Between starvation and coronavirus

It has been proven that Jair Bolsonaro is trying to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic aiming for the support of millions of Brazilians who, without a State’s commitment on food security, would rather challenge a life-threatening disease than starving at home.

Hence, they have backed the opening of trade, industry, informal employment, just as the President does. But he is not the only one encouraging such danger in a world controlled by neoliberalism, where its supporters even applaud the death of human beings they view as useless, and choose to look the other way.

Before the pandemic, hundred millions of people were bound to starvation even in developed nations, with ample nourishment and water, and where climate change is not so obvious.

The fact is that inequality reigns worldwide to the point that it reminds me of that question raised by French economist Maurice Halláis about how many poor people were needed to create a rich one.

This sums up very well the raison d’étre of all economic systems based on the exploitation of human labor and class war, where the US oligarchy is at the forefront since the era of Ronald Reagan; and Donald Trump is now taking them to unforeseen heights — which seems unbelievable. Trump, the biggest champion of no self-isolation, does not care about a wrong-headed policy which has led the US to become the world’s new Covid-19 epicenter.  

Trump dealt a low blow to neoliberalism when he stepped down from some Obama’s treaties with Pacific and European nations. But none resulted in the well-being of the most disadvantaged class. On the contrary, everything resulted in rich people getting richer, living and exploiting within and from the United States.

America first, said Trump, along with other phrases that revive the dominating and aggressive Monroe Doctrine, which made Latin America the US “backyard,” this time with a premeditated intention of impoverishing the people of this and other continents, which led to the creation of such super-rich individuals who stand for the 0.1% of the population owning much of the world’s wealth.

The economic and political exclusion also affects millions of people who cannot get food, not even low-quality food as they do not have enough resources to get it. Somebody dies every four seconds due to starvation in the world, more than one billion individuals struggle with hunger and seven out of ten are women and children.

Monopolies hold most of the largest seed sales in the world in a highly lucrative, captive market where, paradoxically, varieties resistant to their own herbicides are dealt.

To please those who enthrone neoliberalism, it is not coincidence that there is a really captive market with all sort of doses of social injustice and exclusion, fueling people unrest to avoid starvation.

And there is a simple, verified reason: the generalized globalization of trade among nations with different levels of salaries trigger unemployment, reduction in growth, inequalities, and misery in both developed and underdeveloped countries.

Therefore, despite the logical recession caused by COVID-19, we should not expect any change at all. Economic crisis will not make rich people to commit suicide and neoliberal states will subsidize wealthy people while poor individuals will get poorer, threatened by this or any other pandemic or hunger. The only solution is to unite progressive forces.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff