Official Told Recipients of Anti-Poverty Program to Respond 'No' to Hunger Surveys Agencia EFE
go to original March 13, 2016

Samara Lopez, 7, plays outside her family home in a squatters village in Mexico City, Mexico. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A Mexican official urged recipients of anti-poverty assistance to indicate on two surveys that they had not suffered hunger in recent months, an audio recording uploaded to local media revealed.

Leobardo Hernandez, the Social Programs chief for Piedras Negras, a city in the northern state of Coahuila, on Tuesday instructed beneficiaries of the "Prospera" program to answer in surveys to be conducted by the Social Development Secretariat and the National Statistics Institute, or INEGI, that they had sufficient food.

In a passionate speech, Hernandez prepared an auditorium full of people to respond to different survey questions they would face, the recording, uploaded Friday, shows.

"Have you gone hungry over the past three months?" he asked, reading out the question. "No!" those in attendance responded in unison.

"Have any of your elderly relatives gone hungry?" he asked. "No!" they answered.

"Have you sometimes had to go without breakfast, lunch or dinner?" he asked. "No!" those in the auditorium shouted out once again.

The official then repeated the same questions and told the program beneficiaries that answering that they had suffered hunger in the region would mean that "Prospera" (formerly known as "Oportunidades") had been completely ineffectual.

Read the rest at Fox News Latino

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