Institute of Development Studies

The social and economic earthquakes of Chile and Haiti

17 March 2010 - Pablo Policzer and Andrés Mejía Acosta

With only a few weeks apart, both the richest and poorest countries in Latin America – according to GDP per capita – have been hit by two devastating earthquakes, leaving behind human, social and economic tragedies that will be felt for years to come. The striking irony is why a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile produced victims in the hundreds, while in Haiti a magnitude 7.0 earthquake produced victims in the hundreds of thousands. From a technical perspective, architects and engineers have begun to ask fundamental questions about structural conditions: Why did some buildings collapse while others did not? How did different building technologies and standards fare against powerful seismic forces? From a development perspective, the two tragedies offer a valuable opportunity to ask similar questions about the effectiveness of state institutions in both countries.

Some have argued that such a comparison should not be made because it's impossible to avoid making a “racialised discourse” about the differences between these two countries. But regardless of such factors, failing to draw comparative lessons from these experiences is near-sighted: in both countries, the poorest of the poor were the most affected victims.

It would be trivial to enumerate the many economic, social and historical differences that separate Chile from Haiti. Over the past decades, Chile has overcome a repressive and authoritarian past to achieve economic and democratic consolidation, whereas Haiti has been unable to overcome a vicious cycle of political instability, extreme poverty and social unrest.  Yet, one important commonality that challenged conventional assumptions was to observe how looting and social conflict broke out in the aftermath of earthquakes in both fragile state Haiti and law abiding Chile. Authorities on both countries struggled to impose order and found it increasingly difficult to deliver aid to remote communities. And although social order was more rapidly restored in Chile than in Haiti, the earthquake revealed that there are clear limits to the capacity of a strong state outside its own country’s capital.

Some have argued that it is not wealth that determines a country’s capacity to respond to disasters like this but the strength of its institutions. They have a point. Chile has accumulated significant experience in dealing with serious earthquakes since the 1930s (including a magnitude 9.5 earthquake in 1960). Moreover, Chile decided to overhaul its building codes to ensure safer building standards, at a time when the country was still very poor. The recent earthquake showed that the country was not always able to enforce those building codes effectively, as illustrated by the collapse of newer buildings. Although it is too early to know why poor quality structures were allowed to be built in the first place, and why building inspections failed, early signs suggest that weakened regulations in recent years allowed the construction of poor quality buildings especially in poorer areas.

In other words, the devastation caused by recent earthquakes suggests that the poor remain most vulnerable to the seismic risks even in wealthier countries like Chile, which reveals a significant political fault line, not an architectural or engineering one. This is an important lesson to keep in mind if we want to improve poor people’s chances of surviving catastrophes like these.

Andrés Mejía Acosta is a Research Fellow, Governance Team, IDS

Pablo Policzer is the Canada Research Chair in Latin American Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, Canada

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