“It wasn’t at the Sorbonne or any other wise university that I first knew about the phenomenon of hunger. It was revealed to me spontaneously before my eyes, in the Capibaribe mangroves, in the miserable neighborhoods of the city of Recife: Afogados, Pina, Santo Amaro, Ilha do Leite. That was my Sorbonne: the mud of Recife's mangroves full of crabs and human beings.”
That’s how doctor and geographer Josué de Castro, born in Pernambuco state, defines himself in the book “Of Men and Crabs” (1966). By looking at the unequal landscapes of Recife, he was able to understand the real causes of hunger, a serious problem that affected the world's population in the middle of the 20th century and continues to do so to this day.
When the 1964 military coup happened, Josué was chief ambassador to Geneva. He was removed from the post and died in exile, disowned by his own country, but internationally renowned for presenting an innovative look at one of the saddest problems in the world: hunger.
In the third episode of the series “Futuro interrompido: as consequências da ditadura militar para o Nordeste” (Future interrupted: the consequences of the military dictatorship for the Northeast region), Brasil de Fato recalls how the coup interrupted Josué de Castro's political rise and curbed for two decades many important ideas that are still guiding public policies to combat hunger.
We detail what Josué thought, what he defended in parliament and what the military did with all his work.
An innovative look
Throughout his career as a doctor, Josué made efforts to reveal concrete political and social causes of hunger. At that time, between the 1940s and 1950s, his thesis was revolutionary.
Josué de Castro was born in 1908 in Recife, Pernambuco’s capital city, the son of a sertanejo (someone from the Sertão region) who married an heiress to large sugar cane plantations. As he said, he grew up surrounded by the mud of mangroves.
With a degree in medicine, Josué stood out for his work on nutrition in the 1930s and 1940s. Then President Getúlio Vargas invited him to draw up a social survey. Collected data was later used to ground the idea of the minimum wage policy implemented by Vargas.
"There was a lot of talk about hunger. ‘There's hunger here and there,’ but nobody could see where it was. Castro pointed it out: it's here. That's what's so innovative about his work," says Marina Gusmão, researcher and author of the book O combatente da fome: Josué de Castro: 1930-1973 (“The Hunger Fighter: Josué de Castro: 1930-1973” in a rough translation).
"The climate was to blame, the soil was to blame. In other words, it's nobody's fault, it's God's fault. That's what people used to say," she adds.
The first time Josué de Castro pointed out hunger as a social problem was in a factory in Recife. He had been hired to investigate the reasons for the supposed unproductivity of employees. His response was surprising and caused a stir among industrialists.
"He did a study and concluded that it was impossible to increase workers’ productivity because they were suffering from hunger. There was no possibility. Castro said he was a doctor, not a company director, so he had no solution to the problem," says Marina Gusmão.
The Geography of Hunger
In 1946, Josué de Castro published The Geography of Hunger, a classic work and a reference for scholars on the causes of hunger worldwide. With this book, he literally put on the map the regions that were actually living in famine conditions. He then offered political solutions to the problem.
“‘The Geography of Hunger’ divides Brazil into geographical areas, but according to criteria that he established, not official criteria. He divides it into geographical areas, in which he points out areas where there is acute hunger, chronic hunger, others with food insufficiency, and so on," recalls Marina Gusmão.
In an interview for the documentary film Josué - um cidadão do mundo, by director Silvio Tendler, geographer Milton Santos recalls the innovative character of the Pernambuco thinker: "I believe that Josué plays two important roles: firstly, to show the generality of the phenomenon of hunger and, at the same time, how it occurred in different areas."
Milton Santos in an interview in 1977 / Photo: Milton Santos official website
In the same film, Herbert de Souza, popularly known as Betinho, one of the most important hunger activists in Brazil, highlighted the revolutionary nature of Josué's work: "The Geography of Hunger was a must-read book due to the topic he approached. I think it was he who said that there is hunger in Brazil. He was the one who gave hunger political and scientific status when he raised this issue."
The Northeast Brazilian region that Josué studied was marked, at that time, by drought. There was hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, severe child malnutrition and low life expectancy.
