculture, Nutrition, and Development,” International History Review 41:2 (2019): 345-350, (hereafter IHR).

[4] Amalia Ribi Forclaz, “From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955,” IHR: 351-371.

[5] Sarah W. Tracy, “A Global Journey - Ancel Keys, the FAO, and the Rise of Transnational Heart Disease Epidemiology, 1949-1958,” IHR: 372-390.

[6] Corinne A. Pernet, “FAO from the Field and from Below: Emma Reh and the Challenges of Doing Nutrition Work in Central America,” IHR: 391-406.

[7] Oliver Dinius, “Transnational Development on the Frontier: The FAO’s Fishery and Forestry Missions in the Brazilian Amazon,” IHR: 407-426.

[8] Benjamin Siegel, “‘The Claims of Asia and the Far East’: India and the FAO in the Age of Ambivalent Internationalism,” IHR: 427-450.

[9] Corinna R. Unger, “International Organizations and Rural Development: The FAO Perspective,” IHR: 451-458.

[10] In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly established the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 as part of the organization’s sustainable development goals. For more see https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/.

Como os EUA salvaram russos da fome e do canibalismo 100 anos atrás

A century ago America saved millions of Russians from starvation

The story of “The Russian Job” contradicts the bellicose histories preferred in both countries

The Economist, November 9th 2019

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/11/09/a-century-ago-america-saved-millions-of-russians-from-starvation?cid1=cust/dailypicks1/n/bl/n/20191114n/owned/n/n/dailypicks1/n/n/NA/343149/n

The story of “The Russian Job” contradicts the bellicose histories preferred in both countries

The Russian Job. 
By Douglas Smith. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 320 pages; $28. Picador; £25.

TO MOST PEOPLE shaped by the cold war—and today’s icy relations—Russia and America may seem always to have been sworn enemies. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 America celebrated victory. When Vladimir Putin set out to avenge history and make Russia great again, he whipped up anti-American hysteria and scorned Washington’s overreach. For his part, Donald Trump—who thinks America has in the past been a soft touch—in effect concurred with Mr Putin’s criticism, pledging to put narrow American interests first.

In recounting America’s biggest ever humanitarian effort—to save millions of lives in the nascent Soviet state a century ago—“The Russian Job” by Douglas Smith repudiates the modern mythologies of both countries, and their leaders’ twisted histories. Already ravaged by wars and revolution, in 1920-22 Russia was hit by droughts and faced one of Europe’s worst ever famines. It was partly self-induced: terrorised by the Red Army and threatened with requisitions and executions, Russian peasants drastically reduced the land under cultivation, sowing the minimum required for their own survival.

Acutely aware that food meant power, Vladimir Lenin abandoned War Communism in favour of a new economic policy that replaced requisition with taxes and made some concession to capitalism. But it was too late. By the end of 1921, the vast territory along the Volga succumbed to starvation and cannibalism.

Having come to power on the promise to provide bread and end war, the Bolsheviks confronted the prospect of being swept away by hunger. Unable to feed their own people, the leaders of the proletarian revolution turned to the West for help. Maxim Gorky, a Bolshevik writer who had once demonised American capitalism, appealed to “all honest European and American people” to “give bread and medicine”.

The appeal struck a chord with Herbert Hoover, founding chief of the American Relief Administration (ARA). The future president responded not out of sympathy for the “murderous tyranny” of the Bolshevik regime, but from faith in America’s mission—and ability—to improve the world. If children were starving, America was obliged to ease their suffering. “We must make some distinction between the Russian people and the group who have seized the government,” Hoover argued.

The ARA’s insistence on complete autonomy made the Soviet government suspicious, as did its pledge to help without regard to “race, creed or social status”. After all, the regime had liquidated entire classes of citizens and nationalised not only private property but human life. Still, given a choice between losing face or losing the country, the Bolsheviks conceded the ARA’s conditions—while putting the operation under surveillance by the secret police.

