Peasants starve

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32567, 29 March 1971, Page 15

Peasants starve

<N.Z.F.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

RECIFE (Brazil), March 28.

Thousands of peasants from drought - stricken north - eastern Brazil waited outside the town of Cupira yesterday for the arrival of the emergency food supplies which might save them from death by starvation; The Mayor of Cupira (Mr Manuel Joaquim Da Silva) told reporters that 5000 starving people were lurking like a pack of ravenous wolves in the rocky bushland round the town, ready to ambush food convoys. Mr Da Silva has declared the town a disaster area and

appealed for help to the Pernambuco State government, after famished peasants—victims of a drought which has left areas without rain since September—streamed into Cupira in a desperate search for food.

What food was left in the town yesterday was packed into four cells at the gaol, under heavy military guard. Shops have been closed for the last three days, for fear that they would be sacked. The first "invasion” of Cupira (population 5000) came last Saturday when more than 1000 men, women and children, many of them in a state of collapse, drifted into the town, Mr Da Silva said. They formed themselves into an orderly queue stretching several times round the town square, where local authorities distributed rice, beans, meal and all the lunches stocked for Cupira’s schools.

Then they left. But on Thursday more than 5000 people—made desperate by hunger—streamed into Cupira; they were not as peaceful as the first group. Mr Da Silva said that he saw dozens of men and women faint in front of the local prefecture. Children propped themselves up against the walls of the building and then slowly slid to the ground, unconscious.