New Mexico Could Be the Poster Child for Hunger in America

The grocers at Halona Plaza, in the heart of the Zuni Indian Pueblo, spotted him some nights, rummaging through trash cans in the gravel lot behind the store. He was scrawny and not much taller than the bins he scavenged.

He was 7 years old and in search of his supper.

His name was Marty, the son of alcoholic parents who spent what little money they had on liquor. His only meals were the free breakfast and lunch served at school. At night he went hungry, but for the scraps.

Now 15, Marty lives with his sister but is “still struggling,” a social worker says. Struggling with school and his health. Struggling to survive without having to eat trash.

Marty is but one of millions of Americans struggling to find enough food to live active, healthy lives.

A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that 10 million families, or 9.7% of U.S. households, had inadequate access to food from 1996 to 1998. New Mexico topped the list, with 15.1% of its households, or 101,000 families, experience inadequate nutrition.

The findings are particularly discouraging, food bank operators say, in light of the nation’s thriving economy and low unemployment rate.

“If Americans knew the extent of hunger in this country, they would be shocked,” says Deborah Leff, president of America’s Second Harvest, which distributes meals to 189 food banks nationwide. “They don’t believe that in a country so rich so many people can be suffering.”

*

It’s a typical weekday afternoon at the New Mexico Human Services Department in Gallup, an hour’s drive north of the Zuni Pueblo and the hub of McKinley County. The lobby is packed with women, most of them American Indians, filling out paperwork while their babies crawl on the cold tile.

Diana Spencer, a Navajo, sits off to one side, her 1-year-old son, Belson, cooing in her lap. The 28-year-old mother of three is applying for food stamps for the second time. “I didn’t want to come in, but my mom made me,” she says, a look of shame clouding her brown eyes.

Four years ago she and her husband were laid off from a local jewelry store. She found a sales job elsewhere, at a salary of $700 a month, but her husband, a stone cutter, is still looking for work.

With $171 a month in food stamps, Mrs. Spencer can provide three small meals a day for her family. Without it, she and her husband skip meals, and her children eat only potatoes and tortillas.

“We try to work,” she explains, “but it doesn’t cover everything. At least now we get a complete meal, with meat and vegetables.”

Among America’s hungry communities, McKinley County could be the poster child.

Located amid the rolling hills and red rock buttes of northwestern New Mexico, the county lies in the heart of Indian country, encompassing a chunk of the Navajo Reservation as well as the Zuni and Ramah Navajo reservations.

Indians comprise 72% of the county’s 67,558 residents and are primarily self-employed, making jewelry, rugs and pottery. It is an economy rooted in tradition but plagued by poverty.

With a per capita income of $11,869, the county is one of New Mexico’s poorest. The 1998 unemployment rate of 8.2% was almost double last year’s national rate of 4.5%.

And, not surprisingly, the county has the highest food stamp recipiency rate in the state: 22.5%, or 15,193 people.

While poverty is the No. 1 indicator of whether a community is threatened with hunger, McKinley County and others in New Mexico face additional challenges, says Leff of Second Harvest.

“There are a lot of economically marginalized people in that region: Native Americans on reservations, a lot of immigrants, a higher population of elderly,” she says, noting the same factors contribute to high hunger rates in other Southwestern states, including Arizona and Texas.

Welfare reform also has significantly reduced food stamp rolls nationwide while cutting benefits to thousands of legal immigrants, Leff says.

But in McKinley County, there are still other reasons for hunger. It could be alcohol or neglect, as in Marty’s case. Or unemployment, as with the Spencer family. Those factors are less obvious; they often lie buried deep inside the homes and hearts of those who are suffering.

*

Lunchtime is popular at the Na’nizhoozhi Center in Gallup, an alcoholic treatment center that is the top client of the local food bank, serving up to 14,000 meals a month.

In a crowded cafeteria, 38-year-old Marvin, a homeless Navajo and a center regular, eats scoops of beef stroganoff and green beans from a tray as he describes how he eats on the street.

“Wendy’s has all-you-can-eat beans for $1.05, so I eat as much beans as I can,” he says, pausing for a gulp of black coffee. “Sometimes I will Dumpster-dive at Church’s. I get all the munchies I can.”

At Pizza Hut, he tells them he’s broke and passing through town. They give him a free pie.

At McDonald’s, he finds a used cup and helps himself to the coffee. At closing time, they might relinquish a Big Mac or two.

“Sometimes I drink so much that I don’t feel hungry,” Marvin admits. “But I appreciate this place. If it wasn’t for this place, I’d probably be dead.”

*

Rose Johnson is on her way home after another day at Gallup’s Frances Adult Care center. As she rides along in the company van, she clutches a plastic bag to her chest. Inside is a sandwich, she’s not sure what kind, and some cookies--probably the only dinner she’ll eat on this night.

Johnson, 35, is a blind diabetic who lives with her sister and five nieces and nephews in a two-room house on the Navajo Reservation. In one room are three mattresses stacked on cinder blocks. The other is outfitted with a wood-burning stove, a refrigerator and a barrel filled with drinking water.

The refrigerator holds only a block of cheddar cheese and a few cans of grapefruit juice, all wrapped in the generic labels of the government’s commodities program.

Johnson receives $500 a month in federal assistance, but it goes to her sister, who cooks for her some nights. “There’s only one thing we have--potatoes,” Johnson grumbles. “I get tired of it.”

During the week she eats breakfast and lunch at Frances, which sends her home each day with a sandwich. “On the weekends we don’t know what happens,” says Frances executive director Allan Crane. “Some of them would go hungry. A lot of them would.”

*

On a driving tour of the Zuni Pueblo, Olivia Nastacio, an outreach worker at the Women, Infants and Children food program, points out the homes of the community’s most desperate citizens.

In one cement structure lives a family of 26, half on food stamps, half on commodities. Still, Nastacio says as she goes by, “they don’t have enough food.”

Down the road is the elderly woman who was left to care for her four grandchildren when their alcoholic mother ran off. Nastacio recalls dropping by one day to learn from her that her Social Security check had been stolen and the cupboards were bare. “She had no food--nothing. Just a can of commodity lard.”

About 1,000 of the reservation’s 10,000 residents receive food vouchers from WIC; 1,693 receive commodities; all 1,932 schoolchildren are eligible for free breakfasts and lunches; and still others are on food stamps.

With all of the available services, social workers acknowledge hunger should not be a problem. Then they remember Marty, and his suppers of scraps. To those who don’t believe the problem remains, WIC dietitian Alice Jones issues a challenge: “Come visit.”