Hunger as a form of violence
The forms of violence recognized by the social collective are inscribed in a judicial and police reality that identifies them as transgressions to the penal law and justifies repression as a tribute to security; these matters are amplified by TV news reports and their replicas are destined to shock the population.
However, there are other forms of oppression -- such as hunger -- which a certain part of our social imagination does not recognize as violence or crime and that is why these do not come up in social commentaries. But hunger is a crime.
Children and youths -- at least the vast majority of them -- live the present as if they were heirs to a defeat. They suffer the effects of multiple marginalization: they do not enjoy the first fruits of harvests and there is no space for them in city neighborhoods or institutions, and schools -- which are the privileged social organizers -- move further and further away from children’s daily problems, causing more to drop out.
Alturo Jauretche would leave his legacy: “Schools did not continue life, but opened a daily parenthesis in it. Children’s empiricism, their vital knowledge acquired at home and from the environment, all of that was a despicable contribution”.
The March 14 issue of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion stated that the president of Consudec (Council of Higher Education) had warned: “On the outskirts of Buenos Aires there are about 800,000 children, aged 8 to 17, who do not go to school.” From what terrible cliffs do those little souls -- intact of urgency -- fall headlong?
This leads us to think that if life and the condition of life were the most precious nuclei in our set of values, we would not only burst with outrage before robberies and kidnappings but also before the lack of nutrients in our children, who become fragments and die in forsaken corners. The problem is that this affects the security of life and not the security of goods.
Source: tehrantimes.com
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