ABSTRACT:
The present study stems from the understanding that the history of hunger is a constitutive part of the history of Brazil, being the structuring of the colonial, slave-owning, and capitalist project that underpinned the formation of the country. Hunger, as a deliberate instrument of production, domination, and control of bodies, especially those of enslaved and impoverished populations, was mobilized as a mechanism of colonial torture and a weapon of capitalist regulation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Brazil. The objective of this study is to highlight the role of hunger as a mechanism of social control in the consolidation of the Brazilian national project, from a historical-dialectical materialist perspective. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, exploratory research, constructed through the analysis of social policies and a bibliographic review of primary and secondary sources on the history of hunger in Brazil and its conflicts within class society. 502 documents were identified in the consulted databases, of which 59 were selected after inclusion and exclusion criteria, composing the analytical corpus of the study. The selected works address the trajectory of public health as a field of political and democratic dispute, fundamental to the emergence of public policies to combat hunger. The results also indicate hunger as one of the primary mechanisms of operation of capital reproduction in Brazil, using impoverished bodies to ensure a cheap labor force capable of maintaining the current social order, as well as ensuring greater profit margins for the economic elites. Moreover, the research also indicates the fundamental role played by social movements and political struggles in building a social response to social inequalities, as hunger was one of the primary social ills, leading to the consolidation of public policies aimed at ensuring basic social rights.