Mr Smith’s book is not a political history, however. It is principally a reconstruction of the lives of those ARA men, many from military backgrounds, who over two and a half years in effect took over the functions of civil government in Russia, feeding some 10m people. In the Volga region, where residents were driven by hunger to boil and eat human flesh, the ARA organised kitchens and transport, distributed food and rebuilt hospitals.

The misery they encountered in Russia strained their nerves to the point of breakdown and despair, but also imbued their careers with meaning. “It is only by being of service that one can be happy,” an ARA officer wrote. “The help given by the Americans can never be forgotten, and the story of their glorious exploit will be told by grandfathers to their grandchildren,” grateful Russians told them.

Yet the duplicity and paranoia of the Soviet government haunted the ARA’s operation to the very end. While publicly Bolshevik leaders showered the Americans with praise and thanks, the secret police instructed local officials: “Under no circumstances are there to be any large displays or expressions of gratitude made in the name of the people.” No sooner was the Russian job done than the authorities began to expunge all memory of America’s help.

The edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1950 described the ARA as a front “for spying and wrecking activities and for supporting counter-revolutionary elements”. Modern Russian textbooks barely mention the episode. But it is not just Russia that needs to be reminded of this story—so does America, which derived much of its 20th-century greatness from its values rather than military power. As Gorky told Hoover: “The generosity of the American people resuscitates the dream of fraternity among people at a time when humanity needs charity and compassion.” ■

This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "The kindness of strangers"

Venezuela: os refugiados da fome - Peter Prengaman (The Washington Post)

