Bolsonaro backtracks from claim there are no hungry people in Brazil
▶ President cited lack of thin people in the streets as apparent proof that populists are spreading ‘a big lie’
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday said there was no hunger in the country, citing the lack of undernourished poor people in the streets as proof.
Speaking to foreign journalists, Mr Bolsonaro blamed “populists” for propagating “a big lie” that some of Brazil’s 209 million people did not have enough to eat.
“There is no hunger,” the farright leader said, noting Brazil “was rich in practically every type of crop”.
“You don’t see poor people in the street with bone-thin bodies like in other countries.
“To say that there is hunger in Brazil is a populist discourse to try to win popular sympathy, nothing more than that.”
But after widespread coverage of his remarks and social media criticism, Mr Bolsonaro backtracked, saying that “Brazilians eat poorly. And some people are hungry.
“And that is unacceptable in a country as rich as ours, with as much arable land as we have and more than enough water.”
But “we have diet problems here in Brazil. We have them, it’s not my fault, and that was here before I was,” he said.
Often referred to as the “Trump of the tropics”, Mr Bolsonaro criticised the reporting as “fake news”.
Latest figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation show 5.1 million Brazilians are “undernourished”.
But the proportion of the population suffering had fallen to less than 2.5 per cent between 2008 and 2010, compared with 11.9 per cent in the 1999 to 2001 period.
The FAO attributed the decline to social welfare programmes introduced by the left-wing government of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, including the Zero Hunger campaign.
In a recent interview with
O Globo newspaper, Rodrigo Maia, the powerful head of the lower chamber of Congress, accused Mr Bolsonaro of showing no concern for the poor.
Mr Bolsonaro said he was sceptical of reports of increased deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. He is suspicious of foreign interest in the rainforest, and regards control of the region as an issue of national sovereignty.
“With all the devastation that you are accusing us of doing … the Amazon region would already have been extinguished,” he said.
However, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, satellite data last month shows Amazon rainforest deforestation had increased 88 per cent compared to the same period one year earlier.
Mr Bolsonaro said he has asked the INPE head “to come to Brasilia to explain the data that was released to the press”.
The president also criticised as “disinformation” news that Brazilian farmers are heavy users of toxic pesticides – an issue that could create problems for a free-trade agreement between the South American Mercosur trade bloc and the EU.