Earthquake in Chile: Disaster Capitalism at its best?

Image from La Segunda, March 1st 2010: "Chile faces the tragedy. The military protection is soothing."

Just some days after the huge earthquake and following tsunami in Chile, I find myself having a strange deja vu listening in the radio to narratives of dead, disappeared, toques de queda (curfews), shortages and social chaos. Many cities are currently being declared in constitutional state of exception by catastrophe, with curfews and heavy military and police presence to avoid what has been described in the media as violent and desperate looting of supermarkets. Many people from the middle and upper classes, afraid of shortages, have effectively created them by monopolizing fuel and food. But the focus in the media has been definitely on the apparent lack of control of the irrational masses who are raiding the superstores, not only for basic goods, but all kinds of electric appliances. From afar, I see the pictures of young men being arrested by the military in Concepción, face down on the ground for stealing TVs.

However, police and civil authorities in Santiago have also been denouncing a number of false alarms and the presence of people spreading rumors about armed gangs going around looting and stealing. Apparently, besides the confirmed looting, there is people systematically trying to create a sense of social chaos, which is something we have seen before in Chilean history (Campaña del Terror anybody?). People demanding more police and military presence to ensure the "security" and "safety" is another equation that we have heard before. This latifundista (landowner's) mentality that we hear so much lately believes that law enforcement forces are at the service of the ruling classes, and that the protection of private property is more important that the well being of entire communities. In my perspective, in Chile, as anywhere else, we DO NOT need more cops or military presence to be safe or solve our problems. People have reacted in many different ways, and many are already organizing the distribution of basic services and goods, sharing whatever they have, lending support to one another. Solidarity, I think, is the only thing that can make us safe. In contrast, the curfew translates into a soldier pointing his gun at a 13 year old boy who is stealing blankets from a chain store as seen yesterday.




It is undeniable that over three decades of neoliberalism in Chile have had their impact in the "social fabric" and the sense of community and solidarity among Chileans. Some of us have been bombarded for the whole length of our lives with messages of individualism, competitiveness and fear of the other. The dismantlement of social security systems based on collective savings and mutualism under Pinochet have created a sense of insecurity that translates into a general sense of fear, the UNDP Reports on Human Development reported in 1998. The progressive criminalization of poverty and state clientelism have mined traditional practices of collaboration.

And the sense of opportunity of the political actors wanting to further a neoliberal agenda is strikingly good: two weeks before taking power, the elected President Sebastián Piñera announces the several macroeconomic measures to "reconstruct" the country, and again, his focus has been rather on the punishment of looters over the safety of everybody. In this sense, this tragedy may become —yet again— the grounds of legitimation for the furthering of a neoliberal agenda and militarism, as according to Naomi Klein's analysis. OR, this could also be the disaster that awakens some of us from the mirage of ephemeral pseudo-happiness we have been living. It could make a few realize that we need to rebuild our trust on each other, that there may be a deeper sense of happiness to be found in collaboration and solidarity: a sort of a "disaster socialism." Not wanting to be extremely optimist or even naive about it, I believe then that the direction this catastrophe will take the country is not decided yet.

There are some voices in Chile and abroad saying "not to worry, Chile is not Haiti". Yes, Chile is not Haiti, but Chile is not Switzerland either as Rafael Gumucio just wrote. And Santiago is not Chile. The fact that the country has been fantasizing about being a white, modern, wealthy nation for the last decades does not mean that this wealth is shared (Chile has the 8th worst distribution of wealth in the world). While some actors have been working hard to project that image internationally, it is important to distinguish them from others who suffer and/or resist those images of prosperity. A large part of the population lives on poverty and social exclusion. And for sure, those shiny glass covered buildings aren't any indicator of modernity because they are all broken now. As somebody said on facebook, el terremoto rompió espejos y espejismos (the earthquake brought down mirrors and mirages).


Another take on the Chilean earthquake, disaster capitalism and comparisons with Haiti written by my supervising friend Jon Beasley-Murray can be find here.