In Argentina, where roughly two in every five are below the poverty line, soup kitchens, or “comedores comunitarios”, feed people by the millions.

Soup kitchens in slums and popular districts run by the people who live there grew in the years leading up to the 2001 crisis. In the following years, national and provincial administrations started keeping registers of them, vowing to provide them with food products.

Today, neighborhood groups, sports clubs, churches, and social movements finance 34,782 soup kitchens employing 134,449 people, some getting paid and others working pro-bono, according to official numbers. The cooks are overwhelmingly women who fail to get fair compensation –if they get any at all–- for their work.

Grassroots organization La Poderosa is trying to change that.

On Monday, national deputy Natalia Zaracho from Patria Grande – a left-wing party part of the ruling coalition Frente de Todos– presented a bill seeking to guarantee salaries for community cooks working in soup kitchens. The project was authored by community cooks of La Poderosa, who are now pushing for its approval and have invited other social movements to join efforts.

The bill was sent to three commissions, where it now will be studied before being discussed in Congress. Besides Zaracho, deputies of the left-wing Frente de Izquierda alliance, the Frente de Todos and Margarita Stolbizer –from Juntos por el Cambio– signed the bill.

“Make it the law, comrades”

Community cooks held a collective meal outside Congress on Monday as a way of showing support – called an ollazo, a sort of pot-a-thon if you will. Inside a makeshift tent, they gave rice stew for free to their comrades. Signs and aprons revealed the names of the comedores from all over the country – Corazones Abiertos (Open Hearts), Pancitas Llenas (Full Little Tummies), Soñadores Unidos (United Dreamers.)

Inside, activists gave wooden spoons to those who entered the conference room. In front of the stage, three cooking pots with the words Salarios necesarios (necessary salaries) pasted on them were laying on the ground.

“This is a historic day for us,” Zaracho said. “A lot of our comrades literally died feeding those in need.”

La Poderosa member Ramona Medina was one of them – she never stopped working despite having no running water in her home, and died of COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic.

Next to Zaracho, Claudia Albornoz, a La Poderosa community leader in Santa Fe, took the floor.

“In the absence of government policies, there are neighborhood policies,” she said. “We are struggling for more rights, and know this isn’t crazy – we calculated the cost, and it’s only 0.2% of the country’s GDP.”

Community cooks from all over the country listened closely. In addition to paid wages, the bill contemplates maternity leave, a thirteenth salary known as aguinaldo that’s paid in two installments, health insurance, and a severance package for cooks who are fired.

The cooks that currently receive a paycheck get the money through the Potenciar Trabajo welfare program, which pays AR$44,000 (US$180 at the official rate, US$93 at the MEP rate) for a shift of at least six hours a day, according to the cooks.

Susana Zaccaro, a community leader in Córdoba, also spoke. “A pat on the back is not enough for us,” she said. “We are not invisible anymore, no longer the ‘voiceless’ – we have a voice and hands we used to write a bill.”

“Those of us who live in the slums are making history,” she said. “Make it the law, comrades.”

“The importance of community networks for children living in these conditions is very clear,” Luisa Brumana, representative of UNICEF Argentina, which is backing the bill, said at the event.  “They are not only demanding economic recognition, but a general acknowledgment as well.”

Representatives of other social movements that back the initiative, as well as Romina del Plá, a deputy of the Partido Obrero left-wing party, who announced is voting for the project, also spoke.

After the presentation, Zaccaro told the Herald that Unicef donates food to the organization and that the national government owes them some “900 tons of food.”

“From the small income they receive, cooks have to buy onions, tomatoes, chicken wings,” Zaccaro told the Herald.

The women went back to the ollazo to join their comrades. Some of them wielded wooden spoons, others used them to hit cooking pots, all of them jumping and chanting: “Come and see, come and see, we are the cooks fighting for our bill.”