Haiti’s storm damage compounded by poverty and neo-colonialism

by Mark Ostapiak

A fatal hurricane cannot simply be measured in terms of strength and severity. The British Economist noted, “The deadliness of a storm depends not just on its own strength but on the weakness of the country it hits.” Thus, Tropical Storm Jeanne—considerably less fierce than the preceding Hurricane Ivan—dealt Haiti a massive blow. On the other hand, nearby Cuba fared comparatively well during the season’s two major storms that hit it.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Americas. The death toll there has reached over 2000 and continues to rise. Meanwhile, the U.S./UN-backed right-wing military government, which overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a February 2004 coup, provides little assistance to those in desperate need of relief.

“UN officials hired local gang members to keep order,” said the Economist. A Sept. 25 Newsday dispatch reported that “many residents accused gang members of seizing food handouts and distributing them to followers or selling them on the black market.” Haiti’s present recipe for catastrophe is based on more than 200 years of neo-colonial policies that have left the country in economic and environmental despair. In the 20th century alone, years of market regulations enforced by the IMF and the World Bank have laid bare Haiti’s work force and resources to the dictates of U.S. capital.

Repression of the Haitians during the 1915-1934 U.S. military occupation led to years of instability. Then, with the onset of the U.S.-backed Duvalier regime (1957-1986), an already desperate people was met by an acute stage of brutalization and scarcity.

For the sake of survival, the vast majority of Haitians, past and present, cleared the country’s mountainsides of its vegetation and trees. Now, little more than 1 percent of Haiti’s original, lush tree cover remains, according to Pierre Chauvet, co-founder of the Haitian Foundation for the Environment.

Chauvet went on to say that on Sept. 18, Tropical Storm Jeanne’s mere three hours of heavy rain led to massive mudslides and streams of water pouring off nearly denuded mountainsides, resulting in disastrous flooding in the northwestern port city of Gonaives. Reportedly, there was relatively little rain in Gonaives itself; much of the precipitation was in the mountains above the city.

Adding fuel to the fire

Adding fuel to the fire, figuratively speaking, would have decreased Haitian’s dependence on wood and charcoal for cooking. However, U.S.-imposed economic sanctions of the 1990s prohibited propane fuel from entering Haiti. Naturally, Haitians reverted back to the chopping of trees for fuel wood.

People living outside the major towns and cities have no electricity, so they burn wood for cooking, heat, and light. Otherwise, trees are used to make charcoal, which is sold to the urban dwellers. In a country where the unemployment rate is 80 percent and the majority population lives on less than $1/day, any means of income is highly sought after.

Vena Verone of Haiti told an AP reporter on June 2, “This is the only way I can feed my four kids. I’ve heard about the floods and deforestation that caused them, but there’s nothing I can do about that.” The USAID director in Haiti, David Adams, was quoted in a Sept. 22 AP dispatch: “Over the past 20 years, the U.S. Agency for International Development has planted 60 million trees in Haiti, but the poor chop down 10 million to 20 million trees each year.”

Pierre Chauvet, interviewed on National Public Radio’s Sept. 27 “Talk of the Nation,” said that Haitian governmental officials have largely ignored a 1987 petition signed by members of the scientific community urging a state of emergency declaration which, at the very least, would force the government to acknowledge the alarming deforestation rates.

Poor city planning in Gonaives is also a factor in the mass casualties. Salvano Briceno, Head of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction program, joined the discussion on the Sept. 27 “Talk of the Nation” to add that “Gonaives has been allowed to grow in a terribly unplanned manner. And that’s been one of the main causes [of death] also. People are just in the middle of the flood plain.”

The majority of houses in the city are built from mostly perishable materials; therefore, many were destroyed in the flooding.

“It’s not just people’s houses. It’s also crops and livestock that have been washed away. So it will take quite some months before people will be able to cope by themselves again,” said Anne Poulsen, spokesperson for the UN World Food Program in Haiti. “Nature is tough on Haiti,” she continued in a Sept. 21 Reuters report.

Meanwhile, Haitians continue to walk with limes to their noses to mask the smell of decomposing bodies and stagnant water as the threat of water-borne and mosquito-borne epidemics loom greater each day. Assistance to Haiti includes $1 million in aid from Venezuela, $5 million from Trinidad, and 16 Cuban doctors based in Gonaives. “More than 600 Cuban doctors and health experts, already established in Haiti assisting flood victims,” provide medical treatment throughout the country, said a Sept. 22 AFP wire story.

The United States, through its Agency for International Development (USAID), initially pledged $60,000 to Haiti for relief from Tropical Storm Jeanne. However, said a Sept. 24 Knight Ridder dispatch,“after days of complaints about the meager U.S. emergency assistance ... the Agency for International Development announced that it will provide an additional $2 million in aid.”

Cuban model for preparedness

In contrast to the Haitian debacle is Cuba’s evacuation effort before hurricane Charley made landfall on Aug. 13. According to a 2004 Oxfam report, “a highly organized system of disaster legislation, public education on disasters, meteorological, research, early warning system, effective communication system for emergencies, comprehensive emergency plan, and Civil Defense structure” account for astonishing results.

Based on an Aug. 18 report from the Cuban daily Granma, over 215,000 people and 158,000 animals, mostly cattle and poultry, were evacuated from vulnerable areas of Cuba’s southwest coast.

NPR’s Tom Jelton, while in the western Cuban town of Sandino, witnessed the Cubans in action during Hurricane Ivan. Seventy-two hours prior to the storm’s landfall, Cuban evacuation managers made three successive patrols at 24 hour intervals to ensure nobody was left behind. Many valuable possessions—including televisions, radios and mattresses—were then trucked to shelters.

Salvano Briceno added that “for the purpose of organizing their people to respond and to prevent these disasters, they’re very good at that. Everyone has a task already assigned that knows very well what to do. There’s some people in the community that take care of the old people, some others take care of the animals, the cattle. They protect everything. They even wrap up the banana trees not to lose production.” Cuba’s astounding natural disaster preparedness stems from a planned economy, in which its citizens “are highly educated, with a strongly developed sense of solidarity and social cohesion, extensive experience in mobilization and highly organized through mass organizations, professional groups, and political structures,” according to the 2004 Oxfam report.

The report went on to say that Cuba’s “significant and proven risk reduction measures” include:

• Universal access to services. Cubans have better access to education, health, and physical infrastructure than the majority of populations in the rest of Latin America. This access reduces the vulnerability of the population as a whole.

• Considerable investment in human development. 40 years of investment in human capital provides the country with a wealth of trained and available professionals.“

• Government investment in infrastructure. These investments in both urban and rural areas minimize the occurrence of uneven development, providing the country with a range of resources for development that can be used in disaster mitigation, preparedness and response.

• Social and economic organization. Cuba’s particular forms of social organization promote solidarity, cohesion and cooperation, creating social capital that can be applied to risk reduction.

Charley left in its wake $1 billion in property damage in Cuba, including more than “70,000 homes and thousands of hectares of cultivated land, plus grave effects on the electricity (1400 poles, 28 high-tension towers and 291 transformers brought down), water, and telephone services,” according to the Aug. 25 Granma. With the whole country in motion on the basis of putting human needs before profits, many homes already have been repaired. “In the city of Pinar del Rio, various technical teams set up zones of power to guarantee an electricity service to hospitals and food preparation centers,” said Granma on Aug. 20.

A thorough fumigation process is also underway in public buildings, schools, and hospitals to lessen the possibility of an epidemic outbreak.

This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.