Chaco (Argentina): Hungry protesters, mostly indigenous people, raided a government food warehouse on Tuesday (October 28) in the poverty-stricken northern province of Chaco after their pleas for government aid fell on deaf ears.
Among Argentina's poorest provinces, Chaco sits close to Paraguay on Argentina's northern border. Nearly half of its one-million residents live in poverty and many of the indigenous residents live in extreme poverty.
Incited by protest leader Mercedes Sanchez, demonstrators stormed into a warehouse run by the government ministry of social development and hauled food into the street where trucks and bus pulled up to haul it away.
"They have a warehouse full of food while people are dying of hunger and this government doesn't do anything," Sanchez yelled as people sacked the warehouse.
Police arrived and aggressively kicked the raiders out of the warehouse, scattering them with the butts of rifles and rubber bullets. Five men and five women, Sanchez among them, were arrested and hauled away.
"There's too much hunger, too much hunger here in our province and especially here in 'impenetrable Chaco'," Sanchez said.
The 'impenetrable forest' in Chaco is thought to be the poorest area in the South American nation, where some 10,000 Toba Indians live in extreme poverty.
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