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From: tos@psc70.UUCP (Dr.Schlesinger)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics
Subject: Re: The role of America in world hunger & red spread
Message-ID: <150@psc70.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 06:55:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: psc70.150
Posted: Thu Aug 15 06:55:21 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 03:44:58 EDT
References: <295@SCIRTP.UUCP> <10996@rochester.UUCP>, <143@unc.unc.UUCP>
Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH
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Xref: linus net.flame:10684 net.politics:9838


    
   Of course hunger & poverty couldn't be reduced in the direct sense
by stopping the use of tropical lands to grow crops for ourselves. The
people who were once growing their own food on those lands and were
driven off it by the huge agribusinesses or their own larger
landowners are now in the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City,
Guadelajara, Monterrey, etc. and will obviously not return to the land
that easily. That doesn't change the fact that they were once
"subsistence-level" peasants, i.e. people who didn't really take part
in the cash economy, but basically fed and clothed themselves. But
because we like bananas, and e.g. we like to eat tomatoes year-round
(something that was unheard of when I was a youngster in the 20's)
such people were either driven up into the hills trying to cultivate
rockpiles (and hence more amenable to recruitment by guerrilla bands)
or went to the nearest big city and squatted and built a shanty.

                                            Tom Schlesinger
                                            Plymouth State College
                                            Plymouth, NH 03256