The Washington Post, March 20, 2018

Northern Brazil overwhelmed by desperate, hungry Venezuelans Peter Prengaman    Hungry and destitute, tens of thousands of victims of Venezuela’s unrelenting political and economic crisis are trying their luck in Brazil — a country where they do not speak the language, conditions are often poor and there are few border towns to receive them.   Many arrive weak from hunger and with no money for a hotel, food or the $9 bus ride to Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima, known in Venezuelan circles as a place that offers three meals a day. In dozens of interviews over four days, many said they had not had more than one meal a day for the last year.   Some wore baggy clothes, had emaciated faces and complained of medical issues ranging from children with measles to diabetics with no insulin.   Kritce Montero tried to shush 6-month-old Hector, who cried from hunger even after breast-feeding while his family and several hundred other Venezuelans waited to be processed at the border.   Montero, who said she lost 57 pounds (26 kilograms) the last year from eating just one meal a day, traveled with Hector and her 7-year-old daughter 18 hours by bus from Maturin, a city in northeast Venezuela. After spending the night sleeping on the ground in Pacaraima, a dusty border town in the Amazon, they took another bus 130 miles (210 kilometers) to Boa Vista.   “We are desperate. We could no longer buy food,” said 33-year-old Montero, adding it had been months since Hector had any formula or diapers.   While in recent years millions of Venezuelans have immigrated, until recently Brazil received relatively few of them. Hundreds of thousands have gone to Colombia, but authorities there and elsewhere in South America are tightening their borders.   Portuguese-speaking Brazil has become the latest alternative for Venezuelans. But they are not finding much comfort there.   On a recent day, Militza DonQuis, 38, sat under a tree on the side of the main road in Pacaraima. In the two months since she and her husband arrived from Puerto Cabello, they have not been able to find work. With no money, they can’t take the bus to Boa Vista, so they sleep on the ground and scrounge for food during the day.   “This is horrible,” said DonQuis through tears, adding that in two months she had been unable to send money home to her children, ages 12 and 14, who she left with a sister.   With no money for a bus, Jose Guillen, 48, and wife July Bascelta, 44, decided to begin the journey to Boa Vista at night on foot, setting off with 9-year-old twins Angel and Ashley along a road surrounded by forest.   “God will provide,” said Guillen when asked how the family would eat during a trip that can take five days.   After walking 4 miles (6 kilometers), a Brazilian driver stopped agreed to give them a lift to Boa Vista, where the situation is arguably more desperate. Thousands of Venezuelans are living in the streets. They sleep in tents and on benches in central squares, have taken over abandoned buildings and cram dozens of people into small apartments.   The largest of three shelters in the city, Tancredo, has 700 people despite being equipped for 200. Half-naked children roam the former gymnasium while groups of men and women chat about their hopes for finding work and worry about the families they left in Venezuela.   Charlie Ivan Delgado, 30, said he came to Brazil several months ago with hopes of earning enough money so he and his high school sweetheart could finally afford a wedding. But each time he called home to El Tigre, he would hear the situation was getting worse, that their three children, ages 9, 5 and 1, were always hungry. So he decided to abandon wedding plans and bring his family.   “Kids in Venezuela today don’t think about playing with their friends or what they might study” in the university, said Delgado, sitting with his children and partner in a tent. “It’s more, ‘What am I going to eat today?”   While the shelter offers three meals a day, the family’s prospects are bleak.   The soccer referee has only been able to officiate a handful of games in rural areas outside Boa Vista, the kids are not in school and it’s hard to imagine how the family might leave the shelter.   “It’s like Tarzan being in New York,” said Delgado.   Brazilian authorities estimate 40,000 Venezuelans are living in Boa Vista, accounting for over 12 percent of the population in a city that was already poor and unable to offer many opportunities to its residents.   Most have arrived in the last several months, putting intense pressure on the public health system, the jails and volunteer organizations and churches that are carrying the largest burden when it comes to keeping Venezuelans fed.   Police say Venezuelans are sometimes working for as little as $7 a day in everything from construction to yard work, putting downward pressure on wages. For many, even offering to work for less isn’t enough: Several interviewed said many employers have told them flat out they won’t hire Venezuelans.   Milene da Souza, one of a group of volunteers who periodically serve food, said many Brazilians were increasingly angry at the situation.   “Brazil has many of its own problems,” she said. “Roraima has its own problems.”   Last month, fears of a backlash intensified when an arsonist set fire to two Boa Vista houses filled with Venezuelan immigrants, injuring dozens, several severely. A man originally from neighboring Guiana has been arrested, and police have said he was motivated by anger at Venezuelans in the city.   On the Plaza Simon Bolivar, named after the South American independence leader who was the inspiration for late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ ”socialist revolution,” throngs are camping in tents or simply sleeping on the grass. When trucks pull up with food, hundreds run toward them, elbowing each other in a mad scramble to get a meal before they run out. Tempers flare as men accuse women and children of using their advantage to get extra portions.   Roraima’s governor has declared a state of emergency to free up funds for overwhelmed public hospitals, where health officials estimate that 8 in 10 patients are Venezuelan. Last month, President Michel Temer canceled activities during Carnival to make an emergency trip to Boa Vista.   But residents say the federal government’s plans, which include building a field hospital in Pacaraima and relocating a few thousand immigrants to bigger cities, are not enough. Between Jan. 1 and March 7 of this year, 27,755 Venezuelans crossed into Brazil from Pacaraima. Authorities estimate at least 80,000 are currently in Brazil, most of them in Roraima state.   Brazil, Latin America’s largest nation, has one of the region’s most inclusive immigration policies. Venezuelans are allowed to enter with just a national identification card, a lifeline for many who say that getting a passport in Venezuela has become impossible. Many immigrants who don’t have identification cards but can show a birth certificate are allowed in if they request and are granted refugee status.   Being designated “refugees” can be problematic because such immigrants can’t return to Venezuela; President Nicolas Maduro has called them “traitors” of the state.   Many say that as long as Maduro is in power they have no reason to return.   Despite skyrocketing inflation and a collapse of many businesses, Maduro has refused to allow humanitarian aid to enter Venezuela. He denies there is a crisis and says international relief would lead to foreign intervention.   “Maduro’s solution is that we just eat each other,” said Diana Merida sarcastically while washing her clothes in a Boa Vista river. The 34-year-old from Maturin said she recently sent $3 home to her 16-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, which would allow them to buy some rice.   While it took her three days of selling coffee to earn that, it was more than she could earn in a month as a saleswoman in a clothes store back home.   On the Plaza Simon Bolivar, Kritce Montero sits with baby Hector, who now has on a diaper and has spent the last two days gobbling up formula, all donated by volunteers.   It’s been two days since the family crossed the border in Pacaraima. The first night they slept under a tree in the plaza, but then the second night somebody offered them a tent because of the baby.   “At least here, I’m able to feed my kids,” said Montero. “Even if I’m living under a bridge, I would feel OK if my kids have food.

