St. Lucia during and post Hurricane Beryl

by Tamanisha J. John

Toronto, Ontario

Whenever a hurricane hits in the Caribbean, people rush to point out that it is an indicator of “disaster capitalism” and/or that “disaster capitalism” will surely come. While I agree that non-governmental organizations (NGO) and other organizations profit from disasters in the Caribbean region, and have a long history of doing so, I am less inclined to believe that “disaster capitalism” exists there unless one takes an ahistorical view. Disaster capitalism in the Caribbean can only exist in those states whose revolutions have been defeated and/or undermined, but overall, there has been no massive structural changes in these states. The region is already, and historically has been, ultra-accommodating to capitalism. Disaster capitalism refers to “the use of the shock of disastrous situations to dismantle state participation in the economy and to implant structural changes in the form of laissez-faire capitalism” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 311). To claim that disaster capitalism will come to the Caribbean region would thus indicate a marked period of state participation in the Caribbean that provided for the peoples living there.

Instead, all states’ independence was marked by US interventions given the ideological and economic struggle of the Cold War and the neoliberal turn, which attacked state input and intervention in the market. Caribbean states’ independence was marked by debt and lack of access to capital. It occurred alongside financial institutions’ proliferation of structural adjustment policies whose implementation was necessitated for states in the region to acquire access to loaned capital (John, 2023). Though struggles for nationalizations did occur – in industries like mining, banking, insurance, and others – harsh retaliations from the US and Canada made them unsustainable (John, 2023, p. 134) – with no real reductions in foreign ownership “despite the changes in legal forms of ownership” (Thomas, 1984, p. 168-9). Thus, large foreign ownership of resource extractive industries and financial institutions remained a feature of Caribbean societies when they became independent – just as it also marked the colonial landscape in these spaces. The foreign players that controlled corporations, land, and industries in these countries did change somewhat, but this was also typical with imperial rivalries (Caribbean states themselves having been subject to multiple phases of European colonization throughout their histories).

It was Walter Rodney, who in his 1972 text How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, put forward a critique of the thesis that capitalism had to develop prior to ushering in socialism – which was Marx’s estimation – given that this thesis went against the trajectory of capitalist development in both the Caribbean and in Africa, where the capitalist logics of extraction with disregard for these societies left them in almost permanent states of underdevelopment, that only physical and ideological anti-imperialism could rectify. One of the consequences of this underdevelopment, I argue, is the lack of hurricane preparedness. The logic of “getting people back to work” and “security” in these colonized spaces have always trumped wellbeing for the people and environment – precisely because the people in them have always been categorized as disposable, while the natural resources have been reduced to instruments for the generation of profit. This ideology was true under European empires, and now true under US hegemony in the region – where foreign imposing actors continue to have more say on preparedness, wealth distribution, land ownership, security, economic development, and entrepreneurship (innovation).

In a Region Prone to Hurricanes, Unpreparedness is an Ideological Policy Choice

“Hurricanes are not random phenomena. Atmospheric conditions and physics limit their movement” (Schwartz, 2015, p. xvi). In the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States, we have come to expect a lack of preparedness whenever hurricanes strike. Though Hurricane Beryl’s strength and early formation in June was unprecedented for the Caribbean’s hurricane season, what is precedent is the lack of regional preparedness for hurricanes in a region prone to have them – no matter when these hurricanes form. Forming around June 25th it was clear that Beryl would break the record for earliest formed Category 5 hurricane by the time that it made way into the Caribbean. This was due to the unusually warm temperatures registered in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea as early as March, various heatwave advisories and warnings were placed on the region acknowledging that the summer 2024 would be “hotter than usual” (Loop News 2024). When news of Beryl’s formation first spread, people expected the worst given unusually hot increases in temperatures (+4°c) for the region so early in the year.

Making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in one of the smaller islands of Grenada, Carriacou, on July 1st Beryl would destroy 95% of the infrastructure there before strengthening to a Category 5 hurricane. It would bring even worse devastation to a smaller island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mayreu, where reports proclaim that island to have nearly been “erased from the map” (AP News 2024). In its Caribbean path, Beryl brought devastation as a Category 5 and 4 storm to Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Tobago and northern Venezuela, Barbados, and the southern portion of Jamaica. In its North American path, Beryl brought devastation as a Category 2 and 1 storm to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, before making landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Thereafter the storm was experienced elsewhere in the form of a tropical cyclone and massive downpours of rain. Beryl eventually tapered off in Canada on July 11th where it left heavy rain that caused massive flooding (due to Canada’s neglected flood systems). Beryl’s death toll currently stands at 33, with the storm causing 6 deaths “in Venezuela, 1 in Grenada, 2 in Carriacou, 6 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 4 in Jamaica […] at least 11 in the Greater Houston area, 1 in Louisiana, and 2 in Vermont.” (TT Weather Center 2024)”

Now that the storm has passed, people in impacted areas must contend with the loss of life, destruction of physical infrastructure – including homes and businesses, the lack of food and other basic products, as well as the lack of power and electricity. While contending with loss, victims of this severe weather will start to question the inability of their governments – rich or poor – to adequately address the post hurricane scenarios that they find themselves in repeatedly. This discontent with unpreparedness is now prevalent even before the hurricane season itself has ended.

