Disaster Politics

Catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti make incomparably interesting case studies, for reasons Katz picks up on throughout his book. The effects of and responses to a disaster "came down to one's means, which were inevitably bound up with family status, nationality and race...But this time, great government ministries and posh hotels had crumbled alongside the meanest cinder-block homes...Whether you had been in Haiti for fifty years or an hour, whether you were in the most broken-down slum or the best hotel, survival came down to the strength and flexibility of the columns, ceilings, and walls surrounding you at the instant the fault gave way," (55). There's an interesting disparity between this assertion that the earthquake in Haiti did not discriminate against its victims and the reality of how different victims survived, or didn't. This is not a unique assertion though. Katz claims that earthquakes are particular because there's no warning before they come, and anyone's house can fall. It's a common claim in any natural disaster, including those which do have warnings such as hurricanes, that nature doesn't discriminate; that part comes in the response and recovery. Katz recognized that how you fared after the earthquake depended on whether you were a blan or a neg. At the same time, he deals with the common idea that in disasters, natural or not, victims are forced to show their true natures in the face of survival. It's a similar logic to the leveling effects of the disaster itself, a mythology that we've adhered to since Noah's ark.

The Big Truck That Went By contributes to the dismantling of that myth by exposing the flaws and failures of the international aid regime. But the truth is that disasters don't expose the true nature of everyday people, they expose the nature of the world we live in and how it works when lives are on the line. I found it helpful as I read to compare The Big Truck That Went By to hurricane Katrina, a comparison that is not lost on Katz either. The comparison he makes is regarding the misperceptions about looting with which we are familiar after reading Social Death. I was more struck by the resemblances between the two on a larger scale. New Orleanians were warned that the hurricane was going to hit, but that did little to predict how it would affect the city. The population of New Orleans is not split into blan and neg in same way Haiti is, but the relief was still split and ineffective in almost the exact same way. New Orleans and Haiti are different places with different kinds of people of course, New Orleans lacking the foreign/native division that Haiti has, but that doesn't seem to matter much when you're dealing with black and white, rich and poor bodies. Katz spoke with some Haitians after the earthquake who felt that they would be better off if Haiti was part of the United States, if they were in charge and had preexisting channels through which to distribute aid more quickly. Katrina showed, years before the earthquake hit, how wrong they were. In my opinion, a transnational feminist investigation to these disasters and what they expose would take a close look at  what disaster response worldwide has in common, and who it consistently affects. Perhaps great disasters can be revelatory.