Venezuela, no desastre completo; invasao militar? - Ricardo Hausmann

Vou ser muito claro quanto ao que pretende Ricardo Hausmann, um venezuelano que se desespera de ver o seu povo morrer de fome: a Assembleia Nacional não tem poderes para destituir Maduro, e mesmo que tivesse, não aconteceria absolutamente nada, pois as rédeas do poder continuariam com quem estão atualmente: com os chavistas no poder, apoiados em maciças forças repressivas, a começar pelo Exército (mas não só ele). E mesmo se esse milagre da destituição por acaso ocorresse, não haveria um governo com legitimidade suficiente para chamar uma "invasão" estrangeira, que seria contra quem? Contra o Exército venezuelano? Haveria sérios problemas nos planos militar, social, político, logístico, humanitário, e a situação passaria de uim para pior. Mas imaginemos que tudo isso ocorra, que viria para essa "invasão armada estrangeira"? Não vejo NENHUM vizinho em condições políticas, militares, diplomáticas de fazê-lo, e não creio que os EUA de Trump poderiam montar um exército à la Rangers de Theodore Roosevelt, ou mesmo de marines, para "libertar" a Venezuela do governo narcotraficante (essa seria a rationale, não seria?). Esqueçam a ONU, que não serve para essas coisas, não por culpa da ONU, mas dos membros do CSNU.
Infelizmente, a Venezuela e os venezuelanos estão dramaticamente sós, para enfrentar a fome, a repressão, a desesperança, a morte...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida  
 
D-Day Venezuela

RICARDO HAUSMANN

Project Syndicate, Jan 2, 2018 

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/venezuela-catastrophe-military-intervention-by-ricardo-hausmann-2018-01

As conditions in Venezuela worsen, the solutions that must now be considered include what was once inconceivable. A negotiated political transition remains the preferred option, but military intervention by a coalition of regional forces may be the only way to end a man-made famine threatening millions of lives.

CAMBRIDGE – The Venezuelan crisis is moving relentlessly from catastrophic to unimaginable. The level of misery, human suffering, and destruction has reached a point where the international community must rethink how it can help.

Two years ago, I warned of a coming famine in Venezuela, akin to Ukraine’s 1932-1933 Holomodor. On December 17, The New York Timespublished front-page photographs of this man-made disaster.

In July, I described the unprecedented nature of Venezuela’s economic calamity, documenting the collapse in output, incomes, and living and health standards. Probably the single most telling statistic I cited was that the minimum wage (the wage earned by the median worker) measured in the cheapest available calorie, had declined from 52,854 calories per day in May 2012 to just 7,005 by May 2017 – not enough to feed a family of five.

Since then, conditions have deteriorated dramatically. By last month, the minimum wage had fallen to just 2,740 calories a day. And proteins are in even shorter supply. Meat of any kind is so scarce that the market price of a kilogram is equivalent to more than a week of minimum-wage work.

Health conditions have worsened as well, owing to nutritional deficiencies and the government’s decision not to supply infant formula, standard vaccines against infectious diseases, medicines for AIDS, transplant, cancer, and dialysis patients, and general hospital supplies. Since August 1, the price of a US dollar has added an extra zero, and inflation has exceeded 50% per monthsince September.

According to OPEC, oil production has declined by 16% since May, down more than 350,000 barrels a day. To arrest the decline, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has had no better idea than to arrest some 60 senior managers of the state-owned oil company PDVSA and appoint a National Guard general with no industry experience to run it.

