B1 · Intermediate
9 min
conflictfood securityhumanitarian crisisafrica
Blow Up the Market, Starve the City
Once muertos y un mercado vacío
A drone strike hit a civilian market in North Kordofan, Sudan, killing eleven people. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why targeting a market is not just an act of violence but an attack on how an entire community eats.
Un dron atacó un mercado en el norte de Sudán y mató a once personas. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre por qué destruir un mercado no es solo violencia, sino también una forma de atacar la alimentación de toda una comunidad.
7 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| mercado | market | El mercado del pueblo es el lugar donde la gente compra su comida cada semana. |
| soler | to tend to, to usually do | Suelo comprar verduras frescas en el mercado los sábados. |
| desplazado | displaced (person) | Hay millones de personas desplazadas en Sudán por la guerra. |
| hambre | hunger, famine | La guerra destruyó los mercados y causó mucha hambre en la región. |
| acceso | access | El problema no es la cantidad de comida, sino el acceso a ella. |
| humanitario | humanitarian | Las organizaciones humanitarias intentan llevar comida a las zonas de conflicto. |
| destruir | to destroy | La guerra destruyó muchos campos agrícolas en el norte del país. |
Eleven people were killed yesterday when a drone hit a market in North Kordofan, Sudan.
Not a military base.
Not a convoy.
A market.
Sí, y un mercado en esa parte de Sudán no es un supermercado moderno.
Yes, and a market in that part of Sudan is not a modern supermarket.
Es el lugar donde la gente compra casi toda su comida.
It is the place where people buy almost all their food.
Which means this is not just an atrocity.
It is an attack on the food supply of an entire area.
And that distinction matters enormously.
Exacto.
Exactly.
North Kordofan es una región muy grande, con mucha gente que vive en el campo.
North Kordofan is a very large region, with many people living in the countryside.
Y para ellos, el mercado del pueblo es esencial.
And for them, the town market is essential.
Let me just set the scene for listeners who haven't been following Sudan closely.
The civil war started in April 2023.
Two factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces on one side, the Rapid Support Forces on the other.
And it has been, by almost any measure, catastrophic.
Es una guerra muy violenta.
It is a very violent war.
Millones de personas salieron de sus casas.
Millions of people left their homes.
Y muchas regiones de Sudán tienen un problema grave de hambre ahora.
And many regions of Sudan now have a serious hunger problem.
The UN declared famine conditions in parts of Sudan last year.
Which is actually a technical threshold, not just a loose description.
Famine means people are dying of starvation, measurably, now.
Y atacar un mercado en ese contexto es diferente.
And attacking a market in that context is different.
No es solo matar a once personas.
It is not just killing eleven people.
Es destruir un lugar donde la comunidad consigue su comida cada semana.
It is destroying a place where the community gets its food every week.
Nobody has claimed this strike.
The drone question is murky.
Both sides in the Sudanese conflict have used drones.
And attribution is incredibly difficult to pin down.
Bueno, pero la pregunta de quién lo hizo es importante.
Well, but the question of who did it is important.
El RSF, las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido, tiene una historia muy mala en Kordofan.
The RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, has a very bad history in Kordofan.
Atacaron civiles muchas veces en esa región.
They attacked civilians many times in that region.
The RSF evolved out of the Janjaweed militias.
Which, for anyone old enough to remember 2004, were the groups accused of atrocities in Darfur.
Same roots, different name, and now with better equipment.
Sí.
Yes.
Y ahora tienen drones.
And now they have drones.
Eso es nuevo y es muy peligroso para la población civil.
That is new and it is very dangerous for the civilian population.
When I was covering conflicts in the nineties and early 2000s, markets were already targets.
But you needed gunmen to get there.
A drone changes the calculus completely.
You can hit a market from fifty kilometers away, with almost no risk to yourself.
Y el mercado es siempre un lugar de mucha gente.
And the market is always a place with many people.
Si un dron ataca cuando hay más personas, el daño es mayor.
If a drone attacks when there are more people, the damage is greater.
Es una estrategia terrible pero efectiva.
It is a terrible but effective strategy.
Let's go back a level.
Because Sudan's relationship with food insecurity is not just a product of this war.
There's a much longer history here.
Sí.
Yes.
Sudán tiene mucha tierra agrícola buena, especialmente en el norte y el centro del país.
Sudan has a lot of good agricultural land, especially in the north and center of the country.
Históricamente, el país producía mucho cereal, mucho sorgo.
Historically, the country produced a lot of grain, a lot of sorghum.
Tenía comida para exportar.
It had food to export.
Which makes the famine all the more staggering.
This is not a country without resources.
This is a country whose resources have been systematically looted or destroyed.
Exacto.
Exactly.
La guerra destruyó los campos, destruyó los caminos, y destruyó los mercados.
The war destroyed the fields, destroyed the roads, and destroyed the markets.
Sin mercados, los agricultores no pueden vender su comida.
Without markets, farmers cannot sell their food.
Y sin esa venta, no pueden comprar lo que necesitan.
And without that sale, they cannot buy what they need.
There's a phrase economists use: market integration.
The idea that food gets from where it's grown to where it's needed through a chain of transactions.
Break the market, break the chain.
Es que la gente no piensa en esto.
The thing is, people don't think about this.
Pensamos que el hambre viene solo cuando no hay comida en la tierra.
We think hunger comes only when there is no food in the ground.
Pero muchas veces hay comida, pero la gente no puede llegar a ella.
But many times there is food, but people cannot reach it.
Amartya Sen made exactly that argument.
He won the Nobel Prize partly for demonstrating that famines are almost never about absolute food shortage.
They're about who has access to food and who doesn't.
Y en Sudán ahora, el acceso es el problema principal.
And in Sudan now, access is the main problem.
