O Pão e a Faca

"During the great famine of the spring of 1764, people went off to the baker's with long knives inside their shirts for the killing and maiming needed to get a small ration of bread."
(...) "Foreign supplies of korn had brought back the acceptable level of destitution. The poor were again cavorting with tambourines and full-throated songs, but many had kept the long knives which they'd worn to scout for bread and now murdered each other more often for the ordinary, civil reasons."
Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

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