A Note on Cuba’s Hurricane Preparedness, The Importance of Ideology

One of the most infuriating elements of hurricanes in this region is the “disaster” narratives that come after them, which falsely assert the “naturalness” of unpreparedness given the chaos of the disaster itself – when unpreparedness is, in fact, an ideological policy choice. Poorer states in this region are shackled by an unwillingness of the state to drastically deviate from “larger institutional constraints from which the logic of colonial administration derived its central purpose” and are inherited (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 133-4).  On the other hand, richer states are shackled by their individualist ideologies which offer “vigorous critiques of government expenditure” which leave preparedness up to “market-driven, neoliberal economic policies,” that turn state and local responsibilities over “to charitable institutions, to churches, or to the victims themselves and their communities” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 300).

When looking at states in the Western Hemisphere which frequently experience hurricanes, Cuba stands out as a state which tends to fare better in the post hurricane environment given that state’s policies of shared responsibility towards its people. This even as Cuba has been subjected to a draining embargo and sanctions which places a burden on economic growth there. Yet still, Washington maintains that Cuba’s successful hurricane response and disaster mitigation strategies amount to “the exchange of liberty for effectiveness” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 293-4). Though couched in this language of ‘liberty,’ mitigating the loss of life ensures one’s longtime enjoyment of liberty – as opposed to dying for ‘liberty’s’ sake during a hurricane (or other disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic). For example, Cuba’s hurricane preparedness in relation to the US stands out. Cuba’s disaster response compares a bit more favorably to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA “oversaw 15 times more deaths from hurricanes than Cuba from 2005 — the year that Katrina struck New Orleans — to 2015” (Wolfe, 2021).

This is because Cuba’s disaster preparedness is proactive, prioritizing human life and well-being given the ideological foundations of its revolution that transformed political, social, economic, and environmental relations in the country. US disaster preparedness on the other hand prioritizes profit at the expense of people – it is reactionary and reactive, often blaming victims of hurricane disasters for the lack of state preparedness.

The Caribbean Hurricane as Natural Phenomena, the Disaster as Colonial Inheritance

Hurricanes are not experienced equally amongst states in the Western Hemisphere. People living on Caribbean islands tend to experience the worst effects of hurricanes when they do strike, and it is also people on these same islands which tend to have less resources to recover from the impacts of a hurricane. Though Cuba’s hurricane preparedness is commendable, infrastructure and livelihoods there are still devastated by hurricanes. Many of the Caribbean islands are geographically located “in the Atlantic Hurricane Alley, [and] the region is sensitive to large-scale fluctuation of ocean patterns that are disrupted by warming seas” (Zodgekar, et. al 2023, p. 321). Additionally, populations and infrastructure on these islands tend to be concentrated on the coast – a colonial holdover – given that European “settlements were established directly in the path of oncoming hurricanes (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 8). Initially due to lack of knowledge, this trend remained unchanged amongst Europeans given the need to export what was being extracted from these islands using the ports developed on the coasts.

Historically, environmental disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts) throughout the 1600s-1900s would consolidate land amongst the wealthiest European settlers on different islands and would foil settler attempts to diversify agriculture on islands. This was because wealthy settlers could more easily recover and rebuild what was lost in the aftermath of a hurricane, due to their ability to access credit from Europe and resort to using their own fortunes (wealth and networks). On the other hand, smaller settlers unable to rebuild and recover from hurricane losses had a harder time accessing credit – and creditors within Europe viewed loaning to smaller settlers as a financial burden. If these smaller settlers were already in debt, the passing of a hurricane meant that they would either have to work off debt by giving all that they had to a creditor in Europe, or one on the island, by entering into a credit arrangement with a wealthier plantation owner (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86-8). These losses were quite frequent, as it is known that these phenomena made it so that some European creditors in Europe would amass plantation wealth, even if they themselves had never visited a Caribbean island or formally engaged in plantation life (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 87-8).

These dynamics, in part, explain the predominance of the cultivation of sugar (and rice in what would become the South-Eastern United States) within the region, and even then, “plantership […] necessitated deep pockets (or strong credit) to survive its constant and rapid fluctuations” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 66). “Without access to credit, smaller farmers were forced to sell their lands to wealthier and more secure planters, who thereby expanded their landholdings and production capabilities” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86). This consolidation of larger and wealthier plantations also made other concerns arise, namely the depopulation of settlers from the islands, as debtors opted to leave in the aftermath of storms, and later the transfers of estates to owners outside of the colonies (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 86-7). In essence, settlers’ decision to flee in the wake of, or after, a hurricane shaped population dynamics and demographics in colonies. They also shaped the lack of hurricane preparedness in colonies. Wealthier planters on the islands, and Europeans in Europe, who could suffer from hurricane losses (hurricanes themselves not being guaranteed every season), rebuild afterwards, and recover previous losses given the profit from plantation trade goods – had less incentives to plan ahead if they were not as risk of losing everything they had amassed in their life after a hurricane.

