The at-risk-of-poverty rate remains the highest in the country. There’s no point in saying that it has fallen in 2023 when almost a quarter of the people living in the Azores are still on the brink of hunger and bankruptcy. There’s no point in politicians announcing that they’re managing to bring the numbers down when we’re talking about sleeping out in the open and when shopping means going into debt. 
Poverty, the risk of poverty, and the harmful consequences for our society result from decades of interference. Still, they are also the result of a strategy to perpetuate the lower classes. Populism is interested in keeping a slice of the population on the brink of misfortune to sell votes in exchange for support for medicine or an illusory reduction in the retirement age, which may well only arrive on St. Never’s Day in the afternoon.
Let’s go back to the beginning of last year. The writer Joel Neto announced a book that warned of the reality of island poverty. Jénifer, or a French Princess (published in English by Bruma Publications and Letras Lavadas). An interesting novella about the consequences of living in poverty in an imaginary neighborhood could be one of many that fill the reality of our archipelago. An encounter between the gaze of an increasingly elitist middle class and an innocent child, a victim of being born in the wrong house, who just wanted to be happy.
There are many more such cases than we would like to imagine. Joel was also a victim of a systemic policy sweeping the poor under the carpet. He was hurt by some unfortunate attacks, but he held his own and maintained his stance of denouncing the ruined reality of some parts of our beautiful islands.
It should be emphasized against friends and comrades from other times. Paulo Jorge Ribeiro’s recent attitude was not dissimilar in an opinion article published in the Diário Insular. I can only praise him for not giving up against the extremes of economic and moral neoliberalism. We’re talking about neoliberalism. 
More than a year after Jénifer, a report by the Regional Statistics Service of the Azores refers to the 24.2% of people at risk of poverty, announcing that there has been a reduction of around 2%, which is like saying that there has been almost no reduction and that we are still a long way from the national average. And even that average is not famous, nor should it be a source of pride. All it takes is one family at risk of poverty for it to be too much. And that starts in the management offices.
Politically speaking, neoliberalism is a cancer that is spreading through the upper echelons of power, preventing truly useful positions from being taken for the development of an egalitarian society. It is from these tumors that immorality spreads to education and culture, promoting a separation of classes, where some can have everything and others should have nothing. This distinction is being built in health, with the constant talk that we need to review the national system. Yes, we do! We need to give it the conditions to serve everyone who needs it.
Poverty is a disease, one that should not be cured so that expensive medication can continue to be sold. The parties of the current government are publicly fighting for those most in need. Still, they meet behind closed doors with the big businessmen to organize a strategy that keeps a good part of the Azorean women and men tied to the shackle, which is the market and the famous invisible hand.
The coalition wants to convince the archipelago with porridge and cakes, but the plans they claim to be preparing should already be in place and are unknown. What was known was her stance towards those most in need, voting in favor of the sinister measure of Mr. Ventura’s party to prevent the poorest from having equal access to their children’s education, building a new class society from birth, through nursery school, to the premature death of those who live under the risk of that 24.2%.
I don’t know Jénifer, but I know too many Jéniferes. I grew up on an island with problems of economic and social equality. I’ve encountered many other similar realities on all the islands of our Azores. I see it increasing, with cancer spreading among us. The ties that run us want it to. But we must not forget to vote and to keep fighting because we must not forget the black song and know that this is not the way we want to go.

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives in Terceira Island, Azores. She is a regular contributing writer for several Azorean newspapers.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL)