From poor to empowered

from The Chicago Tribune

To deal with poverty, Latin American nations turn to experts: Women who run families

By Colin McMahon
Tribune foreign correspondent

VINA DEL MAR, Chile -- For Lucrecia Leiva, Rita de Cassia and Juanita Guzman, getting government aid is not just a matter of pocketing cash. It also brings responsibilities--and hope.

Unlike previous aid programs, this fresh approach to combating poverty in Latin America delivers cash instead of subsidized goods. Rather than demanding blind loyalty to any political party, it demands better parenting: Recipients must keep children in school, get them vaccinated and take them to the doctor regularly.

The goal is to foster family stability. The method is to require accountability and encourage initiative by putting money directly into the hands of women who are true experts on poverty. So far, results are encouraging.

"It's like everything has changed," said Leiva, a single mother of five who, thanks in part to cash she receives from the Chilean government, now runs a snack shop in Vina del Mar and has a son and a daughter in college. "Everything has turned around thanks to this push they gave me."

With President Bush touring Latin America, poverty is on the minds of more than just poor families like Leiva's. Bush departed for the region Thursday promising new aid programs and acknowledging that U.S.-backed market policies have failed to significantly reduce poverty by themselves, even during times of economic plenty.

"The fact is that tens of millions of our brothers and sisters to the south have seen little improvement in their daily lives, and this has led some to question the value of democracy," Bush said before leaving on his trip. Too many Latin Americans, the president added, "remain stuck in poverty and shut off from the promises of the new century."

Yet, for millions of Latin Americans, an anti-poverty approach developing over the last decade has brought promise where little existed before.

Leiva in Chile, Cassia in Brazil and Guzman in Mexico are benefiting from direct cash transfer programs that are changing the way governments attack one of Latin America's most entrenched social ills. The approach has won praise from the World Bank and support from both ends of the political spectrum.

The premise is simple: The women get money. But unlike traditional welfare plans in other countries that critics say create a culture of dependence, these programs have strict eligibility requirements designed to help the recipients and move them off the rolls once they no longer qualify.

And the sums handed out, experts say, are enough to help poor families but not enough to create a disincentive to work. In Brazil, for example, the average monthly payment is less than $60.

Officials credit the programs with helping ease poverty.

Chile has slashed poverty rates from 40 percent in 1990 to less than 18 percent today. Brazil cut poverty by 19 percent from 2003 to 2006, according to government figures. And in Mexico, overall poverty registered 35 percent in 2005, but extreme poverty has fallen from 24 percent in 2000 to less than 18 percent today.

But poverty is a complex phenomenon. Some of the recent progress can be attributed to general growth in Latin American economies. In other cases, the money sent home by relatives in the United States and Europe also has helped.

What can be said for sure is that the programs--Solidarity in Chile, Family Fund in Brazil and Opportunities in Mexico--have significantly expanded in recent years. Such programs now reach more than 16 million families across Latin America, in mountain villages, farming towns and urban slums. A decade ago, such aid recipients numbered in the thousands.

In addition, Brazil and Mexico report a dramatic increase in school enrollment and childhood vaccinations. Both countries say they have raised primary school attendance to 96 percent of eligible children, and figures are up since 2000 for middle school and high school as well.

Supporters predict deeper benefits in the long term: Today's children are getting more nourishment, health care and education than the last generation did. They are growing up better prepared to take advantage of economic growth, which in the past has often left the poor behind.

The programs are designed to avoid the old traps of Latin American aid programs by limiting corruption and cutting out the local political bosses who exploit government aid. And they empower women by placing control in the hands of mothers.

No one claims that the programs are a sudden fix for a problem that has frustrated Latin America for decades. The mismanagement, corruption, inadequate health care and sub-par education systems that feed poverty in the region will require more profound remedies.

But other countries have noticed the progress. South Africa, Nigeria and Mozambique are among several African nations using lessons from Brazil in building their own anti-poverty programs. Bangladesh, the Philippines and other Asian nations have started or are planning conditional aid transfers as well.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, a neoconservative who served as deputy defense secretary in the Bush administration, called the Family Fund "a real success" during a visit to Brazil in late 2005.

Under the programs, the money gets put to work in the very communities of the poor. Small businesses are sprouting, sometimes started by recipients, because entrepreneurs are confident that even their poorest neighbors will have a steady supply of funds.

`I was desperate'

The cliche holds that it is better to teach a man to fish than to just give him a fish to eat. But governments are finding that giving a woman fish to feed her family raises the whole family's odds of success.

"How could I have done this alone?" Leiva asked, gazing around at a recent addition to her still humble home in Vina del Mar.