Rather than taking steps to end the humanitarian crisis, the government is using it to entrench its political control. Rejecting offers of assistance, it is spending its resources on Chinese-made military-grade crowd-control systems to thwart public protests.

Many outside observers believe that as the economy worsens, the government will lose power. But the organized political opposition is weaker now than it was in July, despite massive international diplomatic support. Since then, the government has installed an unconstitutional Constituent Assembly with full powers, deregistered the three main opposition parties, sacked elected mayors and deputies, and stolen three elections.

With all solutions either impractical, deemed infeasible, or unacceptable, most Venezuelans are wishing for some deus ex machinato save them from this tragedy. The best scenario would be free and fair elections to choose a new government. This is Plan A for the Venezuelan opposition organized around the Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, and is being sought in talks taking place in the Dominican Republic.

But it defies credulity to think that a regime that is willing to starve millions to remain in power would yield that power in free elections. In Eastern Europe in the 1940s, Stalinist regimes consolidated power despite losing elections. The fact that the Maduro government has stolen three elections in 2017 alone and has blocked the electoral participation of the parties with which it is negotiating, again despite massive international attention, suggests that success is unlikely.

A domestic military coup to restore constitutional rule is less palatable to many democratic politicians, because they fear that the soldiers may not return to their barracks afterwards. More important, Maduro’s regime already is a military dictatorship, with officers in charge of many government agencies. The senior officers of the Armed Forces are corrupt to the core, having been involved for years in smuggling, currency and procurement crimes, narco-trafficking and extra-judicial killings that, in per capita terms are three times more prevalent than in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines. Decent senior officers have been quitting in large numbers.

Targeted sanctions, managed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), are hurting many of the thugs ruling Venezuela. But, measured in the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and millions of additional Venezuelan refugees that will occur until the sanctions yield their intended effect, these measures are too slow at best. At worst, they will never work. After all, such sanctions have not led to regime change in Russia, North Korea, or Iran.

This leaves us with an international military intervention, a solution that scares most Latin American governments because of a history of aggressive actions against their sovereign interests, especially in Mexico and Central America. But these may be the wrong historical analogies. After all, Simón Bolívar gained the title of Liberator of Venezuela thanks to an 1814 invasion organized and financed by neighboring Nueva Granada (today’s Colombia). France, Belgium, and the Netherlands could not free themselves of an oppressive regime between 1940 and 1944 without international military action.

The implication is clear. As the Venezuelan situation becomes unimaginable, the solutions to be considered move closer to the inconceivable. The duly elected National Assembly, where the opposition holds a two-thirds majority, has been unconstitutionally stripped of power by an unconstitutionally appointed Supreme Court. And the military has used its power to suppress protests and force into exile many leaders including the Supreme Court justices elected by the National Assembly in July.

As solutions go, why not consider the following one: the National Assembly could impeach Maduro and the OFAC-sanctioned, narco-trafficking vice president, Tareck El Aissami, who has had more than $500 million in assets seized by the United States government. The Assembly could constitutionally appoint a new government, which in turn could request military assistance from a coalition of the willing, including Latin American, North American, and European countries. This force would free Venezuela, in the same way Canadians, Australians, Brits, and Americans liberated Europe in 1944-1945. Closer to home, it would be akin to the US liberating Panama from the oppression of Manuel Noriega, ushering in democracy and the fastest economic growth in Latin America.

According to international law, none of this would require approval by the United Nations Security Council (which Russia and China might veto), because the military force would be invited by a legitimate government seeking support to uphold the country’s constitution. The existence of such an option might even boost the prospects of the ongoing negotiations in the Dominican Republic.

An imploding Venezuela is not in most countries’ national interest. And conditions there constitute a crime against humanity that must be stopped on moral grounds. The failure of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, immortalized in the book and film A Bridge Too Far, led to famine in the Netherlands in the winter of 1944-1945. Today’s Venezuelan famine is already worse. How many lives must be shattered before salvation comes?

