Many parts of Latin America are struggling to recover after debilitating natural disasters. International attention has largely waned, if it even existed. Still, government and institutions haven’t buckled as many feared.
The Haitian government now believes 230,000 people died from the January 12th earthquake, and one million were made homeless. A slow recovery now seems to be taking hold in many parts of Haiti.
For their part, major aid groups have kept Haiti in their crosshairs : the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in cooperation with USAID, this week announced $10 million in funding to bring cutting edge mobile money services to Haiti. This could do much to resolve one of the major bottlenecks remaining: one-third of the country’s banks and ATMs were made inoperable by the quake. One part of the Gates Foundation’s strategy is to create programs and applications so that Haitians can better utilize their cell phones to deposit and withdraw money. Former President Bill Clinton has also done a commendable job of keeping attention on Haiti’s plight.
Chile, by all accounts, has recovered sprightly after the fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded (8.8) struck near the town of Concepción in late February. Though international aid groups rushed to offer assistance, Chilean leaders demurred, launching a pledge drive that raised over $58 million in 24 hours. On March 4th President Bachelet said Chile would need some international loans and rebuilding may take 3-4 years. Largely because the area most directly hit was rural, recovering from the earthquake hasn’t stunted Chile’s economy. Economic growth was pruned for the month of March, but by April the chief economist at BBVA bank in Santiago announced, “the effects of the earthquake were transitory.”
The natural disasters that have befallen Guatemala in the past month may lead some credence to the Maya doomsday predictions. On May 27, Mount Pacaya erupted, not far from the capital. Then, just days later a tropical storm hit Guatemala, leaving at least 152 dead. The Colom government is scarcely positioned to address the storm’s effects; Guatemala has undergone widespread famine over the last year and drug violence has greatly eroded the government’s authority. Simultaneously, a giant sinkhole 100 feet deep and almost 70 feet in diameter emerged in downtown Guatemala City. What exactly caused the massive sinkhole still baffles geologists.
While good luck may be scant in the heavily indigenous country, ingenuity is not lacking: right after the sinkhole emerged engineers announced they planned to help fill it in with the volcanic ash. Makes perfect sense; after all, the hole’s only natural enemy is the pile.