In smaller island states’, where plantation systems were heavily disrupted or stunted in growth due to geography of the land (especially in the Lesser Antilles), even fewer attempts were made to develop any infrastructure which could protect against storms (Mulcahy, 2006). To be clear, this does not mean that these landscapes were spared from destruction which made the impacts of hurricanes worse: deforestation, overgrazing, and over-cultivation of Caribbean islands during centuries of European colonialism that included dispossession of indigenous groups and the enslavement of Africans, also impacted how hurricanes came to be experienced. While planter consolidation, rebuilding, and profits have so far been underscored here – the elephant in the room is that all of this occurred alongside the massive death toll of enslaved Africans who suffered the most both during and after the passage of a hurricane. Outside of the high death tolls for enslaved Africans on the islands, once a hurricane passed, the ultimate goal in the colonies became the reestablishment of ‘law-and-order’ given fears of slave revolt in the wake of destruction (Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). Although slave-revolts post hurricane remained a consistent fear of settlers, slave revolts did not occur after a hurricane due to its disproportionate toll on enslaved populations who were “often the most debilitated by the shortage of food and the diseases that followed the hurricane” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 49).

Caribbean Indigenous Peoples Blamed European Imperial Settlement for Increased Hurricane Devastation

From historical accounts, we know that the Spaniards were the first Europeans to experience a hurricane within the Western Hemisphere during Columbus’s second voyage in 1494/5 (Pérez Jr., 2001; Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). The hurricane experience was unlike anything that Europeans had observed in Europe, and it was from this experience that they sought out intel from the indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. For Caribbean indigenous peoples, “the great storms were part of the annual cycle of life. They respected their power and often deified it, but they also sought practical ways to adjust their lives to the storms. Examples were many: The Calusas of southwest Florida planted rows of trees to serve as windbreaks to protect their villages from hurricanes. On the islands of the Greater Antilles—Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico—the Taino people preferred root crops like yucca, malanga, and yautia because of their resistance to windstorm damage. The Maya of Yucatan generally avoided building their cities on the coast because they understood that such locations were vulnerable to the winds and to ocean surges that accompanied the storms” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 5). Further, Indigenous representations of hurricanes were overall accurate and are similar to modern meteorological mapping of these storms. Europeans also learned from Caribbean Indigenous groups that you could “track” when a hurricane would strike. These developments meant that Indigenous Caribbean knowledge of the hurricane was not only limited to the occurrence of storm, but also meant that Indigenous Caribbean societies factored in preparedness for hurricanes within their worldviews.

Given Caribbean Indigenous knowledge of hurricanes, it is these same people who also recognized that the changes to the landscape by European colonialism contributed to the increased devastation caused by hurricanes between the 1600s-1900s. As such, English colonists who would also come to experience the hurricanes report that “several elderly Caribs stated that hurricanes had become more frequent in recent years, which they viewed as a punishment for their interactions with Europeans” and the main “alteration that our people attribute the more frequent happenings of Hurricanes” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 35). What these settler accounts reveal about Indigenous Caribbean peoples is what Schwartz notes in his 2015 book, Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina, that although “hurricanes were a natural phenomenon; what made them disasters was the patterns of settlement, economic activity, and other human action” (p. 74). Nonetheless, colonial ecological and environmental destruction in the Caribbean – which increased the felt impact of hurricanes – remained worthwhile for Europeans given the high profits to be made from export crops, which kept people there to rebuild after hurricanes. Mulcahy in his 2006 book, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624 – 1783, writes “European settlers and colonists were engaged in a never-ending struggle against nature in their quest for wealth” (p. 93)

Additionally, the European empire’s responses to hurricanes also influenced decisions to stay. Because colonial societies in the Caribbean were stratified along racial and other social hierarchies – hurricanes presented opportunities for large scale consolidation of plantation property on islands which privileged wealthy plantation owners. Additionally, smaller merchants and plantations which could not recover post hurricane were sometimes forced to transfer ownership to merchants in Europe – who never had to visit these properties while amassing wealth from them thereafter (Mulcahy 2006, p. 88). Disaster relief to the colonies thus came to be historically designed as a way for further economic integration, and “assistance to the colonies in times of disaster would bring wealth and affluence to the empire” (Mulcahy 2006, p. 162). Disaster assistance – while increasing inequalities between all peoples in the colonies – did overall benefit imperial capitalism and patriotism within the empire, amongst loyal subjects, especially amongst elite classes, who received the majority of aid based on their losses.

Banking on Hurricanes and Absolving Empire of Responsibility: Debates in Europe

While debates in Europe raged regarding enriching the already wealthy within the colonies with disaster relief – these debates did not change the post-hurricane reality of which those most needing of aid (Indigenous groups, enslaved Africans, indentured workers, small merchants, and small planters) were the least likely to receive it, which was true across all of the different European colonies (Pérez Jr., 2001; Mulcahy, 2006; Schwartz, 2015). “Vulnerability to the hurricane itself was a function of the material determinants” around which colonial social hierarchies were arranged (Pérez Jr., 2001, p. 111). In Europe, debates focused primarily on creditors, so it was argued that the wealthy were more primed to repay creditors when/if they received disaster relief after a hurricane. On the other hand, the proliferation of print news meant that individuals and organizations (e.g., the Church) could send aid to the colonies after disaster struck. Previously, when disaster struck it would take months for news to reach those in Europe, even as the disruptions in trade were more readily felt. Moreover, it was hard for the public in Europe to understand the scale of destruction caused by hurricanes in the Americas, given that this kind of natural disaster did not occur in Europe.

With the establishment of print media, the destruction caused by hurricanes and the damages that they did to plantation systems – which would require a lot of assistance to recover – was made much more readily available to people who could empathize and assist in recovery efforts. Within the British empire, some newspapers even published who would send what amount and type of post disaster relief to the colonies, which undoubtedly contributed to the charitable giving of some wealthy individuals (Mulcahy 2006; Schwartz 2015). Given that the voyage from Europe to the various colonies was long, there was illegal trading between different colonies to provide relief to one another faster – including with the United States, even after the American Revolution.

