Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 12 June 1970
Peru: priorities after the disaster
The colossal scale of the earthquake disaster is making the government's ability to organize adequate relief in time look doubtful. There is friction between foreign, mainly us, relief organizations and the government, largely over official determination to maintain priority for economic development.
The earthquake has unquestionably been the biggest natural disaster in Peru's recorded history. There can be no doubt about this now that the government has begun to talk of deaths exceeding 50,000 and the cost of rehabilitation and reconstruction at no less than 230 million dollars. Given the unparalleled scale of the disaster, much of which occurred in some of the most difficult country in the world, it is hardly surprising that there should be so many reports of relief failing to get through in time due to lack of transport and poor organization. To provide quick and adequate relief under the circumstances would require the technical resources, the organizational experience and the administrative system of a highly developed modern state, which Peru most certainly is not. And although this is not the present government's fault, any sense that it has failed the sufferers, most of them the poor masses whose imagination has been caught by the military regime's revolutionary plans, would cost it dear in popular support.
The only way round this problem is for the government to appeal for massive foreign help in cash and kind. This it has done, with an impressive response. But the official attitude has always left the impression that this aid must not infringe Peruvian sovereignty. It is perhaps as much this as genuinely poor administration that has caused friction with, in particular, US aid organizations. Some US officials have also been narked at what they see as official attempts to play down their efforts (which have certainly been generous, as the Peruvian government has recognized) and to stress those of many Latin American countries including Cuba. The Cubans sent a team headed by their health minister, Dr Eleodor Martinez, and set up a constant supply shuttle from Havana with two of their airlines.
Lima has also applied for 135 million dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank and 35 million from the World Bank -- but has made it plain that it expects such loans for rehabilitation to be long term and at low interest rates. As for money coming in from the recent exchange control measures, now estimated at about 100 million dollars, there is no longer any questioning about how it will be spent. The vital fishmeal industry, much of it centred on Chimbote, may have been extensively damaged; it will require enormous effort to get the Chimbote steel mill going; and the sugar industry, not to mention the entire agrarian reform programme, have been badly hit by the destruction of plant, buildings and machinery, as well as the death of many of the scarce technicians and administrators on the estates.
But what is irritating foreign relief organizations even more is the government's determination not to abandon its 1970 development plan, combined with its mounting concern that the disaster will fatally accelerate the movement of indians from the Andes to the coastal cities, especially Lima. To relief organizations, the first priority by far is obviously relief of the immediate suffering. But the Peruvian government's point of view is slightly different, and is evidently not appreciated by the foreign organizations.
In the first place the government, though more worried than its predecessors about the Andean peasants, is inevitably concerned first and foremost with the coast just like any other Peruvian government. This is a basic fact of Peruvian social and political life. Failure to observe it could easily cost any government its job -- and indeed foreign interests of any strength in Peru have never helped any government to take any other attitude. Secondly, any sudden massive influx of people from the sierra to the coast could stretch to breaking point the already overstrained services, housing facilities and employment opportunities available in, for example, the appalling shanty towns round Lima. This could lead to serious social unrest and political instability, threatening the government's entire revolutionary programme and perhaps even its very existence. That is why the ministry of economy and finance declared at the weekend that 'despite the urgency of directing important resources towards the ruined zones, efforts must be maintained to complete the tasks set by the annual economic plan for 1970'. To the Peruvian government, such an attitude is not so much heartless as plain common sense.
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