Mary Anne Fackelman
Mexican first lady Paloma Cordero; U.S. ambassador to Mexico, John Gavin; and the U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan observing the damage done by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.
On the afternoon of September 12, shortly after the second of Mexico’s two recent major earthquakes struck, my husband and I were hurrying down a cobblestone street near our house to pick up our daughters early from school, when a woman heading in the other direction stopped us to talk.
Did we feel the earthquake? She asked. Was everyone all right? Her daughter, who lives in Puebla, near the epicenter, was in her home office when all the books and computer equipment toppled to the floor, she told us. Gracias a Dios she was unhurt, the woman said. But with all the natural disasters lately—the hurricanes and earthquakes coming in quick succession, it’s clear that the End Times are at hand. “Get right with God,” she told us. We thanked her and hurried on our way to pick up the girls.
The news about multiple, devastating natural disasters, coupled with the grim politics and another horrible mass shooting in the United States can, indeed, give you the despairing feeling that the world is ending.
This depressing effect is deliberately exacerbated by what Naomi Klein calls the Shock Doctrine—a pro-corporate, anti-democratic approach to governance that seeks to further disempower the victims of disasters, both natural and man-made, and take advantage of chaos, fear, and dislocation in the general population to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of elites.
We're seeing what Naomi Klein calls the Shock Doctrine—a pro-corporate, anti-democratic governance that takes advantage of chaos, fear, and dislocation after disasters to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of elites.
A key example Klein uses to illustrate the Shock Doctrine is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Tax-cutting politicians deliberately chose to leave the levees in New Orleans in disrepair, exposing the poor, black, politically disempowered residents to a preventable disaster. Then, when disaster struck, the federal and state government failed to mount an adequate rescue effort.
It took FEMA almost a full week to reach the people of New Orleans with food and water. Stranded on their rooftops, they held up signs that said “HELP!” and watched helicopters pass them by.
When the feds did arrive, residents were treated like criminals. Privatizers seized on the disaster to replace public housing with high-priced condos and public schools with charters, turning the misery of the powerless into profit for the powerful. This model has been repeated around the world, Klein demonstrates—in war zones and in the wake of hurricanes, earthquakes, and famine.
In New Orleans, Klein writes, “People helped each other as best they could. They rescued each other in canoes and rowboats. They fed each other. They displayed that beautiful human capacity for solidarity that moments of crisis so often intensify. But at the official level, it was the complete opposite.”
The conservative every-man-for-himself philosophy of government is revealed in its utter callousness and bankruptcy when disasters strike.
As disasters mount, exacerbated by climate change, we need more solidarity among all people and across borders.
What we are getting from the Trump Administration is the opposite.
In her latest book, No Is Not Enough, Klein connects the Shock Doctrine politics on display during Hurricane Katrina to key figures in the Trump Administration, and warns that we must prepare for an all-out assault on democracy, community, and the wellbeing of the majority of people.
This threat was on full display in Trump’s failure to adequately respond to the devastation after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico—and in his outrageous declaration, in the midst of the disaster, that “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you are throwing our budget out of whack.”
In Mexico, where citizens have been waging a long struggle against a corrupt, elitist government, citizen response to the earthquakes in the face of government inaction could be a blueprint for a wider backlash against this sort of callous politics.
In Mexico, where citizens have been waging a long struggle against a corrupt, elitist government, citizen response to the earthquakes in the face of government inaction could be a blueprint for a wider backlash against this sort of callous politics.
In September, two major earthquakes hit Mexico. The first, on September 7, struck off the coast of the southern state of Chiapas. A magnitude 8.1 quake, it was the biggest earthquake to hit Mexico in 100 years and caused devastating damage. In some rural communities where houses were destroyed and landslides blocked highways, government aid has yet to arrive. Only twelve days later, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck, its epicenter in the state of Puebla, close to Mexico City. Coincidentally, the ground began to shake just as Mexicans were commemorating the thirty-second anniversary of the devastating 1985 earthquake that killed 10,000 people in the capital.
Volunteer rescue missions are fanning out across the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas where, especially as the nation’s attention turns to Mexico City, rural communities are giving up hope of rescue by their government.
The idea that ordinary citizens, not the government, will rescue earthquake victims undermines the government’s legitimacy in the eyes of many people, going back to the 1985 quake in Mexico City.
Blanca Cue, who now lives in Oaxaca, but grew up in Mexico City, remembers both the physical and political shock of the 1985 quake:
“It was frightening because it lasted a long, long time,” she remembers. She was awakened by the quake around 7:30 in the morning and turned on the news to see “all these images of buildings falling down, of people in the streets.”
Then Mexico’s president at the time, Miguel de la Madrid, came on TV to tell people to stay in their homes, and leave it to the army to take care of the damage. “The army was there, but they were just standing around, guarding the buildings,” Blanca recalls. So people rushed in, forming neighborhood rescue groups.
The same thing is happening today, with citizen volunteers performing much of the rescue work after September’s earthquakes.
“And that’s what the government fears a lot—an organized society,” Cue says. “They say, ‘No, don’t go out! We are going to take care of everything. That’s not true. What they fear—and that’s what we learned in Mexico City at that time—is that we have the power. We don’t need the government to tell us what to do. We can organize ourselves.”
The 1985 earthquake galvanized citizens and had a dramatic impact on Mexican politics. The PRI lost power for the first time in decades, Mexico City politics moved to the left, and reforms such as same-sex marriage passed.
“All of these changes in Mexico City came from that ’85 drama we lived,” says Cue, “because we felt empowered. We felt that we could do it. We can be on our knees, but we can be on our feet again. And that is a feeling that you cannot imagine. How wonderful it is. That is what is happening right now in Mexico City. That is what is most moving to watch—the people making these chains, pulling people alive from under the rubble. That is the people. It’s not the government. That is the people who are there for the people.”
That display of compassion and solidarity is exactly what we need to fight the Shock Doctrine, and to shake off end-of-the-world despair.
Ruth Conniff is working as editor-at-large for The Progressive from Oaxaca, Mexico.