Las Luchas del Corazón

Famines - throughout at least the last century of our history - have not been caused by a lack of food. They have been caused by relative poverty. The economic resources were so inequitably distributed that the poor simply didn’t have enough money with which to buy the food that would’ve been available if they could have afforded to pay for it. That would be an example of Structural Violence.

Another example: in Africa and other areas - I’ll particularly focus on Africa - tens of millions of people are dying of AIDS. Why are they dying? It’s not because we don’t know how to treat AIDS. We have millions of people in the wealthy countries getting along remarkably well because they have the medicines that will treat it. The people in Africa who are dying of AIDS are not dying because of the HIV virus. They are dying because they don’t have the money with which to pay for the drugs that would keep them alive.

Gandhi saw this. He said: “The deadliest form of violence is poverty.” And that’s absolutely right. Poverty kills far more people than all the wars in history, more people than all the murderers in history, more than all the suicides in history. Not only does Structural Violence kill more people than all the Behavioral Violence put together, Structural Violence is also the main cause of Behavioral Violence.