Per capita income in the region was US$ 96, much lower than in the center-southern Brazil, which was US$ 303, according to data cited by Vandeck Santiago in his book Pernambuco em chamas - a intervenção dos EUA e o golpe de 1964.
Industrialization had fallen sharply, from 30% of GDP in the 1930s to just 11% of the GDP in the 1950s, and remained so for decades.
From a health point of view, the level of malnutrition was extremely high. Children between the ages of five and ten had only 10% of the weight and height of those in the same age group in the United States. Daily calorie intake was below the minimum conditions recommended at the time, according to a survey carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1957. Only 4% of children were breastfed after six months of age, according to data in the book The Revolution That Never Was, by Joseph Page.
"He says that the history of humanity is a history of hunger and goes on to show that hunger was always hidden. People pretended the problem didn't exist. It only came to light scandalously at the end of the Second World War, when people in concentration camps were freed and the world saw them, already in a catatonic state due to hunger," says Marina Gusmão.
International renown
In the 1950s, Josué held positions of international importance. He was one of the creators of the FAO. In Brazil, he was elected a federal deputy. In parliament, he made incisive defenses of agrarian reform and denounced large estates as one of the biggest boosters of hunger throughout history. On this front, he established political partnerships with Francisco Julião, a Pernambuco parliamentarian and member of the Peasant Leagues who became known for his radical defense of agrarian reform.
"He worked on the progressive spectrum, among those who understood that governments should act in favor of the most socially and economically excluded segments of society and, above all, those who are hungry," says political scientist Túlio Velho Barreto.
The coup silences Josué's ideas
With the military coup of 1964, Josué de Castro became an enemy of the country. He was included on the list of first people to be persecuted, alongside President Jango and other authorities, such as Pernambuco governor Miguel Arraes. He lost his ambassadorial post and had his political rights revoked. He was exiled to France, where he taught geography at the University of Vincennes. During this period, he also traveled to various countries in Asia and Africa, spreading his recent revolutionary thesis on hunger. He remained abroad until his death in the 1970s.
"Josué de Castro's work was something that bothered the military. If he remained in Brazil, he would be a voice to denounce elitist, exclusionary policies, the maintenance of status from the point of view of the elite, hunger, and the dependence of the starving population on rulers," analyzes political scientist Túlio Velho Barreto.
A permanent reference
Despite the silence imposed by the dictatorship, Josué de Castro continued to be studied by many researchers at universities, read by artists and adopted as a political reference for people’s movements, especially those fighting for agrarian reform.
In 2004, President Lula quoted Castro during the launching ceremony of the Food and Nutrition Security Council (CONSEA, in Portuguese). The event took place in Olinda (Pernambuco state). At the time, Lula pointed out that the geographer is a reference and that he dared to do what everyone else had neglected. "A Brazilian like him should never have been punished, but rewarded because he was concerned about something that the state should have been concerned about," he said.
In Pernambuco, the Mãos Solidárias Campaign, organized by the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), created the Solidary People's Kitchens project. The initiative is based on Josué de Castro’s ideas and provides weekly meals for food-insecure families in various areas of the Metropolitan Region of Recife.
People's kitchens have been receiveing support from the federal government and distribute free meals for those in need. / Mãos Solidárias
Josileide Lins, better known in the community as Vinha, is the coordinator of the Vila dos Milagres Solidarity Kitchen in Ibura, the south area of Recife. She is in charge of preparing meals donated every week. She describes the difficulties families face and the persistence of hunger, despite the resumption of public policies in President Lula's third term.
"There's still a lot of hunger, a lot of misery and neglect. Some people live almost in the mud: they don't have sanitation or a home," she denounces.
The Mãos Solidárias Campaign understands Josué de Castro's thesis on the causes of food insecurity and tries, through donations, to denounce those who favor this environment of crisis, hunger and helplessness for families living in impoverished areas.
"We see that hunger is not simply a lack of food, because there is food. If you go to supermarkets, production and agribusiness are increasingly making more profits, but we see more and more hunger in Brazil, as in the world. Today, it's not a problem, for example, of technology or production so that this food reaches people. It's a political problem of social organization," explains Tomás Agra, coordinator of the Campaign in Recife.
Edited by: Matheus Alves de Almeida
