Some 400 residents of Argentina's poorest province are gearing up for an all-out hunger strike to raise awareness about their dire situation, Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said Sunday. "La Quiaca once again stands up for the rights of the poor and marginalised through an extreme measure," the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner told reporters in Mar del Plata, Argentina's top beach resort on the Atlantic Ocean.
Esquivel said the hunger strikers would begin their fast Monday in La Quiaca city, in eastern Jujuy, to protest the lack of federal and local government attention to the province's social problems. The hunger strike, said the human rights and anti-poverty advocate, will last "until the final consequences."
He said Mar del Plata was chosen for the strike announcement to contrast the glitzy tourist center with Jujuy, where 30 percent of its 620,000 inhabitants "face extreme poverty ... hunger, and child malnutrition plagues many homes." The city is 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Buenos Aires capital.