Paraguay: Popular pots & the women who support homes and families
In Paraguay, soup kitchens have historically been a community and popular response to hunger, an act of resistance and solidarity. In times of greatest economic and social crisis, there are women in the neighborhoods and communities organizing soup kitchens, a wood or charcoal stove and a large pot to prepare food.
“The Paraguayan woman is the most glorious in Latin America” say grandiloquent speeches every February 24 (which take up the poem by Carmen Soler) with the image of the Kuña Guapa but without showing the voices of the women who build the country day by day. “Only on paper do they respect her” say Emilia Medina (Ña Eme) and Severina Insfran (Ña Seve). Both lead soup kitchens in community dining rooms in their territory with great pride and conviction.
On February 24, Paraguayan Women’s Day, it is important to remember how women, often invisible, have been the main drivers of various processes, including access to food. This is intertwined with the fight against social injustice and the fight for the right to land and territory, to decent housing, health, education and fair prices for peasant production.
Ña Eme, 68 years old, has been part of this community resistance for more than two decades. She cooked in various soup kitchen initiatives in the Bañado Norte of Asunción and is currently part of Pykui, Coordinator of the Soup Kitchens of the Bañado. She is the mother of 10 children, born in Asunción but the great flooding of the Paraguay River in 1978 took her entire family to Liberación, San Pedro and there, together with her family, she spent part of her childhood helping to plant and harvest tobacco to help cover family expenses.
“We planted manioc and corn on our land and we did minga, we went with our father to harvest and we exchanged the money to eat. When my mother got pregnant, she got sick and we had to return to Bañado when I was 14 years old. We left everything and came with just a few clothes, we had a very bad time, we lived better in the countryside,” she remembers with nostalgia. She says that if she could, she would like to return there, to those lands where they worked so hard to produce food.
Ña Severina Insfran is the guardian of the seeds of the CONAMURI peasant women’s organization. The story of both intersects, since she is also from Liberación San Pedro. She is the mother of 11 children, is 57 years old and is part of a Committee of peasant women producers who have been organizing since 1989. “We came to Liberación with my mother and father and we have always worked in the kokue (farm).”
Both remember that they began in organizational spaces from a very young age, moved by the desire to contribute to improving the living conditions of their family and their community. Ña Emi began at 19 years old in the organization “Pelopincho for the land and for housing” and Ña Seve began as a catechist before forming the Committee of Peasant Women in Liberación.
“My thoughts are that my children do not suffer from the cold, I wanted them to live well and I already had children at 19 years old, I suffered from the rising of the river and without housing, and I did not want my children to suffer what I suffered. When I returned to Asunción we suffered hunger, poverty, we did not have a home and we slept in someone else’s house on the floor. I was only able to study until the 4th grade but I like to manage the organization,” says Ña Emi.
A story of solidarity in times of crisis
In Paraguay, soup kitchens have historically been a community and popular response to hunger, an act of resistance and solidarity. In times of greatest economic and social crisis, there in the neighborhoods and communities, there are women organizing the pots, a wood or charcoal stove and a large pot to prepare food.
“Pykui was born in 2020. At that time we named it the Popular Pot Coordinator, we started in the neighborhood. With the pandemic, nobody was working and my children told me to stay, but I told them that I couldn’t stay, that I had to do something. We asked companies for chicken giblets and cookies and so we started cooking. I had a friend who was a Guaraní teacher in another neighborhood and he told me to make soup kitchens in the communities, and so we started. In Bañado Sur they were also organizing and so Cira visited me to unite us all to ask for supplies from the SEN (National Emergency Secretariat), if there are many of us we get more. Now there are 180 plates and sometimes more people come,” says Ña Emi.
With the COVID 19 pandemic, the crisis did not end and the needs in the communities deepened. In Liberación, Ña Seve and her companions also began to organize a soup kitchen that delivers 75 plates of food on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the families of the 17 members of the Women’s Committee. We began to work after the pandemic every 15 days. Now we have supplies for the soup kitchen and it got a little complicated because we have to buy vegetables and meat, we don’t have shade to have vegetables all the time,” Severina explains.