Vina del Mar is known as the "Garden City" on Chile's Pacific Coast. But Leiva's neighborhood is far in every meaningful way from the tourist capital's beaches and hotels, clubs and casinos. Her hilly street is a jumble of low-slung homes, many of them works in progress.

"I was desperate, crying all the time, living in depression, low self-esteem," Leiva said in a breathless rush. "Now I'm happy to be working. I'm making money. I'm in charge.

"I get up in the morning and it's: `Who wants bread with cheese? Who wants bread with something else?' Before we had no bread, not with cheese, not with anything."

Leiva, 49, named the shop where she sells staples, snacks and refreshments after her granddaughter, Lily.

Five years ago, there was no store, just a cart to haul goods to sell goods in the market.

"We were all living on top of one another," Leiva said. The family shared a room and one bed, with neither a proper kitchen nor a bathroom. One night a pot of boiling water tipped into the bed and burned one of her sons.

Now, behind the store, the family has beds for the kids, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room.

Leiva gets more help on more fronts than Cassia in Brazil or Guzman in Mexico. Not just cash, but also intensive intervention by social workers. She gets advice on her business and personal finances and counsel on family matters. She has access to government micro-credit.

Chile's economy has had the most robust and consistent growth of any Latin American nation over the last two decades. That growth drove some of Chile's success in combating poverty.

But even conservative analysts now acknowledge that while consistent economic growth is crucial in raising standards of living, other measures are needed to lift up the poorest in Latin America.

In his speech Monday to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Bush announced a new Latin America aid initiative, albeit modest in dollar terms. It includes $75 million for education and $385 million to promote home ownership for low-income families, plus help in constructing a health-care training facility for Central America.

One goal of the aid initiative, and of Bush's trip, is to counter the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other leftist leaders who have come to power by promising to champion the neglected poor.

In Brazil, economist Marcelo Neri of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro said the country's Family Fund, or Bolsa Familia, is more effective at easing poverty than raising the minimum wage.

Neri said Brazil should expand Family Fund to provide cash incentives for families to get their children into early education and keep their teenagers in school longer. The Chilean and Mexican programs already do those things.

"Bolsa Familia is much better than the old programs," said Neri, noting that it focuses on the young.

"This is a good strategy, so why not stick with it for a longer part of a person's life?" Neri asked.

Critics of Family Fund include political opponents of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who accuse him of expanding the program to curry favor with voters. They say eligibility standards need to be strengthened and safeguards against fraud and waste better enforced.

Yet most of the debate is over how Family Fund should be run, not whether it should exist.

Cassia, 43, was enrolled in Bolsa Familia last year after neighbors in the Atlantic Coast city of Lauro de Freitas urged authorities to check on the children. A visit to the family's home showed why.

Cradled in Cassia's arm, 11-month-old Ester looked listless, almost stupefied. Her dark eyes were blank, her skin sallow, her belly bloated, just like that of her 2-year-old brother, Bruno.

Five other boys goofed around in the yard, playing tag, scuffling over an old telephone, singing the theme song from a nighttime soap opera. A small television was the only glimpse of modern convenience, and it was on the blink.

Cassia's home is two rooms on the ground floor of a squat cement building. The building is actually a giant water storage tank, and the rooms that Cassia's family call home were once the living quarters and supply shed for the security guard. They rest under thousands of gallons of water.

Cassia and her husband, factory worker Inacio Silva Vidal, have 10 children. Nine of the kids sleep with them in the main room. That's 11 people on one full mattress on a cement floor in a room that measures about 9 feet by 14 feet.

Cassia said she was glad to have the money from Family Fund, that it helped her buy meat and fish for the family meals and clothe the kids.

But in an indication of how little poor Brazilians expect of the state, she expressed puzzlement over why the government got involved. After all, she told officials, none of her children had died.

Cassia said doctors were concerned about baby Ester. They thought she might have parasites. They prescribed medicines and nutritional supplements. She had fattened up some, Cassia said, raising distressing questions about how poor Ester must have looked before.

As for the brood of boys, Cassia said, "It's important they stay in school." But the boys could produce only one school textbook in the whole house. "Sometimes you have to fight to hold out hope," Cassia said.

Children faint from hunger

Despite Cassia's dire situation, poverty can be even more extreme in the Brazilian countryside. The poverty rate, about 36 percent in 2005, according to UN figures, is higher in rural areas than cities by as much as 20 percentage points.

"I remember visiting a school and watching children faint during assembly because they were so hungry," said Lourdinha Lobo Ramos, the secretary of labor and social development for the city of Lauro de Freitas. "How can you expect children to learn if they cannot stand up from hunger?"

