The earthquake in Peru and Hurricane Dean have again shown that capitalism worsens the situation caused by natural disasters. We saw that in the Tsunami that hit Asia a few years ago. Then Katrina exposed to the world the racist nature of the Bush administration and U.S. capitalism. Now these last two disasters have also had a marked racist and anti-working class character.
The earthquake that hit southern Peru on Aug. 15 reached 7.9 degrees in the Richter scale. Officially 540 died, 1500 were injured, and 200,000 families were left homeless with 70% of the houses destroyed in the city of Pisco. Of course, most of the houses destroyed are made of adobe and are located in the working class areas, many of these workers are of Indian descent. Some areas where most of the population is Afro-Peruvians, like El Carmen, were also devastated by the quake. President Alan Garcia ordered the army and police to go to the affected areas, but they went mainly to "maintain law and order." Desperate workers who received no aid and didn’t even have caskets for those who died, took actions and decided to loot businesses looking for food and water.
Peru is an example of the total failure of capitalism. Peru has had 70 uninterrupted months of economic growth, reaching 8% in 2006. Corporate profits have grown by 32% so far in 2007. Meanwhile, 50% of the population lives on poverty and 5 million live under the poverty line. Fifty children die of hunger each day. Two million children are forced to work and 75% of the economic active population lacks a stable job. This gross inequality has caused major militant strikes and other actions by miners and teachers in recent months.
Meanwhile, hurricane Dean, which at a point reached Category 5 (the highest), also caused major tragedies and destruction all over the Caribbean and in Mexico. But while the people were basically unprotected, the government’s main reaction has been to protect businesses and tourists—70,000 were evacuated from the Cancún resort area in Mexico. TV news showed people in Mexico saying "we have to protect ourselves since the government won’t do it." The government also did protect Pemex oil rigs in the Campeche region. Businesses are always primary over workers under capitalism. Many in Jamaica refused to go to the few shelters available because conditions are very bad in them. Kingston was inundated and left without electricity and the government declared a state of siege but to protect businesses from looters.
Meanwhile, the aid from the big imperialist countries has been ridiculous. A few millions dollars were sent by the U.S. and the European Union, compared to the hundreds of billions the central banks of all those countries gave to speculators to bail them out from the recent stock market-credit crunch-mortgage crisis, or the billions each month the U.S. spends in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that is the nature of capitalism.
On the other hand, workers have tried to help the victims of these tragedies. Fund raising events were held in the NYC-NJ area to send aid to the victims of the earthquake in Peru. Workers and youth are also responding to calls for aid to the victims of Dean. But, unfortunately, most of this aid is channeled through corrupt local governments which steal most of it or the Red Cross (which keep a big part of the aid for its "administrative costs"). The best way to send aid is through unions and mass organizations in the areas affected.
The best lesson that we can learn from these disasters is that system based on profits and racism must be smashed and replaced by a society based on the needs of workers and their allies: communism.