Shortly after the tsunami hit Southeast Asia last winter, I traveled to (unaffected) Northeast Thailand for the semester. In April, I went to the province of Phangnga, in Southern Thailand, to help rebuild villages of minority communities-Baan Nai Rai, a Muslim village, and Baan Taabthua, a Morgan "Sea Gypsy" village.
Four months after the tsunami, these villagers had barely begun to recover and rebuild. Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai Prime Minister, refused to accept international aid after the tsunami-not because he didn't need it, but because he didn't want to cede control over the process of rebuilding to the international community. Thaksin is the richest man in Thailand, and as a politician he has pushed industry, modernization and tourism as the answer to Thailand's economic troubles since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. In some ways he saw the tsunami as an ironically fortuitous tragedy.
I do not mean to claim that Thaksin celebrated the death and suffering of any tsunami victims. His immediate action after the waves receded, however, belies his true priorities. Thaksin declared that it was unsafe for villagers to return to their homes along the coast, while hotels and resorts have not received the same warning. With shores now cleared, developers are laying claim to the coastal areas that villagers have lived in and depended upon for centuries.
Morgan communities are being forcibly relocated inland to make room for shoreline tourist facilities. With new homes away from the sea, and private ownership blocking access to the water, the villagers' very way of life and livelihood are severely threatened.
Morgan people have been connected with the sea for generations. They live with and on the sea, "with their toes in the water," often building floating houses on lagoons. Morgan people believe they will die out if they are forced to live in government-supplied concrete high-rises away from the water. Their livelihoods and their culture revolve around the rhythm of the ocean. Because of their marginalized and at times uneducated status, the Morgan people have few avenues of protest to which they may resort.
Although the outpouring of generosity and relief after the tsunami was admirable, we must hold governments and agencies accountable for using relief funds fairly and effectively. Most importantly, we must ensure that the money we give to any relief effort is not used to further victimize those who have already been devastated.
As Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated so violently within our own borders, the onset of natural disasters leaves marginalized and underprivileged groups extremely vulnerable to exploitation. There is a politics to disaster relief, and we have witnessed the effects streaming through our television sets in the last few weeks.
After the storm hit, President George W. Bush announced that "Katrina did not discriminate, and neither will the relief effort." His mother, Barbara Bush, may give a more accurate picture of the State's true attitude: "So many of the people in the area here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Perhaps Laura Bush's appearance on ABC's special New Orleans edition of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" will be enough to counter Kanye West's poignant claim during a fund raiser that "George Bush does not care about black people." Certainly the reconstruction effort will indicate how committed George W. really is to bridging the racial and class divide.
Developers and corporate lobbyists are treating Hurricane Katrina as a boon. They see African-Americans in New Orleans as "the minority community," when in fact over two-thirds of New Orleans' population is African-American-at least before the storm.
The presently occurring demographic shifts in New Orleans are astounding. Some of the evacuees have described the process as "ethnic cleansing." President Bush sees the decimated areas as "opportunity zones"-Hurricane Katrina has cleared the way for upscale development in the inner-city. With so many poor people displaced and reluctant to return to their flooded and even burnt-down houses, it looks like gentrification may win out.
Getting back to their homes is only half the battle. Hurricane Katrina survivors now face a web of bureaucracy and the "technology of power" as they begin to rebuild. Worse than the horrific tales of dead bodies being eaten by rats and the violence that has thrown New Orleans into turmoil is the over one million people who are now left without housing, jobs, possessions or health care.
Paperwork, bookkeeping, inspections, reports-all these things will define differences and distinctions, as they decide who will rebuild their lives and who will be left on the curb. This is just another aspect of the discrimination rife in this process-allowing a seemingly "fair" and sufficiently complex procedure (thereby creating "experts" and "victims" whose roles are fixed and defining) to select who is determined and resourceful enough to get their lives back together. It is not only an issue of race but also an issue of class.
This will ultimately be the legacy and lasting devastation of Hurricane Katrina-the people who survived the storm, but were defeated by the relief effort and policies of the State. Already, the tone has been set for rebuilding, with no-bid contracts going to Halliburton subsidiaries, the suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the government to pay relief workers the local prevailing wage, and the refusal of many insurance companies to cover what they see as "flood damage" in the hurricane insurance policies.
Only time will tell if global scrutiny will foster greater participation in the reconstruction effort, or if the poor will remain ostracized and marginalized from the process. We should look at the continued struggle over the tsunami-affected areas as a warning for what could take place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Our attention must not lapse or wane-the people of New Orleans need us for the long haul, not just for a quick flood of funding that can easily be misappropriated.
The faces and stories of Hurricane Katrina's survivors demand solid answers for the inept relief and recovery effort and challenge us to ensure that the survivors have some control over the rebuilding process. As Christopher Jencks told The New York Times, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has allowed us to see "who gets left behind in society-in a literal way."
Meijer can be reached at mcmeijer@amherst.edu