Carrot and meat soup is, for many, the first thing that fills the stomach from the day before.
“It looks like human meat, but it's good,” laughs Johnny Borges, stirring the orange broth with a spoon so it cools a bit.
"Here we are like the Pirates of the Caribbean."
On a desert island, you eat what's there, period.
This 50-year-old man with angular features has arrived early at the alley in downtown São Paulo where an association distributes food.
He has gotten a good number.
He is the sixth in a long line out of sight around the corner.
The kilometric hunger that exists in Brazil will be one of the great challenges of whoever governs from January.
Brazil has gone back three decades when it comes to hunger.
At the beginning of 2022, 33 million people had nothing to eat, 14 million more than a year ago, according to a report by the Brazilian Network for Research on Food Sovereignty and Security.
People with some type of food insecurity reached 59% of the population, levels similar to those of the 1990s. The mirror of this increase is a greater number of people living on the streets.
In São Paulo, it grew 31% compared to 2019, according to the City Council.
According to another study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), the increase is greater: 73%.
Just take a few steps through the largest city in the country to find people stretched out on the floor under the arcades of stores, sometimes covered only with a blanket.
Dina de Oliveira Santos, cook, prepares the soup that is delivered to homeless people. Lela Beltrão
Borges lives in a donated tent.
He says that he prefers it to a reception center because on the street “you are always accompanied”, although someone recently entered his store and stole the few belongings he had.
He only has the white t-shirt and sweatpants that he is wearing.
His priority now is to recover from “the vice”, the cocaine that he used to stay awake during long journeys as a truck driver.
A year ago, he had an accident.
Borges shows the images of him on his cell phone of the truck lying on its side, with the corn he was carrying scattered on the road.
He had to be carried out on a stretcher and taken to the hospital.
When he left, he was left in the open.
They say that the first day without eating is the hardest.
The stomach twists and rage dominates.
When one wakes up on the second day, the body has already become accustomed to emptiness.
She feels it but it doesn't hurt as much anymore.
The dining room where people go to escape that feeling is on Calle José Bonifacio, a dark alley with graffitied walls a few minutes' walk from the cathedral.
It was the first to open at the beginning of the pandemic, promoted by the State Movement of the Population in a Street Situation.
Every day, the group distributes 2,200 meals and soups.
“They also have a palate;
you have to prepare appetizing things for them”, says the cook Dina de Oliveira Santos, who has left her huge pots for a moment to go out for some air.
Robson Mendonça, who founded the movement in 2000, lived on the streets for six years and experienced hunger.
Since then, he has struggled to obtain resources from the authorities that allow him to serve the population.
Last year, Mendonça, 77, chained himself to the doors of the Municipal Assembly to prevent the programs created during the pandemic for people on the street from being eliminated.
He got them to pass a law to support them, but he doesn't trust it: “Let's see.
On paper, everything is beautiful, but they need to execute it, ”he says.
"The end of the pandemic has not ended the problem."
A man eats the soup that was handed to him in line. Lela Beltrão
The government of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro has reacted to the emergency derived from the pandemic with several ups and downs in the value of support.
First, it was 600 reais a month, then 300, then 150. Recently, with inflation skyrocketing and a few months before the elections, the Executive has raised the amount to 600 reais again, through the program known as Aid Brazil.
For Maite Gauto, head of programs at the NGO Oxfam, the aid is not enough.
“The basic basket in São Paulo already costs an entire minimum wage [1,200 reais].
600 are not enough to cover all the needs of a family”, she points out.
In addition, Gauto points to the importance of a macroeconomic policy that updates the minimum wage above inflation -something that has not been done since Bolsonaro came to power- and that stops the rise in prices: "Monetary transfer policies help , but they do not solve.
People have to go back to work to have an income that does not make them depend on the government.”
Despite receiving Aid Brazil, Celine de Luz Siqueira and Elisabete Bezerra are in line on José Bonifacio Street.
The two are sitting on the sidewalk and chatting animatedly under a red umbrella, while they wait for the main course: sausage accompanied by rice and beans.
Siqueira, 81, receives her minimum salary as a retiree, 1,200 reais, but 500 goes on rent.
Luckily she eats little and she can save half of what she gets for dinner, she says.
Bezerra, 51, used to be a seamstress but has been unemployed for years.
She lives in a tent an hour from the center, but her Christian faith helps her cope with the situation: "A little with God is a lot, a lot without God is little."
As the association allows them to repeat portions, she will take a box for her and another for her husband.
Celine de Luz Siqueira, (81 years old) talks with Elisabete Bezerra on the sidewalk, while they wait for the main course. Lela Beltrão
When the report of the NGO network on the increase in hunger came out, Bolsonaro questioned the results.
“Does anyone see people asking for bread at the bakery checkout?
You don't see it,” he said.
Later, he admitted that there was hunger, but "not in the proportions that they say there."
In the electoral campaign, his main bet has been to maintain the support of Aid Brazil next year.
On the other hand, Lula has recalled that during the PT governments the country came out, thanks to a range of social aid, from the red list of countries with hunger problems made by the UN.
Now he's back.
The leftist candidate has promised to broaden support if he wins and raise the minimum wage above inflation.
A reflection of the division that exists in society around the election, in the hunger line on José Bonifacio Street there is also no uniform vote before the second round on Sunday.
Siqueira says that he will support Lula: “Before he was poor;
he is more on our side.”
Bezerra will abstain, as he did in the first round, because he doesn't trust anyone.
And Johnny Borges will vote for Bolsonaro, because he "valued" the trucking sector to which he belongs, with aid for the purchase of gasoline.
Regardless of who wins, as soon as he can he wants to get on a truck and make money again.
He dreams of changing the soup for a good steak and chips.
The line to receive a portion, which disappears from sight when turning the corner.Lela Beltrão
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