Natural disasters, as flash floods in Pakistan show yet again, will become increasingly frequent and severe, due to world climate disruption. Therefore, although the Haitian earthquake of January 12, 2010, was not caused by climate disruption, it is instructive to consider how world capitalism reacted to this disaster, and learn some practical lessons from this reaction.

US response

Within days of the Haitian earthquake, the US military seized control of the principle airport at Port-au-Prince . They used this control to bring in the troops rather than relief supplies. This was because the Haitian state had collapsed (literally) while the Haitian working class had a long left tradition. In the eyes of US and world capitalism, this left a danger of a workers’ movement developing in response and even seizing real power.

The Obama administration pledged $100 million in aid, compared with the $150 million that was spent on his inauguration. Worldwide, a mere $5.3 billion was pledged. This compares with the hundreds of billions that has been spent bailing out the banks. Even this amount, however, was mainly pledged for public relations purposes as according to a recent CNN investigation a mere 2% of these pledges has actually been donated!

According to an al Jazeera report, there are some 20 million cubic meters of rubble in Haiti as a result of the earthquake and just 300 trucks used to cart it away. At the present pace, it will take about six years just to remove the rubble.

Land grab and evictions

Ever on the lookout for sources of wealth and profit, Haiti’s capitalist class, along with international capital, are seeking to use this disaster to increase their land holdings and evict working class people from potential investment-grade property. According to Haitian community groups, thousands of Haitians are at risk of forcible eviction from some of the 1,300 camps established since the quake.

Below is an exchange between an al Jazeera reporter (Sebastian Walker) and some camp residents who reported having had their camp raided by the police, who slashed their tents with machetes:

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Well, it looks like the roof has also been slashed with machetes, and there’s rain now coming into the shelter.

SQUATTER 2: [translated] They don’t want us to build here. The rich people need the land. They had the land surveyed so they can take over.

SQUATTER 3: [translated] When I got here, they had beaten two people up. They were barely left alive. One was the owner of the house. They threatened us and said they had come to get me. Had I been here, they would have killed me. But they couldn’t find me. (Note: This particular individual was evidently a camp leader.)

SEBASTIAN WALKER: This is supposed to be one of the few plots of land owned by the Haitian government. But it sounds like local police are enforcing the interests of private land speculators. Land tenure is one of the major issues holding up reconstruction and resettlement.

(http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/07/20107614463473317.html. This video is well worth watching.) 

Conditions in the camps

As a result, some 2.5 million people – over 25% of the total population - are still in tent camps, living in flimsy tents and mere tarpaulins in a region subject to hurricanes. In one of the main camps, a “model” government camp, one single structure has been erected, and that is a flimsy one made of a few pieces of plywood that would fly apart in a hurricane.

According to Mark Schuller, an assistant professor of African Studies at the City University of New York, “About 65% of the camps are owned by private landowners…. So, about 20 percent of the camps have been closed between May and July…. Many, many places, 30 percent of camps, don’t have access to toilets. Twenty-seven don’t have access to water…. In many cases, we’re talking about a hundred, 150 people per toilet.” (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/17/thousands_of_haitians_face_risk_of)

Rape

As a result of the brutal conditions and the continued repression of the workers’ movement, crime and violence have become widespread within the camps, especially violence against women. The al Jazeera report documented widespread rapes of women, but UN troops have ignored this and, when questioned, commanders of UN troops there absolutely denied this development.

NGO’s

The Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) have hardly been more useful. As one camp resident said, “I don’t see any of the NGOs helping to stop violence against women or finding a way to avoid it, or working with the government to reduce it. Every day, the violence multiplies.” And as the reporter, Sebastian Walker, reported: “The leaders of at least one of the (Haitian women’s) organizations, FAVILEK, told us they have not received any assistance from international NGOs. The FAVILEK organizers took us to the Savanne Pistache camp, where there have been numerous cases of rape and violent assaults on women in the past six months.”

One thing the NGO operatives have not failed to do is take advantage of the opportunities to party, as the al Jazeera report shows scenes of them drinking and dancing in Port au Prince’s fanciest night clubs and bars until the early morning hours.

Walker reports that graffiti is visible throughout Port au Prince saying “Down with the UN! Down with the NGO’s!”

Some conclusions for the workers’ movement

Given that natural disasters will be increasing in coming years, it is important to learn some lessons from the disaster that continues in Haiti .

Preventing violence

No military force, including that of the UN, will help resolve these problems. This means that where troops are sent in, workers should fraternize with them and explain to them that their families may be suffering from these same conditions elsewhere. Direct links between the rank and file soldiers and the workers and peasants in the area should be formed and through this rescue efforts carried out, under the control of joint committees of workers and soldiers rather than that of the upper officers. Such links can also help prevent the soldiers from being used to carry out evictions and other acts of repression.

Since the UN and Haitian troops have been absolutely useless in preventing violence within the camps, women in the camps have started to organize themselves around this issue.  If this were connected with direct links with rank and file soldiers, then it would make it easier to prevent this and other forms of violence, including violence directly organized by landlords and political bosses.

Such self-defense committees could be organized by elected councils in every camp, with these councils also meeting together. Such a joint council could also meet with representatives of workers in the different plants and factories throughout the country as well as representatives of farmers. A body coming out of such meetings could organize the production and distribution of the construction materials, food and clothing needed.

International links

A poor country such as Haiti cannot afford to provide for its own rebuilding after such a disaster. Direct appeals to the working class in other countries would have to be made. First and foremost would be an appeal to demand that the French regime repay Haiti the $23 billion (in today’s dollars) that French capitalism extorted from Haiti at the point of a gun after the Haitian slaves freed themselves from French rule. In other countries, similar debts are owed, including debts that developed capitalist countries owe the former colonial world for all the years of colonial exploitation. It should be explained that the more the ex-colonial countries can develop, the more the wages will be raised, meaning that it will be more difficult to use the low wages as a club to drive down wages in the developed capitalist countries.

Capitalist-caused crises and “opportunities”

Within days of the quake, the US ’s Heritage Fund, one of the more clear-headed and pitiless think tanks for US capitalism, called the earthquake “an opportunity” (to increase the exploitation of Haitian workers). They will be seeking similar opportunities in every disaster to come. However, the working class movement too can find an opportunity in such disasters, just as it has in previous economic crises. Often times, the state power is vastly weakened or nearly disappears. A tendency for workers to organize independently arises in conjunction with this. The workers’ movement must learn the lessons from this and see that this tendency has to be carried out to the fullest in order to minimize the present suffering and start to reverse the conditions which were the original cause of the disaster. The guiding principle should be that which Trotsky explained to the Russian workers on the eve of the Russian Revolution of 1917: “Rely only on your own forces.”

In this way, the struggle to provide relief from natural disasters can grow over into the struggle to overthrow the root cause of these disasters – capitalism – and create an democratic socialist society as an alternative.

John Reimann is a retired carpenter and an expelled member of the Carpenters' Union in the United States. (He was expelled for leading rank and file struggles against the union bureaucracy.) He is a long-time socialist, who organized for a number of years in Mexico. He is presently a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.