Tremendous effort is underway to rebuild Chile after it was hit on February 27 by an 8.8-magnitiute earthquake. This tragedy was followed by seven-meter high tsunami and several less devastating after-shocks. The coastal city of Constitucion and the resort town of Iloca lie in ruins, while much of the historic center of the city of Curico is either damaged or destroyed. It’s believed that around 550 people died overall.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and other natural disasters shed light on social cracks and fissures invisible in everyday life. These disasters provoke social crises that states tend to resolve with militarization, which in turn shows the profound crises that our societies have been undergoing.
Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar. There are echoes of the same bad development advice Haiti has received for decades, even before the nation faced its current devastating situation. To avoid repeating past failures, we would be wise to review how previous aid models led down the wrong path.
Colombia’s congressional elections on March 14 were hailed by the United Nations as the most peaceful in years. The victory of the coalition led by President Alvaro Uribe suggests an easy win for his party in the presidential elections scheduled for May 30.
How might the changing political relationship between Cuba and the United States influence Cuban-American literature?
In its draft “Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment” (PDNA), which was prepared with the help of some of its bilateral and multilateral donors, the government projected total damages and losses caused by the quake at close to eight billion dollars.
As a 30-year-old Australian who had previously travelled to Guatemala and El Salvador, I decided to respond to an email listserv request for international observers in Honduras after the June 2009 coup.
The United Nations will host a Haiti donors’ conference at the end of March.
This conference will be quite different from last year’s event, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries. An agenda has already begun to take shape: It’s already clear that a future Haiti must be populated with environmentally sustainable, earthquake-resistant buildings, for example, and it’s also clear that the international community must do something to ease Haiti’s massive debt burden.
Millions of Brazilians have serious housing problems. The Movimiento Sin Techo (Homeless Movement) seeks to organize them, and to occupy abandoned properties and land on the outskirts of the city to pressure the government.