It is this colonial history which still shapes the lack of hurricane preparedness in a region prone to have them. Thus, most scholars on hurricanes in the region continue to highlight the colonial and slave legacies which have shaped regional unpreparedness to hurricanes. Though the United States is a wealthier country today with the capabilities to develop hurricane preparedness – even if only within its own borders – it is elite US security interests and ideological leanings which have prevented it from doing so. Additionally, historians like Schwartz (2015) make a compelling argument that “the United States, by its military and political expansion into the Caribbean after 1898, its foreign policy objectives in the Cold War, and through its advocacy of certain forms of capitalism joined with its ability to impose its preferences on international institutions, has also influenced the way in which the whole region has faced hurricanes and other disasters” (Schwartz, 2015, p. xviii-xix). This implies that the United States – like the European empire’s past – also has a stake, or interest, in regional hurricane unpreparedness for both political, economic, and security objectives.

US Imperial Extensions in the Caribbean, Impact on Hurricane Preparedness

From this overview of the history of hurricanes in the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States a few things become clear: hurricane preparedness has never been a concern for colonial capitalist development. Hurricane disasters came to be recognized as extremely ruinous to those occupying the lowest rungs of colonial societies, aid was given to the wealthy people who were understood as being able to put aid to better usage, and disaster situations consolidated preferred modes of accumulation in otherwise “chaotic” and uncivilized landscapes. Thus, outside of patriotic tales and misremembering of the storm events, historically “hopes of communal solidarity” in the wake and aftermath of hurricanes “were either naïve or disingenuous [… with] social divisions ha[ving] always shaped the responses to hurricanes (Schwartz, 2015, p. 68-9). Given strict colonial hierarchies, the maintenance of order – to dissuade slave revolts and looting – were always preeminent concerns of empires and those with wealth and power. This is important to plainly state, given that little has changed in today’s experience with hurricanes in the region.

Today’s granting of conditioned relief and temporary debt removals still serve to subordinate Caribbean states to the Western capitalist system and the US security apparatus. Those areas hardest hit by storms and less likely to receive aid, continue to be occupied by the poor populations that are largely non-white/Euro peoples. Settlements on islands continue to be concentrated on coasts, where the tourist industry quickly rebuilds its infrastructure post-hurricane and are the first to receive aid. This at once dispels the myths that recovery is impossible, as it happens in the large coastal areas owned and controlled by foreign hotel chains and entities which quickly beckon tourists back to their “lovely beaches” less than a day after a hurricane. Preparedness for hurricanes in the Caribbean islands are “subordinated to political, military, or what today would be called ‘security’ concerns” (Schwartz, 2015, p. 276). I would include economic and ideological concerns as well. These latter concerns are maintained by the wealthiest states in the hemisphere – the United States and Canada.

Hurricane Flora in the 1960s claimed the lives of over 5,000 Haitians under the Duvalier dictatorship – which failed to even warn Haitians about the arrival of the hurricane so that disorder against Duvalier would not take over the country. The lack of preparedness was accepted by both the United States and Canadian governments given their fear of communism in the Caribbean region. Thus “unlike Haiti’s U.S.-backed right-wing president, François Duvalier, Castro’s Communist government ordered residents living in the hurricane’s projected path to evacuate their homes, and if they were unable, to stay and prepare appropriately for the storm.” This preparation and the establishment of Cuba’s defense system in 1966 accounted for significantly less deaths (1,157) in Cuba (Wolfe, 2021). Today, unpreparedness remains a feature in most Caribbean countries that put corporate interests and the interests of the US (and its allies) security objectives above the prioritization of human life and livelihoods in the Caribbean.

As further illustration of this point, even though the 2004 Hurricane Jeanne hit Cuba a lot harder than Haiti – killing 3,000 Haitians – no Cuban lives were lost due to the hurricane (Wolfe, 2021). The historical and present-day case of Haiti is both informative and a cause for worry as we expect future hurricane seasons to be quite bad. Not only is Haiti a fully privatized economy (Wilentz, 2008); but it is also one that has been under the tutelage of the CORE group – a group composed primarily of foreign ambassadors from the US, France, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Germany, and a few representatives from the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), and the Organization of American States (OAS) – for over two decades. The CORE group’s tutelage of Haiti has been exceptionally negative, as these states and their ambassadors secure their own corporate and labor interests in the country at the expense of that state’s democracy and national sovereignty (Edmonds, 2024). Thus, disaster preparedness in Haiti has never been an agenda item – and has only gotten worse as those governing the country continue to benefit from political, economic, and environmental disasters there. Present day armed intervention and occupation in Haiti, further makes it unlikely that Haiti will be able to weather the next hurricane season.

Hurricane Unpreparedness, A Note on Canada

It is important to remind here that although much is said about US imperialism and security concerns trumping human rights and pro-people development in the region – Canada is not exempt from this critique. For instance, although Canada touts that its military base (OSH-LAC) in the Caribbean is a “support hub” – that also seeks to assist states experiencing disasters, of which hurricanes are included – in 2017 when Category 5 Hurricane’s Irma and Maria wreaked havoc on Dominica, OSH-LAC warships monitored the situation but provided no on the ground help to Caribbean peoples there (John, 2024, p. 12-3). The Canadian government also enacted restrictive migration policies towards those fleeing from the hurricane and its damages. This practice would be repeated by Canada again in 2019 during the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas (John, 2024, p. 12-3). Given that I am currently living in Canada, it is important to point out that Canada is a state that frequently touts progressive rhetoric on climate change, resiliency, and disaster preparedness in the Caribbean region. However, Canada’s actions continue to render the Caribbean region unprepared alongside the actions of the US.