Family Fund, like Solidarity in Chile and Opportunities in Mexico, is based on need.

Recipients are given bank accounts and, depending on their location, cards for automated teller machines. How they manage their money is their own affair.

"Bolsa Familia provides dignity," said Moema Gramacho, the mayor of Lauro de Freitas. "States like Bahia, particularly in the run-up to elections, have had a clientelism, a dependence on the local politicians.

"You would receive some awful food that you could not choose. It was humiliating.

"Now we don't live owing favors," Gramacho said. "The woman of the home has her own [program] card. She is the actor in the market. She is going to choose which beans she wants to buy. She is going to decide whether to have meat or more milk."

The programs have also changed the role of women, not just in their families but in their communities as well.

Inspirational words

On a hot and heavy morning in the fishing village of El Papayo on Mexico's Pacific Coast, the people of a dozen surrounding communities came to collect their Opportunities payments. Aside from the bureaucrats and security officers, there were perhaps three men in a crowd of more than 200 people.

Opportunities officials reminded the women that they could be dropped from the rolls if they failed to keep their children in school and take them to the doctor. They warned the women about having proper documents and reporting any hint of fraud or corruption.

Then Alejandro Samano Zapata, a regional supervisor, addressed the crowd. "How are we going to finish off poverty?" Samano asked.

"Work," one woman responded.

"Study," shouted another.

"I'm glad to hear you answer this way," Samano said, "because we would not do away with poverty even if the money you are given were doubled or tripled. We are not going to do it with money alone but with the efforts that each of you makes, saving, studying, overcoming, educating your children."

The vast majority of recipients are women, though single men running a household can also get payments. Officials are not shy about saying why they steer the money to the women: Too much aid from previous programs, usually delivered to the males in the family, ended up in cantinas and other places where it did no good.

"Women are exponentially better at getting the most out of the money," said Cecilia Perez Diaz, executive director of the Solidarity and Social Investment Fund in Chile. "But they are also more efficient in the micro-economy. They are less daring with their investments and more responsible in servicing their debts and fulfilling their commitments."

The Chileans report that the payments, and the responsibility that goes with the payments, have helped women who were victims of discrimination or domestic abuse stand up for themselves. Even in traditionally male-dominated areas of Mexico and Brazil, women have won new respect for making the family's life better.

"Guerrero is a pretty rough state, but even here the men respect the money of the women," Samano said. "Before a woman's place was in the home. But now she is in touch with the doctors, the teachers. She is making decisions in town."

Juanita Guzman, 30, looks at the four children in her home, three she bore with her husband and an older girl from her husband's first marriage, and sees progress.

Hilda, the oldest, has just finished junior high, and she will keep getting a monthly government stipend for staying in high school. Guzman's youngest daughter, 3-year-old Citlali, has put on weight, pleasing the doctor whom Guzman sees as part of the program.

But the family still sleeps crammed in the main room of their home, a rickety mix of adobe and brick and wood and thatch. The roof keeps the rain out, but the sewage still runs out through the yard and into the dirt streets of El Papayo. And the wages from her husband's janitor's job remain measly.

If not for the $35 a month the family receives from Opportunities for food, plus nearly $100 in the education stipend and other aid payments, things would be harder, Guzman said.

"The big difference is in food and education," said Guzman, who came from a fishing family that suffered when the fishing was bad. "I finished junior high school. But there was no money to continue."

A $1,600 difference

That relatively so little money--Guzman receives about $1,600 a year--can make such a big difference is a major selling point for the programs.

A study in Brazil showed that government corruption cost the country more every year than Bolsa Familia.

And in Chile, where payments are higher and the Solidarity program is more comprehensive, the monthly aid is still not enough to replace a family's monthly wages.

"Never do the transfers reach a level that generates a strong dependence or creates a disincentive to work," said Patricia Jara of the Solidarity program in Santiago.

Lucrecia Leiva said it took her six months to come out of a depression that she links to her worsening poverty. The recovery started when she began receiving help through a part of the wider Solidarity program called the Bridge fund. For the first time in a long time, Leiva saw hope.

Social workers visited her home, helping her get identity documents she lacked, making sure she had access to the social services that all Chileans are entitled to by law.

Then, as she got more confident, Leiva was able to open her store with the aid and move her family.

Now she wishes sometimes that her college-age kids were around more to lend a hand and tend the cash register. But then she remembers where she was, and where they are.

"I don't lack for food anymore," Leiva said. "And if my kids cannot help me because they are in the university, I say, it doesn't matter. I am happy. And they say that one day they will pay for me.