Families eat lizards and leftover meat to cheat the RN’s hunger

“The last time I ate meat is over a month ago. It was when I helped skin a cow.”

In Senador Elói de Souza, a municipality in Rio Grande do Norte in a state of public calamity due to drought, Adailton Oliveira recalls, moved, that the animal was dying of weakness, hungry, and was slaughtered by its owner.

The pieces were broken where they fell. Adailton, 52, says he got “the hand”, one of the front paws. With his wife, Sebastiana, he made the piece work for 20 days on the improvised wood stove. Foods there are numbered. The R$170 of Bolsa Família “doesn’t amount to anything”, he says, and the emergency aid for the pandemic is passed on.

“Instead of leaving the cow for the vulture and the dog, we have to eat”, says the farmer. “That’s because there’s no other way. Without rain, you can’t plant food and run out of animals. There’s no more bird to enjoy either, and we can’t ask for ‘put 1 kg of bone-in meat’ at the market. . We have to get the animals to make the mixture.”

The reports of hunger in the Potiguar region are added to those of other Brazilians across the country. This year, images of ox bones being disputed by residents of Rio de Janeiro and sold as an extra product in a butcher shop in Santa Catarina gained notoriety. In Fortaleza, premium and second-rate meat bones were also included in the list of items of some butchers, when they were previously donated.

Two houses away, Deojem Emanuel Gomes da Silva, 57, says he has nothing in the fridge. The food available in the kitchen is half a kilo of beans spread out in a box.

Income “is less than gas”. The canister costs R$ 110. “Everything went up with the pandemic”, he says with a tone of regret. For lunch, he ate the beans straight.

He says that it is not even possible to resort to small reptiles, animals that for decades were part of the diet of the poorest afflicted by drought in the Northeast.

“The mixture, sometimes, is egg. Sometimes, it doesn’t have any. There aren’t any lizards or tijuaçu lizards here anymore. They migrate after water.” Some say that those who are left “are small as lizards”.

In the settlement where he lives, part of the families are “at the extreme of the extreme”, says the president of the residents’ association, Áurea da Silva, 60. “They don’t even have the Bolsa Família and the income is from agriculture, but this year there was nothing , there was no rain”. Church food baskets are what help to save.

Drought, poverty and hunger advance

The increased unemployment caused by the pandemic and the drop in purchasing power in 2021 aggravated food insecurity and hunger. More than half (52%) of the municipalities in Potiguares are in “severe drought”. The area with this diagnosis has increased, according to Ana (National Water Agency), and the state is, in the Northeast, the most affected by drought. In October, the government launched a state plan for coexistence with the semiarid region.

Parallel to this, the Secretary of State for Labour, Housing and Social Assistance estimates that 370,000 families are in extreme poverty, the highest level in a decade.

The number of families living in poverty has also risen and, the secretariat emphasizes, the number of people suffering from hunger has increased. There are more than 1 million people, almost 38% of the population, in poverty and extreme poverty. “Evidently the drought aggravates the situation”, says the holder of the folder, Iris Oliveira. “But there are several factors, such as the waiting list at Bolsa Família — several families, since 2019, 2020, have been waiting to join the program and this makes their right to income difficult.”

The elimination of jobs in the pandemic and the increase in the price of the basic food basket make the scenario worse.

“Various municipalities and traditional communities [quilombolas, indígenas] of the state are with the same problem of hunger. The scenario is one of deprivation of an essential human right for survival: the Human Right to Adequate Food”, says the professor of the Nutrition Department at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, researcher in the area of ​​food security and member of the Security Council State Food, Nila Small.

“This acquisition of food, from inadequate quantity to nutritional quality, is socially unacceptable and breaks naturally established dietary patterns”, says the professor, referring to the search for alternatives such as “birds, lizards and pebas, which are uncommon for most of the population Brazilian, but they have long been portrayed in episodes of drought and hunger in the northeastern hinterland”.

Brazil, he observes, left the UN Hunger Map in 2014, but is regressing. “The scenario has worsened since 2016 with the emptying and dismantling of public policies.”

Sausage, mortadella and chicken carcass

In a local supermarket, the crisis is portrayed by the increase in the sale of sausage, mortadella and eggs, which are cheaper than meat, and also by the growing search for chicken carcasses. One employee, who asked not to be identified, said that many even fight over the “soup bone”, which costs R$ 6 a kilo.

The search for xaxado or pelanca, the fat of prime meat, also increased. The store offers it for free. Most ask, claiming to be for the dog, but it is clear that people are going to eat these parts, says the official.

José Vicente, 46, is one of the clients looking for alternatives. Crop for the family’s subsistence, he says, is zero and depends on donated bags. Unemployed, he points to the empty gas canister. Fire, only firewood.

Francisco Horácio, 60, still regrets the loss of his animals. “I ask God for it to get better because, if it doesn’t get better, no one can resist,” he says, referring to the hope of rain, amid dry vegetation, where 3 of the 11 heads of cattle that he lost are outstretched.

The smell of one of them, dead a few days before, spreads through the air, and the animal’s decomposition makes the meat a dish only for insects and other animals.

The family hopes to find a buyer for five animals that are still resisting and raise some resources for sustenance. Today, they depend on donations from relatives to eat.

Sheila Silva, 37, and her husband, Carlos, say that they also fight daily to guarantee food. “I’m going through a difficult situation,” he says in tears. “I’ve come to think, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to make for dinner’, having only rice at home and deceiving my children with anything: sugar and flour, or just flour.”