this article from the l.a. times this morning outlines some of the many many problems that such aid as has been dispatched toward port au prince and other areas devastated by the earthquake: logjams at the airport, which has run out of fuel; a "shattered" communications system which is making co-ordination about as difficult as can be imagined; significant infrastructure damage--to roads for example; the fact that (for example) initial american teams to arrive and actually get to port au prince went first to un headquarters there and then to a swank hotel popular with the international set to help--well who?
For many in Haiti quake, help is still a no-show - latimes.com
there's no tools to speak of, which is kinda amazing, an indication of the effects of the current distribution of wealth in the overall neoliberal order, the consequences of neo-colonialism in all its commodity glory. there's little to no food. there's no running water. there's no potable water. people are still trapped in collapsed buildings. there is no way to bury the dead. the central government was effectively collapsed. people are getting desperate and they're getting angry.
meanwhile supplies appear to be simply arriving but they're jammed up at delivery points.
it sounds about as bad as one could imagine.
and it's hard to say sitting in a chair looking at a computer monitor, involved with the situation in and around port au prince by way of newspaper articles and such what can or should be done otherwise.
but i can't get the question out of my head: why are things as they are in haiti, not because of the earthquake, but as they are as an effect of how they were. i know something of the history of haiti. it's not pretty.
all i'll say here is that i find it a bit odd---not surprising, just odd---that the disastrous situation there is being framed as a human crisis alone, as if human beings do not operate in contexts and as if contexts are not a function of histories.
it seems to me that this framing amounts to a legitimation of the neo-colonial order that explains much of the economic and political situations haiti was in prior to the earthquake--now representatives of different aspects of the same system that marginalized haiti and kept it so are seen rushing in to try to save these people from themselves.
so we get a retread of the white man's burden narrative.
it's a repellent thing to think about alongside the overwhelming information that's trickling back about a tragic situation--one of those that makes tragic seem a cheap and empty word.