In the 2023 Canada-CARICOM summit hosted by Canada, Caribbean prime ministers sought to place climate issues and climate infrastructure at the top of the agenda – however, Canada was mainly concerned with getting support for an armed intervention in Haiti (Thurton, 2023). Haiti remains the most unprepared country in the Caribbean when disasters hit, which made Canada’s insistence on armed intervention and occupation even more tone deaf. Haiti’s unpreparedness is directly tied to US, Canada, France, and CORE group members tutelage and rejection of Haitian democracy ever since that country’s integration into the Western capitalist system via US occupation. These examples illuminate the fact that the wealthier states in the Western Hemisphere, namely the US and Canada, actively disregard the lives of those impacted by hurricanes and other natural disasters to their south – while first and foremost safeguarding their own economic, ideological, and security priorities. In my analysis of ‘south,’ the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South-Eastern United States are included.

Conclusion

Ideologically, the promotion of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism in the Caribbean (of which the South-Eastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico and Yucatán Peninsula is included) continues to pose an obstacle to disaster preparedness in a region prone to hurricanes.  More importantly, the promotion of these harmful ideologies often comes at the expense of human life. Nothing makes this clearer than the fact that it is the revolutionary state – which is also the most heavily economically sanctioned state in the region – Cuba, that continues to be the most prepared state in times of disaster. This stands in stark contrast to other Caribbean states and to wealthier states, like the US, which mandate regional unpreparedness. Today, while we await (but hope that it is not so) a bad hurricane season, the Caribbean region is more militarized than it has been since the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Militarization is directly due to US security objectives that aim to keep China’s investments (thus competition) out of the region. This policy is backed by Canada, which seeks to advance its own corporate interests in the region.

The US and Canada continue to militarize the Caribbean region, exacerbating climate change and neglecting the urgency of developing resiliency infrastructure. In fact, militarization in the Caribbean region today (and in Africa and Asia) occurs alongside the tightening of both the US and Canadian borders given hostile narratives towards immigrants and immigration within them. This even with the region’s long history (as has been pointed out) of people fleeing the region both during and after a hurricane. All of which indicates that while these states are undoubtedly deepening the climate crisis with their global “security” endeavors, they view the people harmed and negatively impacted by their actions as disposable.

Postscript

Three months after the writing of this document, 5 hurricanes – Debby, Ernesto, Francine, Helene, and Milton – have impacted peoples and infrastructure in the south. The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane season thus far (October 11th, 2024) has taken almost 400 lives – with the actual figure being uncertain, given that the damage from Milton is still being assessed. Each storm is estimated to have cost between $80 – $250 billion (USD) in damages across the region. While governments talk about costs and recovery efforts to get economies “back on track” and provide people with temporary and conditional aid – which is the post disaster norm – we are presented with an uncomfortable, yet undeniable fact: states in the region, whether by colonial inheritance or commitment to capitalism, are banking on unpreparedness continuing well into the future. We must be proactive in defeating this dangerous ideology that places people’s lives, livelihoods and the physical environment at stake; while perpetuating, in its aftermath, conditions that make it so.

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Zodgekar, Ketaki, Avery Raines, Fayola Jacobs, and Patrick Bigger. 2023. A Dangerous Debt-Climate Nexus. NACLA Report on the Americas. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2023.2247773.

Photo Credit: InOldNews, by Delia Louis
Description: Depicts St. Lucia during and post Hurricane Beryl
License info: Creative Commons taken from Flickr.

About the author: Tamanisha J. John is an Assistant Professor at York University in the Department of Politics

The chart above shows Aotearoa New Zealand’s exports and imports of coal. First, note that the emphasis is on timing, not absolute amounts; Imports have a different scale to Exports. Essentially, imports have been around 10% of exports.

It’s also important to note that most Aotearoan coal is exported, while coal used to generate electricity at the Huntly power station is mainly imported. These are two different grades of coal. So it is to be not unexpected that coal imports will have been high at the same times that coal exports also have been high.

And it’s important to note that these data are for values of coal, not volumes. Values will be affected by fluctuations in world coal prices and by fluctuations in the $NZ exchange rate. (Increases in coal exports from 2000 to 2002 will have reflected the historically low exchange rate then.)

Coal exports actually increased after the November 2010 Pike River explosion; that coalfield was still in development in 2010.

Generally, from 2005 to 2012 the export expansion reflected the world market; noting dips for the 2008 global financial crisis, with a subsequent export of stockpiled coal in 2009. During that coal boom period, more than half New Zealand’s coal exports were to India. There was a resurgence of coal exports to India at the end of the 2010s’ decade.

The lull in 2020/21 reflected to Covid19 crisis. Again, we see an exporting of stockpiles after the crisis eased. In 2023 coal exports plummeted, probably a mix of falling world demand as well as falling New Zealand supply. This is a good sign for global transitioning away from coal, though China’s domestic production and consumption of coal will be rising as it transitions from petrol and diesel cars to electric cars. China will be happy to be using fewer imported fossil fuels.

