Food Distribution: Human Right, Charity or Marxism?

Representations of the National Food Programme (1983-1989)

Abstract

This article analyses the representations constructed around the National Food Programme (PAN) (1983-1989), whose aim was to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the post-dictatorship period. It describes the positions of different political and social actors on the PAN: government officials, political parties, the main media and police intelligence in the Province of Buenos Aires. The representations of these actors show that the state's social intervention in the post-dictatorship period was perceived in different ways: as charity, political clientelism, corruption and as a threat to social order. Even so, the government and experts linked to these policies tried to begin to install the concept that social benefits were a human right that had been violated by the dictatorship.