Dear hazards list members and RADIX list members,

Greetings from San Salvador, where the note of Elaine on the World Bank statement brings to mind the larger context of globalization and neoliberalism.  The situation in the world today in many places is such that individual ruling elites are taking neoliberalism further and faster than some in the World Bank and other global and regional institutions would want.

El Salvador is a case in point.  The results make disaster prevention and mitigation impossible.

Thus I am not surprised that the World Bank cautions against involuntary resettlement in India and seems to be joining residents in questioning the recovery package.  However, we have to look deeper into the fabric of globalization to see the dangers that lurk there.

Here in El Salvador, the ruling conservative government of ARENA brought NO RECOVERY PLAN to the donors meeting recently in Madrid.  The position of the government here is steadfastly neoliberal: market forces will automatically organize reconstruction and recovery. Hence the package of aid from Madrid is a series loans for further privitization of the economy, that, among other things, makes no allowance for small farmers or small businesses.

To help market forces to do this, the government has abolished the Ministry of Public Works, idling nearly 7,000 workers and technicians and hundreds of pieces of equipment.  With the rainy season now only weeks away and roads, culverts, retaining walls, and major drainage works all in desperate need of repair, cleaning, and maintenance, the government has at a stroke slowed such activity to a snails pace.  In theory private contractors here will eventually take over all these functions of a Ministry of Public Works.  But not before flash floods ravage a population that has already sufferred hurricane Mitch, cholera and dengue epidemics, la Nina drought, forest fires, and the recent series of earthquakes.

You do not have to be a rabid "globofobico" (globaliphobe -- as neoliberalism contrarians are referred to in Mexico) to see that this is an insane policy.

Meanwhile dollarization of the local economy in El Salvador is quite likely to mean increases in the price of basic goods for the ordinary people (e.g. the 90% who are workers, lower middle class professionals, farmers and unemployed).  Add to this the application of sales tax on basic food just before the earthquake in January, increases in electricity and telephone rates, and the current privitization of water services, and you can see that it is not only the 1.5 million people who still have no homes who will be further impoverished by a blind faith in global market forces.

Remittances from the 1.5 million Salvadorans who live in the USA may provide some short term respite, but in the long term, there needs to be a systematic alternative national plan for human development.

Remittances and the 140 dollars a month that women can make in the textile maquillas here will never be a basis for any kind of national economy let alone human development.  Nor in simple market terms will there be enough purchasing power in the hands of the majority to "demand" dignified homes ("casas dignas" is the local, highly politically charged term), drainage, sanitation, water, safe schools and health posts that will not collapse during the next earthquake.

At the very last moment the national government invited the president of the national association of municipalities to accompany it to the Madrid donors meeting.  Civil society was formally represented at the meeting, but there is no unity among them, and no systematic alternative was tabled.

Both the national governments arrogant and commandist approach and the lack of unity among the opposition are continuing products of a vicious and terrible civil war (paid for by the United States).  The need for unity among the opposition, of capacity building at the municipal level for effective and informed negotiation with the agents of privitization are urgenty priorities.

Meanwhile San Salvador waits for the rains, which at least may put out a persistent forest fire on the slopes of the nearby volcano.  It waits like a medieval fortress city, the small middle class and working classes as well as the rich sleeping behind huge, tottering brick and concrete block walls made unstable by the earthquakes of 1986 and 2001.  These are topped with masses of razor wire and all entrances to small shops, car washes, fast food restaurants are guarded by private security guards armed with shotguns.

Hundreds of ravines ("quebradas") fan down through the city from the ring of volcanos surrounding it.  The very poor live in these ravines. Those with more income live on the ridges that separate them.  Thus the rich and the poor live spatially close, but separated by the walls and the guards.  More elite satellite towns and developments have sprung up, including many gated developments worthy of Beverly Hills, Sandton in Johannesburg, or Coyacan in Mexico City.  Ironically, it was in one of these suburbs, Santa Tecla, that the middle class was crushed under tons of earth and rock when a slope make unstable by development of luxury homes above came crashing down on 13 January.

Nadine Gordimer, South African Nobel laureate, wrote a short story about an upper middle class, liberal, white South African family whose beloved son of five years of age bled to death inside a coil of razor wire atop their home compound wall.  He had crawled in out of a sense of mischief, but could not get out.

I have worked in disaster mitigation and prevention for 35 years.  I have seen the best and the worst in many metropolitan areas (Dhaka, Mumbai, Manila, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Mexico City, Guatemala City....).  In all these years I have never yet encountered as hellish a combination of short sighted elite misuse of economic and political power.

There are some very compassionate, intelligent, skillful, and committed people here in civil society, in the NGOs, and in many of the municipal governments.  However, their disunity and the perverse drive by the ruling national elite for an "all or nothing" implimentation of neoliberal dogma make mitigation and prevention impossible.

Consider the children.  Consider the child who crawled inside the coil of razor wire.  Consider the fact that "Mundo Feliz", a huge indoor amusement park in the heart of San Salvador has all of its emergency exits padlocked and the guards have not got keys.  It is also situated right across the street from a gasoline station.

The rains are coming and many children are still going to school in the central squares of small municipalities and other open air temporary locations.  There is a lot of rhetoric and some impressive private charity -- a business group from Costa Rica has, for example, built 100 homes in one municipality.  But there is no consistent, coordinated national plan.  This galoping, fuliminating variety of the disease of neoliberalism is conscientiously opposed to planning.

The Miss El Salvador competion has come and gone.  The commemoration of the death of Rev. Oscar Romero has taken place.  The rains are coming.  Privatization is rolling along even as Ministry of Public Works road graders are sitting idle.  Holy Week is coming, and a group of ocean live guards demonstrated their preparedness for the Holy Week exodus of the middle class to El Salvadorean beaches.

Beauty queens will not save this country and its six million people, nor life guards, nor private security guards, nor private contractors, nor "market forces".


Elaine Enarson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hello to far-flung friends and colleagues--whose discussion
of relocation issues in Gujarat has been so instructive. I
would add that a week ago the ADB and World Bank made this a

moot issue--or at least The Times of India carried a story
(3/18/01, p. 3) to this effect:

" 'They have told us that there should not be any
involuntary resettlement of the people. They know that our
packages talk of consulting people before any relocation
takes place. They are happy about it,' said a government
source."

Bank officials are surely less happy about the state
government's recovery package, which links funding to
agreement to
relocate, or about the 4,000 people who took to the
streets in Bhuj recently in protest.

I've raised some questions about money and democracy, and
other  "Questions and observations: from the outside looking
in", which I'll post on Radix (or send to anyone who'd like
the file). It's based on a close reading of the local media
during my recent trip to Ahmedabad. You'll find a slew of
questions but few answer and  I welcome your ideas!



_______________
Dr. Elaine Enarson, Independent Scholar
Adjunct Faculty, Institute for Women's Studies & Women's
Services
Metropolitan State College, Denver CO  80217

Mailing address:
    33174 Bergen Mt. Rd.
    Evergreen, Colorado US  80439
    Tel:   303-670-1834
    Fax:   303-679-0938
    Email: [log in to unmask]




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