RICARDO HAUSMANN

Writing for PS since 2001 
58 Commentaries

Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, is Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University and a professor of economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Venezuela: mortes infantis por fome se acentuam

Até quando a América Latina suportará esse espetáculo propriamente "africano" num país que já foi, outrora, o de maior renda per capita da região?
Até quando crianças morrerão de fome na Venezuela, na total indiferença dos países vizinhos?
Até quando teremos de assistir realidades brutais como essa, ao lado do Brasil?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Crise se agrava e crianças morrem de fome na Venezuela

O Estado de S. Paulo, 18/12/2017

 

 Nos últimos cinco meses, ‘New York Times’ visita 21 hospitais em 17 Estados e constata a falência do sistema de saúde venezuelano

CARACAS - O problema da fome assola a Venezuela há anos, mas agora a desnutrição está matando as crianças em ritmo alarmante. Por cinco meses, o New York Times acompanhou o cotidiano hospitais públicos venezuelanos e, segundo os médicos, o número de mortes por desnutrição é recorde.

Desde que a economia da Venezuela começou a ruir, em 2014, protestos por falta de comida se tornaram comuns. Também virou rotina ver soldados montando guarda diante de padarias e multidões enfurecidas saqueando mercados.

As mortes por desnutrição são o segredo mais bem guardado do governo de Nicolás Maduro. Nos últimos cinco meses, o New York Times entrevistou médicos de 21 hospitais em 17 Estados. Os profissionais descrevem salas de emergência cheias de crianças com desnutrição grave, um quadro que raramente viam antes da crise.

“As crianças chegam em condições muito graves de desnutrição”, disse o médico Huníades Urbina Medina, presidente da Sociedade Venezuelana de Pediatria. De acordo com ele, os médicos venezuelanos têm se deparado com casos de desnutrição semelhantes aos encontrados em campos de refugiados.

ara muitas famílias de baixa renda, a crise redesenhou completamente a paisagem social. Pais preocupados ficam dias sem comer, emagrecem e chegam a pesar quase o mesmo que seus filhos. Mulheres fazem fila em clínicas de esterilização para evitar bebês que não possam alimentar.

Jovens que deixam suas casas e se juntam a gangues de rua para vasculhar o lixo atrás de sobras carregam na pele cicatrizes de brigas de faca. Multidões de adultos avançam sobre o lixo de restaurantes após os estabelecimentos fecharem. Bebês morrem porque é difícil encontrar e pagar pela fórmula artificial que substitui leite materno, até mesmo nas salas de emergência.

“Às vezes, eles morrem de desidratação nos meus braços”, afirmou a médica Milagros Hernández, na sala de emergência de um hospital pediátrico na cidade de Barquisimeto. Ela diz que o aumento de pacientes desnutridos começou a ser notado no fim de 2016. “Em 2017, o aumento foi terrível. As crianças chegam com o mesmo peso e tamanho de um recém-nascido.”

Antes de a economia entrar em colapso, segundo os médicos, quase todos os casos de desnutrição registrados nos hospitais públicos eram ocasionados por negligência ou abusos por parte dos pais. Quando a crise se agravou, entre 2015 e 2016, o número de casos no principal centro de saúde infantil da capital venezuelana triplicou.

Nos últimos dois anos, a situação ficou ainda pior. Em muitos países, a desnutrição grave é causada por guerras, secas ou algum tipo de catástrofe, como um terremoto”, disse a médica Ingrid Soto de Sanabria, chefe do departamento de nutrição, crescimento e desenvolvimento do hospital. “Mas, na Venezuela, ela está diretamente relacionada à escassez de comida e à inflação.”

O governo venezuelano tem tentado encobrir a crise no setor de saúde por meio de um blecaute quase total das estatísticas, além de criar uma cultura que deixa os profissionais com medo de relatar problemas e mortes ocasionados por erros do governo.

As estatísticas, porém, são estarrecedoras. O relatório anual do Ministério da Saúde, de 2015, indica que a taxa de mortalidade de crianças com menos de 4 semanas aumentou em 100 vezes desde 2012, de 0,02% para pouco mais 2% - a mortalidade materna aumentou 5 vezes no mesmo período.

