Hunger knocks from door to door in São Paulo’s commerce

Whoever sells on Avenida Comendador Sant’Anna, in the Jardim São José neighborhood, in Capão Redondo (southern São Paulo), doesn’t go a day without seeing people asking for food, snacks, snacks, fruits or vegetables at the doors.

“I’ve even seen customers ask because they are less able to buy”, says Marcelo Dionisio, 42, manager of Vitor Sacolões. The report is not isolated: the situation was confirmed by 13 road traders in just under 1 km.

The report of Sheet and the Mural Agency traveled through neighborhoods of the capital and Greater São Paulo and saw people asking for money or food donations at the doors of shops, others who sought to reuse food scraps that were not sold at the fair and homeless people looking for food in dumps.

The scenes contrast with a recent speech by president and reelection candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PL) who, confronted with the worsening food insecurity, said there was no “real hunger” in Brazil.

A resident of the Pau Queimado community, in the Tatuapé region, east of São Paulo, Levi da Silva Bezerra, 40, is unemployed and his two children – one 1 year and 8 months old and the other 4 years old – are without milk at home. .

Unable to find work, the family was left with no alternative: “It got bad this week, because I even had a little money saved. But I couldn’t do odd jobs anymore.”

Levi says that if he could get coins, in addition to milk, he would bring sausage for dinner. “We try to eat at least once, but breakfast, lunch and dinner are not enough,” he says.

Currently, 33.1 million people live in a situation of severe food insecurity, according to the National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil.

‘It is absurd for someone to question that hunger exists’, says project leader

In the capital, one of the indicators that show the worsening of social conditions is the increase in the number of homeless people. In the region of Avenida Paulista, the report saw homeless residents moving through garbage cans.

Alda Assunção, 62, sits on a sidewalk on the avenue, next to Masp, and watches employees go in and out of the surrounding office buildings, while enjoying the first meal of the day: a cup of coffee with milk and a piece of bread, which asked at the door of a local bakery. “I used to work in one of these buildings. I lost everything and came to live on the street”, she says.

Without a cell phone, she tries to stay connected to the world by reading newspapers from previous days, which she can get at newsstands in the region. She stitches together in the same sentence memories of her father (who wanted her to go to university), complaints of body aches and excerpts from an article in the Sheet of September 11, about the life of Frei Caneca.

“I’ve slept several times on the street that bears that name [também na região]it’s as if part of his story was also mine.”

Traders in the region claim that orders for food have doubled in recent months. “After the pandemic, the number of stalls selling food on the street dropped by half, but the number of people asking for it doubled,” says Rogério Guedes, 45, who owns a sandwich shop on Alameda Rio Claro, also in Bela Vista. “Customers feel sorry.”

At the back of Largo de São Francisco, in the Sé region, Sefras (Franciscan Solidarity Association) also had to double the number of meals offered at its best-known food donation space, Chá do Padre.

Even with the end of restrictive measures due to the pandemic, lunch went from 400 to 800 meals. In winter, about a hundred people seek shelter. And it is still not possible to meet all the demand, says Dalileia Lobo, project coordinator.

“The biggest pain is to tell a family that comes to get food that today they don’t have it anymore. There has been a change in the profile of those looking for food: before, they were usually homeless men, but now we see whole families. lap, trans women, immigrants. It is absurd for someone to question that hunger exists”, she says.

On the street for two years, Silvio Teles, 54, lives on donations and says that he worked in locksmiths and glassworks before being homeless. “I faced the pandemic by providing services, we depend on work to survive, but what about when we don’t have it?”

The last Census by the São Paulo City Hall indicated an increase in the homeless population, which reached 31 thousand people. On the outskirts of the city there were districts where the increase reached six times. In the east, for example, there was an increase from 7,000 to 9,000 people in this situation.

In the north of São Paulo, in Jardim Brasília, the family of Ednalda Ezilia, 44, has been receiving help in markets and fairs in the neighborhood. To survive, she looks for food that is close to maturity, fruits and vegetables that are no longer visually beautiful for sale.

She and her husband get pieces of chicken from a farm in the neighborhood, as well as fish carcasses at the market. “With the donations, I support my house and help my daughters and grandchildren. And I’m also able to help another family in the region”, says Ezilia.

In a market, you have to arrive on time to guarantee the donation. “Out of hours they fight and the food goes to the garbage”, he says.

Jonathan Brito Campos, 20, from Jardim Noronha, in Grajaú, south of the capital, has resorted to occasional jobs, known as “beaks”, but he also needs help.

He came from Bahia, where he worked as a professional painter, but could not find a job in the same field. “Here in São Paulo, sometimes, people offer hard work, but they want to pay a pittance. They think that just because a guy can’t afford it, he has to accept humiliation.”

‘It’s frustrating not being able to help always’, says attendant

At the Plenitude bakery, also in Grajaú, the attendant Camila Matheus, 29, says that there are dozens of people a day who stop to ask for help. “They ask for food, sell candies, garbage bags. Occasionally we help, but it’s frustrating to have to say ‘no’ because we can’t always help”, says the attendant.

With the increase in hunger, the presence of security in supermarkets has also been part of the routine of some establishments. In two units of St. March there are security guards next to the fridge where the meat is kept.

Sought, the network did not respond until the publication of the report. In March, the Sheet showed that some supermarket chains had put padlocks on their refrigerators.

The street markets are also places where help is sought, especially after the xepa. In two of them, in the north zone, in Jaçanã and Tremembé, the Sheet saw people trying to use up leftover vegetables and unsold food.

The attendant Andradina Soares, 37, lives this scenario.

“I earn a very low salary, even so I can’t afford it, so I recycle things at the fair like leftover food to take to my daughter. I take tomatoes, onions and fish heads,” he says.

She lives in Jardim Horizonte Azul, in Itapecerica da Serra, in Greater São Paulo. Even facing this situation, she tries to help other people. “Once I was having lunch near the market and I shared my lunch box with a lady with nothing. It’s hard,” she says.

“Whoever says that there is no hunger or that it is over doesn’t see who recycles food or who is starving. But I can show you every little place where people are hungry, I take them to check if they are hungry or not.”