Garapa for the Masses: Creating Substance Out of Consuming Saccharine
“Two weeks, and still nothing,” Rosa sighs. Two weeks of no milk for herself, her two boys and the rest of the family. This scene resonates a driving theme through the rest of the film Garapa.
Garapa. A Brazilian term for raw sugar cane juice: something sweet, something dense with calories, but ultimately just that – saccharine. No vitamins, no minerals, no substance. To try and raise growing families predominantly on a diet of garapa understandably inflicts long-term strain on families in “developing countries” such as Brazil.
The film tells the story of Rosa, the family of a woman named Robertina who lives in Santa Rita, and the story of Lucia and her family, who live in favelas (slums) in Sao Joao. Both communities lie in Ceara, a northeast frontier region of Brazil and historically known as a backwater region (by even Brazilian standards). The families wait for monthly government payments via a “Zero Hunger” program to buy food for 10 to 12 days at a time.
Rosa’s husband at one point says, “Look, I am 28 years old and not once in my life have I eaten three meals in a single day.”
I also learned that as disconnected as Capitol Hill may be from the rest of the District of Columbia and the country at large, that optimism, transparency, accountability, innovation, responsibility, and community exists at the level of grassroots food systems. Such values provide the root base not only for healthy produce and stewardship, but healthy societies and healthy ecologies.
