A week ago, the Barros family’s kitchen cupboards were empty.
But now the food packages do not fit on the shelves, after the Brazilian Miguel Barros, 11 years old and one of eight brothers, desperately called the police to report that there was “nothing to eat” in his house.
Miguel moved Brazil last Wednesday after contacting the emergency service. For three days, his mother had barely been able to offer him and his siblings cornmeal and water.
When the operator asked what his emergency was, the boy replied: “Mr. Police… it’s because there is nothing to eat at my house.”
The interlocutor sent a mobile unit to his house in Santa Luzia, in the suburbs of Belo Horizonte (southeast, state of Minas Gerais).
fight for food
The agents thought that it could be a case of negligence. But when they arrived at the precarious house, they found an increasingly common story in Latin America’s largest economy: that of a mother struggling to feed her family while food prices rise and incomes decline.
The officers went to the supermarket and returned with a load of food.