Por quase dois anos, o governo venezuelano não publicou nenhum boletim epidemiológico ou estatísticas relacionadas à mortalidade infantil. Em abril, porém, um link apareceu subitamente no site do Ministério da Saúde conduzindo os internautas a boletins secretos. Os documentos indicavam que 11.446 crianças com menos de 1 ano morreram em 2016 - um aumento de 30% em um ano.

Os dados ganharam manchetes nacionais e internacionais antes de o governo declarar que o site tinha sido hackeado. Em seguida, os relatórios foram retirados do ar. Antonieta Caporale, ministra da Saúde, foi demitida e a responsabilidade de monitorar os boletins foi passada aos militares. Nenhuma informação foi divulgada desde então.

Os médicos também são censurados nos hospitais e frequentemente alertados para não incluir desnutrição infantil nos registros. “Em alguns hospitais públicos, os diagnósticos clínicos de desnutrição foram proibidos”, afirmou Urbina.

No entanto, médicos entrevistados em 9 dos 21 hospitais investigados mantiveram ao menos algum tipo de registro. Eles constataram aproximadamente 2,8 mil casos de desnutrição somente no último ano - e crianças famintas regularmente sendo levadas para a emergência. Quase 400 delas morreram, segundo os pediatras. “Nunca na minha vida vi tantas crianças famintas”, afirmou a médica Livia Machado, pediatra que oferece consultas grátis em uma clínica particular.

Venezuela: o povo morre de fome; governo nao importa alimentos do Brasil (FSP)

Agronegócio brasileiro sofre com crise na Venezuela

Mauro Zafalon

Folha de S. Paulo,  21/09/2017  02h00

 

As relações comerciais entre Brasil e Venezuela estão virando pó. Tradicionais exportadores de produtos agropecuários para os venezuelanos, os brasileiros conseguiram receitas de apenas US$ 176 milhões com as exportações de janeiro a agosto deste ano para o país vizinho.

Há três anos, o valor das exportações era de US$ 2,9 bilhões nesse mesmo período, conforme dados da Secex (Secretaria de Comércio Exterior).

Responsáveis por 4% das receitas das exportações brasileiras do setor de agronegócio em 2014, os venezuelanos agora representam apenas 0,4%.

As estimativas econômicas indicam que as coisas vão piorar ainda mais para a Venezuela. Com isso, o setor de agronegócio brasileiro perde um mercado até então bastante rentável.

O país vizinho não tem mais fôlego para importações até de alimentos devido à grave crise econômica.

A atividade econômica deverá recuar 7% neste ano, com a inflação podendo superar 700%. O problema é que o país registra recuo do PIB há quatro anos, e a tendência é de continuidade da queda no próximo.

Sem renda e sem emprego, os venezuelanos devem conviver com uma inflação ainda maior no próximo ano.

Essa grave situação econômica prejudica o agronegócio brasileiro. Um dos setores mais afetados é o da exportação de gado em pé.

Em 2014, as receitas do Brasil com as exportações de animais vivos para a Venezuela somaram US$ 568 milhões. Neste ano, está em apenas US$ 2,9 milhões.

As carnes ainda são os principais produtos comprados pelos venezuelanas no país, mas em um patamar bem inferior ao dos anos recentes.

Neste ano, os gastos da Venezuela com compra de carnes caíram para US$ 53 milhões até agosto, bem abaixo do US$ 1,4 bilhão de igual período de 2014.

Sem reservas, a Venezuela também reduziu drasticamente as compras de açúcar, de leite e de cereais do Brasil.

O volume importado de cereais pela Venezuela caiu para apenas 42 mil toneladas neste ano, bem abaixo das 282 mil de três anos atrás.

Famintos do mundo: o bilhao imaginario - The Economist

Burocracias, governamentais e internacionais, e politicas publicas antimercado, contribuem para a fome.

Feast and famine

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Hunger

Not a billion after all

The Economist, Oct 10th 2012, 10:24 by J.P.