On the import side, New Zealand’s demand for coal from 2003 to 2020 seems to have reflected the global trend, and it will have reflected a lack of growth in renewable energy generation during the later years of the Clark-led Labour-led government. It was under National that the big fall in coal imports took place.

Coal consumption in New Zealand stabilised in the mid-2010s, but resurged again in 2018, again under a Labour-led government; although, to be fair, 2018 and 2019 mainly reflect economic growth rather than the new government’s priorities.

Coal consumption at Huntly in recent years also reflects drought, meaning less hydro-generation of electricity. There is likely to be a lull in coal imports over the next few months, given that the hydro lakes are full, and the El Niño weather forecast is for a strong contribution from wind generation.

My sense is that increased use of electric vehicles – and increased charging capacity – will lead to another temporary resurgence in coal imports. The 2023 quasi-recession, engineered by the Reserve Bank, may however lead to some offsetting reductions in energy demand. My guess, though, is that there will be a short-lived consumption boom in Aotearoa in 2024 and 2025, as high interest rates pull in hot-money from overseas, holding up the $NZ exchange rate, and leading to a further ‘blow-out’ in New Zealand’s current account deficit; a 30.6 billion dollar annual deficit (7.6% of GDP), slightly less than the record high of nearly 9% of GDP earlier this year.

I look forward to hearing about the new government’s plans for expanded renewable electricity generation, and hope that these plans will not mean the loss of wild rivers such as the Mokihinui. Time will tell; soon, in 2024. This government needs ‘runs on the board’ – outcomes, not just proposals – if it is to survive beyond 2026.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Environmental costs are a big deal, which need to be properly factored into our economic decision-making. Last week the Government announced a rebate scheme for electric and hybrid vehicles.

These days we emphasise the very important greenhouse costs arising from the burning of fossil fuels: coal, petrol, gas. But they are not the only ways that urban vehicle use contributes to global environmental degradation. Certainly it is important that New Zealanders make a contribution to the emission-reduction endeavour, at least in proportion to the influence of greenhouse gases on global environmental harm. Changing the ways we own and use private vehicles represents an important outcome, to which good policymaking can make a valuable contribution.

In cities and towns, the problem is a mix of the overuse of private motor vehicles, and the use of vehicles that are overspecified for the tasks they are required to perform. The high-tech solution just announced in New Zealand is to transition to an all-electric fleet; with 2035 being designated as the year in which the import of non-electric new urban vehicles will be prohibited, with a view to New Zealand having an all-electric fleet by around 2050. The important new policy to accelerate the promoted transition will be a subsidisation of electric and low-emission vehicles, combined with a tax on high-emission vehicles.

In my view, this represents an overreliance on a particular technology that presently contributes as a niche solution, but is untested at scale. It represents a strategy by which one technology is replaced by another, whereas a more robust outcome might involve more variety of technologies, and better incentives to use existing technologies more efficiently. Indeed, there is too little emphasis on low-tech contributions that can be implemented in 2021 or 2022.

Public Transport

We should note that countries operating at pandemic emergency levels need to emphasise both minimisation of urban travel, and other measures – vaccination, physical distancing, and mask use – that minimise opportunities for indoor airborne transmission of pathogens between people from different households. Public transport here constitutes a public indoor space; so, under these conditions, there will necessarily be a preference for private transport. However, this preference for private transport in a pandemic will be offset by significantly less overall movement of people.

It is important that, when countries are not at pandemic emergency levels – and New Zealand is not currently at a domestic emergency level (it does continue to have a pandemic emergency at its international border) – all incentives to prefer private over public transport are discontinued; even reversed.

New Zealand at present has a permanent requirement for passengers to wear facemasks when using public transport. And the consequences are obvious, at least in Auckland. While traffic congestion is noticeably worse than it was in 2019, buses and trains are noticeably more spacious, with empty buses still a common sight all over the city.

New Zealanders of all ethnicities have revealed an unsurprising preference to not wear masks (except when there is a current outbreak of Covid19), and to only use masks when required to by law. New Zealanders don’t like wearing masks. Indeed, it was quite strange visiting Middlemore Hospital last month, which has a train station outside its main entrance. The only masks I saw in the hospital were those being worn by people heading out the front door, to catch a train.

The mask mandate makes public transport consumption a more costly experience than it would otherwise be; in part because New Zealanders don’t like wearing facemasks, and in part because it signals to the public at large that buses and trains are inherently unhealthy – indeed dangerous – places. Auckland’s public transport has improved markedly this century, though buses had a taint, even before Covid19, of being ‘loser movers’. That taint has been majorly exacerbated during covid times.

When there are twenty percent more cars on urban roads than there need to be, then greenhouse emissions are likely to be raised by fifty percent; that’s because of the stop-start nature of traffic congestion. So the first thing authorities can do to reduce greenhouse emissions from car use is to discontinue the mask mandate, except as an emergency measure. Other incentives to use public transport – including temporary incentives – may also be helpful, to help redress its ‘loser mover’ taint.

(Of course any incentives for workers to take sick leave when sick, or to work from home periodically, need to be retained. Also, people should be encouraged to wear facemasks if they are experiencing conditions such as hay fever; conditions which could be construed by fellow passengers as covid or influenza. The general principle is that buses and trains and ferries should become happy, normalised, family-friendly public spaces.)

