Olhares de beneficiárias do programa bolsa família no município de Caarapó-MS. entre “favor” e “direito”, a luta por dignidade

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the Bolsa Família Program (PBF), as a State policy that aims to transfer income to overcome poverty and hunger in Brazil, analyzing its objectives, conditionalities and direct and/or indirect impacts on the beneficiary population. The Program was created in 2003 under the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Government. Therefore, we looked at bibliographic references that led us to understand the role of the capitalist State, more precisely in neoliberalism, in the deepening of wealth and poverty and how public and social policies are historically constituted in this economic model and, specifically, the PBF. We address the elements that make up the Program in question, the monetary amounts transferred, rules for granting and conditionalities. Furthermore, we searched for references that allowed us to understand the PBF, the characteristics of the households and the beneficiary population, more precisely, those responsible for the family, who in the PBF are preferably women, usually mothers, who are responsible for the information at the time. registration in the Cadastro Único, also assuming the benefit card. As a case study, we analyzed the municipality of Caarapó-MS and sought to understand the functioning of the PBF in the municipality, where the majority of benefits paid are intended for the indigenous population, the absolute majority living in the Tei'yí Kue Reserve, not randomly, but which are also distributed in peripheral and poor neighborhoods, as well as find poverty in the countryside. Thus, interviews were conducted with beneficiary women in the city of Caarapo-MS, seeking to obtain the beneficiaries' vision about the PBF. In this process, we heard their stories and got to know their struggles to raise their offspring and we realized, through their words, the role of the PBF, for the different generations of poor women with whom we dialogue, mostly with low education and qualifications, without opportunities to work, who started to live experiences of autonomy and dignity, through the income obtained through the Program. We can conclude that the Bolsa Família Program, regardless of the low values, brings objective and subjective benefits to the beneficiaries' lives, such as freedom to choose products, autonomy to leave abusive relationships, access to a bank account, microcredit, freedom in caring for the children, access to other programs and services, educational evolution, with access to school not only for their children, but also for some of them, in the medium and long term, not to mention the fight against malnutrition and reduction of infant mortality, through the monitoring of conditionalities health and education, and, indisputably, the fight against hunger and extreme poverty.