IN 2010, as food prices were spiking for the second time in three years, governments, international agencies and non-government organisations blared out a new and powerful fact: there were a billion hungry people in the world and this, they said, in a period of plenty, was a disgrace. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which had estimated the figure in an annual report, even had the words ‘one billion hungry’ draped in letters 50 feet high outside its headquarters building in Rome. The number of hungry people in the world is indeed a disgrace. But there was one problem with the precise figure: it was completely bogus. This week, in its 2012 report on the state of food insecurity in the world, the FAO quietly revised it down to 868m and got rid of the spike in the numbers that had supposedly occurred in 2008-10.

The charts above show the new estimates (left hand panel) compared with those for 2010 (right hand panel). Detailed comparisons are complicated by the fact that many of the plots are for slightly different periods. But the big change is clear: instead of a sharp rise and fall in 2008-10, tracking the world food-price spike, the number of hungry people stayed stable throughout the 2000s. For developing countries, the new hunger estimates are lower after the price spike than they had been before it, falling from 885m in 2004-05 to 852m in 2010-12.

There are statistical and methodological explanations for the change. The 2010 report used the computer model of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to estimate the impact of high food prices. The USDA model is primarily designed to calculate how much food countries need to import. So it pays a lot of attention to trade and to importing nations but does not do such a good job of explaining what is going on in countries that are self sufficient or which use price and other controls to reduce the impact of world-price movements on domestic prices. These include China, India and Indonesia, the three largest developing countries. There, increases in staple-food prices were very small in 2007-10. In contrast, the new methodology pays more attention to daily diets and habitual consumption. This means it provides better estimates of chronic undernourishment but, as the report itself says, “does not fully capture the effects of price spikes.”

The FAO has also improved its data collection. New figures for the vast amount of food that gets wasted on farms and in shops pushed up the figures for the number of hungry people in 1990 (from 850m to 1 billion) but not in 2010-12. This alone accounts for much of the decline in hunger numbers in the past 20 years.

At the same time, there is a “real” reason for the lower estimates of hunger (ie, independent of methodological or statistical changes). The great recession of 2008-09 resulted in only mild slowdowns in most developing countries, so incomes were less affected than was expected: people could afford to keep buying food. At the same time the spread of conditional-cash transfers and other programmes to help the poor seems to have been remarkably effective at sheltering the worst off from the impact of price rises. In short, poor countries turned out to less vulnerable to food crises than previously thought.

The new estimates have significant implications. The world is not doing quite such a bad job of feeding itself as many people fear. At the moment, food prices are rising again for the third time in five years, leading to renewed worries about a food crisis and to demands for drastic intervention in world food markets (banning exports or taxing “commodity speculators”, for example). The new figures suggest the worries may be overdone and so are the demands that accompany them. The supply response to high prices seems to be better than expected. Social-protection measures seem to work. A simple measure of how well the world is doing is the first millennium development goal which calls for halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015, ie from 23% in 1990 to 11.5% in 2015. The proportion now is 14.9, only slightly above target.

That said, hunger is still high and, in two parts of the world, is growing. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of hungry people rose by 1m a year in 2000-05 but by more than 6m a year between 2007-09 and 2010-12. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are almost twice as many hungry people now as there were in 1990-92 (41m compared with 22m). It is also worth saying that undernutrition may not have spiked, the world still faces a big problem of poor nutrition (lack of micro-nutrients, as opposed to lack of calories). So the news is good on average, but not everywhere.

It may still take some time to be believed. The notion that there are a billion hungry people was so widely trumpeted that it has taken on a life of its own. On the very day the new FAO figures appeared, Gordon Conway, a professor at Imperial College London, published a (very good) book on food called—you guessed it—One Billion Hungry. Even the UN’s own food bureaucracies have not caught up with the new facts. The same report that details the new numbers also contains a contribution from four UN food agencies (including the FAO) to the big environmental conference held in Rio de Janeiro this July (the Rio +20 meeting). It refers to the old numbers.

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