Although they now have the supplies provided by the Ministry of Social Development through the law of soup kitchens and community canteens, they continue to contribute vegetables such as tomatoes and bell peppers from their production. When it is harvest time they collect between 4 and 5 kilos per member. They blend and freeze. They also organize sales of chipá, binguito and other community activities to collect resources that allow them to buy the missing supplies. In Bañado they hold food fairs in the peasant activities and marches on 8M and 25N to raise funds.
The products they receive from the State for two months: 10 packages of 1 kilo beans, 10 packages of locro, 5 packages of fine salt, 5 containers of 5 liters of oil, 120 containers of 1 liter milk, 5 packages of 5 kilos of sugar, 10 packages of 1 kilo peanuts, 10 packages of 10 yerba mate, 5 packages of 5 kilos of flour, 4 packages of 5 kilos of short noodles and a package of noodles.
Through their work, women not only support their families, but also build a network of mutual support that faces economic and political challenges. They do not seek prominence or public recognition, but their struggle is in every gesture of solidarity and in every meal served to the neediest families. Their work has been fundamental in times of crisis and continues to be crucial to ensure that many families survive, building a more just future from the everyday.
The soup kitchens are not only a space to cook food, but also a space for women in the community to meet and talk about their daily lives, their needs, their concerns. “It is a space where we share, drink tereré, let off steam, think about how to help spiritually or economically, through this we also go to training and talk among the members, sometimes they visit us and how to work in the kokue,” emphasized Ña Seve when elaborating on the importance of the space.
The Legal Recognition
One of the greatest victories of the women organized in soup kitchens was the sanction of Law 6380/19, which officially recognizes and supports soup kitchens in Paraguay. This law, promoted by women who do not necessarily recognize themselves as activists, guarantees state resources for the purchase of supplies and the training of those who work in soup kitchens.
Emilia, who was involved in the struggles that led to the creation of this law, remembers: “I was very happy, I learned that if we organize ourselves we will be able to overcome our government, they will give us what we demand, they will listen to us more and we will achieve our rights. There were 48 soup kitchens in 2020 and we protested even when it rained, although they gave us little, we got the law.”
Although the approval of the Law on soup kitchens and community canteens was a historic milestone led by the pot makers, when it was passed to the Ministry of Social Development, access was bureaucratized because it requires having infrastructure and they deliver fewer products that were previously included, such as meat, vegetables and eggs. “To get supplies, they ask us for paperwork and crazy, we luckily had a space that we got before for a bakery and with that we now made our canteen. And in the end it is not for the poor, many commissions do not have premises, it is not easy to get and anything is difficult to get, they do not give, only the basics”, mentioned ña Seve with concern.
This precariousness and little access to supplies is nothing new in the country, it is added to the fact that before the existence of this Law, indigenous communities already denounced that they were not receiving any support in the midst of the pandemic.
The Fight for Food Sovereignty
The challenge faced by women who lead soup kitchens is, in many cases, to be recognized for the impact they generate, without being given the visibility they deserve. “Women’s Day for us as volunteer women workers. If the government is going to listen to me, senators, president, I ask that we be given our right to a salary as volunteers. We do not have financial support either in the dining room or at home,” said ña Emi.
The work of women in soup kitchens is also linked to the fight for food sovereignty, a fundamental right that many women have defended over the years. The recognition of food sovereignty is not only related to food production, but also to fair and equitable distribution, in a context where large agribusiness corporations try to control food production and consumption.
The women who lead the soup kitchens are, in many cases, the main defenders of food sovereignty, since they are organized to produce, distribute and guarantee that their communities receive food fairly.
“Girls and boys proudly come to eat, and that makes us happy, py’a vy’a (rejoice). You serve them cooked food with milk and they are happy. For me it is important to organize and demand our rights and it is important that you can do something impressive in your community that the people who worked with me will never forget. I have a young man who tells me that he will never forget that he is proud, and that makes me cry,” says ña Emi.
Article Source: Agencia Presentes
This post is also available in Español.