It’s also important to note that interruptions to the normal flow of low grade ‘seasonal’ viruses – infections such as ‘common colds’ – may have unanticipated consequences. These viruses may provide substantial (albeit incomplete) immunity to more serious viral infections; we do not know, in large part because our public health people are not asking this question. (We should note that vaccinations themselves can be regarded as protective low-grade infections.) Thus, by disturbing the normal flow of low grade pathogens – such as the cold viruses we have adapted to – we are participating in a social experiment. In New Zealand over the last nine months, hospitalisations have increased for what were otherwise rare respiratory disorders; and excess deaths in New Zealand have been comparable with those in European countries with active Covid19 outbreaks.

Public transport use is a critical component of greenhouse emissions’ reduction.

Subsidies and Small Cars

Subsidies (‘carrot’ incentives) are generally more effective than taxes (‘stick’ disincentives’). They work by leading more people into making those choices that have collective benefits. And they fit the wider (‘zero-sum’) principle of public finance that requires private financial surpluses to be offset by public financial deficits. (In this context, just as responsible governments understand that small countries are not excused from contributing to the global good through greenhouse emission reductions, so all countries’ governments need to contribute by running public sector financial deficits to offset unsustainable private sector financial behaviours. This means that ‘we do not have enough money’ is not a valid governmental excuse for inaction or for under-action.)

First, governments need to subsidise surgical-grade facemasks for people with conditions that make them high risk to acquiring respiratory infections in public places. This allows such compromised people to mingle in public spaces without imposing illiberal mandates on the general public.

Second, small cars emit fewer greenhouse gases than large cars. Not only should governments subsidise small safe low-emission petrol vehicles, but they should encourage households who genuinely require larger family vehicles to acquire such small vehicles as their ‘second’ car. And to default to their smaller vehicle whenever they are on runabout duty with one to four occupants; thus, the smaller vehicle should rightly be called the ‘first car’ of a household.

The vehicle I mainly drive now is a 2003 Honda Jazz, which is still fuel efficient, can act as a mini utility vehicle when circumstances require it, and, over the last summer, effortlessly ran a return trip from Auckland to Cromwell.

The other benefit of city residents and townspeople driving small cars like this as their default option is that the roads become safer. Collisions are more likely than at present to be between two small vehicles, and thereby less likely to cause major injury or death.

By all means we should subsidise small electric vehicles as part of this mix. But, we should note that most small vehicles will not be garaged at night – because they are owned by mainly younger people without a garage, because a bigger family vehicle is in the garage, or because of the modern trend to use garages more as storage units for household affects than as homes for cars – and that plugin electric vehicles parked on the street at night cannot easily be charged.

Family Vehicles

Larger vehicles – especially vans and people movers – do play and will continue to play an important role in our vehicle mix. The answer here would be to emphasise (and subsidise) hybrid technology, now well established. These vehicles are particularly useful for large families, and for many businesses.

What we want is to minimise the inappropriate urban use of ‘utes’ and SUVs. Indeed, in recent years four-door utility vehicles – in most cases a form of truck – have become a status symbol, to some extent displacing SUVs. These are vehicles best suited to rural use – eg by farmers. Petrol or diesel ‘utes’ should be subject to a large-car tax (indeed a large car-tax), which can be rebated to legitimate users for whom these are a valid business cost. They should continue to be available to rich city-folk who need to tow their recreational boats to Pauanui or Whangamata, so long as they pay the large car tax. And, they should be exempted the tax if they buy an electric ute or SUV instead of a ‘gas guzzler’; incentives should apply at all price points.

Electric Vehicles

All EVs, including bikes, should be eligible for transition subsidies. The aim however should not be to switch to fully electric fleets; we need diversity and efficiency, rather than vulnerability. Thus a small EV is clearly better than a big EV, for typical city runabout use.

We should note that, in New Zealand this year, more electricity has been generated by burning coal than in any of the previous ten years. This may be partially a consequence of climate change; more droughts, meaning less water available to generate hydroelectricity. Thus, a mass switch from oil-based fuels to electricity might end up being, substantially, a switch from petrol to dirtier coal; not exactly what the policy is intended to achieve.

Considering vulnerability, we need to note that modern electric vehicles require scarce raw materials, such as rare earth metals, which are substantially sourced from China; and massive amounts of other increasingly scarce metals, such as copper. (See Al Jazeera‘s The Dark Side of Green Energy.) At a time that one ‘conversation’ is leading western countries to distance themselves from China, another conversation may be leading us go become more dependent on Chinese sourced materials. And the environmental costs to these mining regions in China is comparable to the political costs being faced by some other communities in China.

Another really big issue is that of e-waste. It’s important that the cost of any vehicle – including electric vehicles – is fully inclusive of the costs of reusing, recycling, or otherwise disposing of end of life vehicles (and vehicle components such as batteries and tyres). One aspect of this is to avoid a transition process which makes many still good vehicles prematurely obsolete. Policymakers need to take a global perspective on this. Countries like New Zealand – which traditionally import many used vehicles – need to continue importing quality low emission used petrol vehicles – to ensure that a sound global vehicle ecology is maintained.

