Reply #13: Do you have a link to any article on Venezuela's poor and food?

[Judi Lynn]

I do:

VENEZUELA: Nutritious food a ‘basic human right’

Owen Richards

We’re crammed into a small kitchen, maybe three by four metres, with blue concrete walls. Lining the walls are shelves stocked with kitchen basics — string bags of potatoes, garlic cloves, carrots, pumpkins and melons. There’s a bucket of chopped onions. A giant stainless steel pot waits empty on the gas stove. Four women and a man, in matching red aprons, hand-roll fish cakes and banana balls. A tiny wall fan hums in the background.

It could be a kitchen anywhere, but it’s quite different. The members of the Caracas section of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Brigade are here in Guaicaipuro Casa de Alimentaciones on July 29, witnessing firsthand one of the social achievements of the Bolivarian revolution. It is here in this modest house that 150 people come daily to receive two free meals.

There are some 4000 of these kitchens now across Venezuela. They are only possible because of the revolutionary will of the Venezuelan people and the assistance provided by the government of President Hugo Chavez.

Established to guarantee access to nutritious food — particularly for pregnant women, children, the over-60s and the extreme poor — the casas are nonetheless open to all.

They will not accept any money for the food, not even a donation. In fact, they have been instructed by the government to feed everyone who visits, even if they be from rich First World countries. And that is how we came to be eating delicious fishcakes, banana balls and rice complimented by endless arepas and fruit juices. The point of feeding tourists and fact-finders, they tell us, is to show the world that their food is both tasty and nutritious.
(snip/...)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/639/639p12b.htm