The conservative face of Bolsa Família

Announced ten years ago as Lula's government's main program to combat poverty in Brazil, the Zero Hunger program failed to take off and was eventually succeeded by Bolsa Família.

A decade later, while authorities and PT militants sing the praises of the success of "the world's largest income transfer program," what we see in some of the country's poorest cities is that, despite improved living conditions, the poor population cannot survive with dignity on their own income.

In Guaribas, Piauí, where a delegation of Lula's ministers visited in February 2003 promising residents that they would soon experience a new reality, 87% of the 4.401 inhabitants are beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família program and have no other source of income to support themselves.

In ten years, the municipality has made progress in social indicators, it's true, but the objective living conditions of the population remain precarious. In Itinga, in northern Minas Gerais, another city visited by Lula and his ministers at the beginning of the last decade, the current situation is equally desolate.

According to the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, 2.194 of the 3.457 families registered in the Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger's registry receive Bolsa Família (a Brazilian social welfare program), but 31% of the municipality's population is illiterate, while 73% of people aged 10 or older have no schooling or have only completed part of their primary education. The per capita income, which was R$ 328,52 in 2000, is now no more than R$ 314,81.

Announced by the PT government as the pinnacle of social policies, Bolsa Família is neither progressive nor truly transformative.

On the contrary: the program reinforces the traditionally entrenched political bossism in various regions of the Brazilian interior, in addition to functioning as a scandalous electoral tool. It suffices to note that the highest percentage of government votes in the last elections was concentrated in the regions that received the most support.

In the 2010 election, Dilma Rousseff received enough votes to be elected in the first round in nine of the ten states where the program has the highest coverage.

Contrary to what the government's sycophants would have us believe, the criticism of the conservative face of the Bolsa Família program does not come from a fanciful "coup-mongering media" or the "reactionary right"—especially since the political bosses are all on Dilma's side, as they were with Lula, now dressed in the guise of neo-socialists.

In fact, the Brazilian population itself is already aware of the program's structural problems. According to data from a recent study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), 58,9% of the population disagrees, totally or partially, with the statement that Bolsa Família "lifts many people out of poverty." Whether in Guaribas, Itinga, or hundreds of other impoverished cities scattered throughout the country, the scenario is the same.

Hundreds of families escaped absolute poverty, but today, without concrete alternatives, they are condemned to inescapable poverty, sustained by the conservative functionality of a program that improves the present only to, in the end, leave everything exactly the same, compromising the future.