Haiti lesson: Pro-US policies make quakes doubly deadly

Labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno said the government should  learn from the experience of the people of Haiti with the recent earthquake, saying bad economic policies prescribed by the US make the Filipino people vulnerable to the worst effects of natural disasters. 

The Latin American country was hit by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake last Tuesday, the worst in its recent history. Numerous buildings were destroyed, causing the death of an estimated 500,000 people. 

KMU said it is now coming to the fore that many among those killed were either in cramped but weak buildings or in overpopulated hillsides where poor Haitians live, both in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city.

“The concentration of poor people in the cities, and their residence in dangerous areas were caused by the combination of the creation of assembly manufacture plants in the cities and the dumping of agricultural products in the entire country. These are effects of US domination over the economy,” said Elmer “Bong” Labog, KMU chairperson. 

“The dumping of agricultural products from the US and elsewhere – and US produce are heavily subsidized by the US government – destroyed agriculture in Haiti. This has left many farmers landless,” he added.

“On the other hand, the creation of assembly manufacture plants in the cities attracted landless farmers to take a chance at finding a job in the cities. This has pushed many farmers to migrate in the city and set up homes in dangerous areas like the hillsides littered with bodies that we are seeing on television,” Labog said. 

The labor leader also said that what happened to the economy of Haiti is happening to the local economy, hinting at the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters.

“We only have to substitute ‘assembly manufacture plants in cities’ with ‘assembly manufacture plants in export-processing zones’ and we have the same picture: peasants driven away from the countryside to live precarious lives in areas where they have at least a chance at finding jobs,” said Labog. 

“The picture is the same because Haiti and the Philippines have one thing in common: US control of the economy. The US has imposed neoliberal policies on so-called developing countries, which has destroyed agriculture and promoted temporary jobs among poor people,” Labog said.

“Aside from causing a demography that makes people vulnerable to disasters, these neoliberal policies also cause countries to become very poor – and thus unable to respond to natural disasters swiftly, sufficiently and effectively. Haiti’s needs at present – food, water, clothing, shelter – are sorely lacking even during the best of times in that country’s history,” he added.

“What’s happening in Haiti is another wake-up call for the Filipino government and people. We need to move away from US-imposed policies, so we may create a humane demography that will lessen the negative impacts of natural disasters and build an economy that will enable us to respond well to such disasters,” said Labog. #