Las organizaciones humanitarias no pueden entrar en muchas zonas.
Humanitarian organizations cannot enter many areas.
El camino está cerrado, o es demasiado peligroso.
The road is closed, or it is too dangerous.
I want to stay on the market question for a minute.
Because in conflict zones, markets are remarkable things.
They keep operating under extraordinary pressure.
I've seen markets running in the middle of active fighting zones, because people needed to eat and sellers needed income.
El mercado es también un lugar social.
The market is also a social place.
La gente habla, intercambia noticias, sabe qué pasa en el pueblo.
People talk, exchange news, know what is happening in the town.
Cuando destruyes un mercado, destruyes más que la economía.
When you destroy a market, you destroy more than the economy.
There's a word for this in conflict studies: sociocide.
The deliberate destruction of the social fabric.
Not just killing people but dismantling the structures that let communities function.
Mira, en España tenemos los mercados municipales, los mercados de barrio, y para muchas personas mayores, ir al mercado es lo más importante del día.
Look, in Spain we have municipal markets, neighborhood markets, and for many older people, going to the market is the most important part of the day.
No solo por la comida, sino por la comunidad.
Not just for the food, but for the community.
My daughter's mother-in-law does that.
Every morning in Madrid, to the same three stalls, same vendors, same conversation.
She's been doing it for forty years.
Claro.
Of course.
Y en Kordofan, en los pueblos pequeños de África, el mercado semanal es aún más importante.
And in Kordofan, in the small towns of Africa, the weekly market is even more important.
Porque no hay tiendas todos los días.
Because there are no shops every day.
El mercado es la única opción para comprar o vender.
The market is the only option to buy or sell.
Weekly markets.
That detail is key.
If the market is attacked, the next one might be in seven days.
Seven days without the ability to buy food.
Y en una situación de guerra, con poco dinero y mucho miedo, esos siete días son una crisis para las familias.
And in a wartime situation, with little money and a lot of fear, those seven days are a crisis for families.
Here's something that doesn't get enough attention: the world has actually tried to codify market protection in conflict law.
The Geneva Conventions protect civilian objects.
Attacking a civilian market is a war crime, technically.
And yet.
Y sin embargo pasa.
And yet it happens.
En Siria pasó muchas veces.
In Syria it happened many times.
En Yemen también.
In Yemen too.
Los mercados son un objetivo fácil porque hay muchas personas juntas.
Markets are an easy target because there are many people together.
I covered a market strike in Sarajevo in the nineties.
The Markale massacre.
Sixty-eight people killed in one shelling.
It galvanized the international response to the Bosnian war in a way that months of other reporting had not.
Porque la gente entiende el mercado.
Because people understand the market.
La gente fue allí a comprar pan, a comprar verduras.
People went there to buy bread, to buy vegetables.
No son soldados.
They are not soldiers.
Son personas normales con sus bolsas de la compra.
They are normal people with their shopping bags.
And that's partly why this story deserves more attention than it's getting.
Eleven people in a market in North Kordofan will not lead the news.
But it is exactly the kind of slow, repeated destruction that produces famine.
La hambruna no llega en un día.
Famine does not arrive in one day.
Llega porque durante meses, o años, la guerra destruye poco a poco todos los sistemas que dan comida a la gente.
It arrives because for months, or years, the war slowly destroys all the systems that give food to people.
The cumulative logic of starvation.
And we're not good, as journalists or as an international community, at responding to cumulative slow crises.
We respond to moments.
To images.
To numbers.
A ver, creo que lo más importante es que la gente sepa que Sudán tiene una crisis humanitaria enorme.
Look, I think the most important thing is that people know that Sudan has an enormous humanitarian crisis.
Hay más de doce millones de personas desplazadas.
There are more than twelve million displaced people.
Es uno de los peores problemas del mundo ahora mismo.
It is one of the worst problems in the world right now.
And the world is barely watching.
Honestly, barely watching.
The Iran war, the Lebanon bombing, all of that is pulling attention that Sudan desperately needs.
Oye, antes dijiste 'soler' en español antes del programa, cuando hablábamos.
Hey, you used 'soler' in Spanish before the show, when we were talking.
Dijiste 'la guerra suele destruir los mercados.' ¿Puedo explicar esa palabra?
You said 'la guerra suele destruir los mercados.' Can I explain that word?
Please.
I thought I used it correctly but I have learned not to trust that feeling.
Sí, lo usaste bien.
Yes, you used it correctly.
'Soler' significa hacer algo normalmente, habitualmente.
'Soler' means to do something normally, habitually.
'La guerra suele destruir los mercados' significa que la guerra, normalmente, destruye los mercados.
'La guerra suele destruir los mercados' means that war, normally, destroys markets.
Es un verbo muy útil.
It is a very useful verb.
So it's like saying 'tends to' or 'usually does.' And it's a real verb, conjugated like a normal verb, not just a filler phrase.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Suelo comer tarde.' Yo, normalmente, como tarde.
'Suelo comer tarde.' I usually eat late.
'Solemos escuchar podcasts por la mañana.' Nosotros, normalmente, escuchamos podcasts por la mañana.
'Solemos escuchar podcasts por la mañana.' We usually listen to podcasts in the morning.
Es elegante y muy natural en español.
It is elegant and very natural in Spanish.
And I assume getting it wrong sounds terrible?
As opposed to just clunky?
No, no suena terrible.
No, it doesn't sound terrible.
Pero si no lo usas, suenas un poco rígido.
But if you don't use it, you sound a little stiff.
Es uno de esos verbos que los nativos usamos todo el tiempo sin pensar.
It's one of those verbs that native speakers use all the time without thinking.
Eleven people went to a market in North Kordofan yesterday and did not come home.
And somewhere in that fact is an entire world worth understanding.
We'll be back next week.