Rental Vehicles

It is common for us to rent tools (eg trailers) and power machinery; otherwise these items that we own spend most of their time idle. We can treat passenger vehicles in much the same way. So, while it is good for young people to learn to drive – and gain drivers’ licences – that does not mean they need to own a car, not even a small car. They can rent cars – preferably small cars – for weekend and longer trips. Quality rental housing within walking distance of main employment and transport nodes, combined with a reliance on rental vehicle options for irregular travel, can form the basis for an affluent but uncluttered life; an eco-life.

Likewise, ‘nuclear’ households of four or fewer people should be able to comfortably get by with one small private vehicle, renting a larger vehicle whenever irregular vehicle requirements occur.

A green society needs fewer vehicles that each do many kilometres in one year. In that way, the vehicles will wear out as the technology becomes obsolete; ie ideally a car should do 200,000 km (or more) in a fifteen-year life.

Technological Transition

Electric vehicles, used at scale, represent an unproven option with many potential unaddressed and unintended consequences. The only comparable wholesale transition is that from steam to oil, and that took eighty or so years, with the best steam engines being built in the 1950s.

One of the most interesting transitions in transport technology was that of sailing ships giving way to powered ships. The transition lasted over 100 years, with Norway in particular improving the technology of commercial sailing ships into the twentieth century. New Zealand is particularly well-adapted to sailing ships, because it represents the half-way point of the great circle circumnavigation route. There is a reason why the westerly winds in the Southern Ocean are called ‘trade winds’. The last of the commercial windjammers was the Pamir, which last sailed out of Wellington in 1948. Sailing ships, in their context, are much more eco than electric cars. May we see a reintroduction of sailing ships into the mix?

We can learn from this last episode, by using multiple technologies simultaneously, and letting markets (which properly cost what they supply) determine the outcomes; and focussing on the bigger ecological picture, that less is more.

We need to remove disincentives to the use of public transport. And we need to promote the intensive use of small private vehicles wherever and whenever they are sufficient to the tasks people require of them.

————-

Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

contact: keith at rankin.nz

Book Review
By John Perry
From Nicaragua

Who Killed Berta Cáceres?: Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet, by Nina Lakhani.  Verso, 2020. 336 pp.

“They build dams and kill people.” These words, spoken by a witness when the murderers of environmental defender Berta Cáceres were brought to trial in Honduras, describe Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), the company whose dam project Berta opposed. DESA was created in May 2009 solely to build the Agua Zarca hydroelectric scheme, using the waters of the Gualcarque River, regarded as sacred by the Lenca communities who live on its banks. As Nina Lakhani makes clear in her book Who Killed Berta Cáceres?,^[1] DESA was one of many companies to benefit from the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, when the left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya was deposed and replaced by a sequence of corrupt administrations. The president of DESA and its head of security were both US-trained former Honduran military officers, schooled in counterinsurgency. By 2010, despite having no track record of building dams, DESA had already obtained the permits it needed to produce and sell electricity, and by 2011, with no local consultation, it had received its environmental licence.

Much of Honduras’s corruption derives from the drug trade, leading last year to  being labelled a narco-state^[2] in which (according to the prosecution in a US court case against the current president’s brother) drug traffickers “infiltrated the Honduran government and they controlled it.”^[3] But equally devastating for many rural communities has been the government’s embrace of extractivism – an economic model that sees the future of countries like Honduras (and the future wealth of their elites) in the plundering and export of its natural resources.^[4] Mega-projects that produce energy, mine gold and other minerals, or convert forests to palm-oil plantations, are being opposed by activists who, like Cáceres, have been killed or are under threat. Lakhani quotes a high-ranking judge she spoke to, sacked for denouncing the 2009 coup, as saying that Zelaya was deposed precisely because he stood in the way of this economic model and the roll-out of extractive industries that it required.

The coup “unleashed a tsunami of environmentally destructive ‘development’ projects as the new regime set about seizing resource-rich territories.”^[5] After the post-coup elections, the then president Porfirio Lobo declared Honduras open for business, aiming to “relaunch Honduras as the most attractive investment destination in Latin America.” ^[6] Over eight years, almost 200 mining projects were approved. Cáceres received a leaked list of rivers, including the Gualcarque, that were to be secretly “sold off” to produce hydroelectricity. The Honduran congress went on to approve dozens of such projects without any consultation with affected communities. Berta’s campaign to defend the rivers began on July 26, 2011 when she led the Lenca-based COPINH (“Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras”) in a march on the presidential palace. As a result, Lobo met Cáceres and promised there would be consultations before projects began – a promise he never kept.

Lakhani’s book gives us an insight into the personal history that brought Berta Cáceres to this point. She came from a family of political activists. As a teenager she read books on Marxism and the Cuban revolution. But Honduras is unlike its three neighbouring countries where there were strong revolutionary movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The US had already been granted free rein in Honduras in exchange for “dollars, training in torture-based interrogation methods, and silence.”^[7] It was a country the US could count on, having used it in the 1980s as the base for its “Contra” war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Its elite governing class, dominated by rich families from Eastern Europe and the Middle East,  was also unusual. One, the Atala Zablah family, became the financial backers of the dam; others, such as Miguel Facussé Barjum, with his palm oil plantations in the Bajo Aguán, backed other exploitative projects.

At the age of only 18, looking for political inspiration and action, Berta left Honduras and went with her future husband Salvador Zúñiga to neighbouring El Salvador. She joined the FMLN guerrilla movement and spent months fighting against the US-supported right-wing government. Zúñiga describes her as having been “strong and fearless” even when the unit they were in came under attack. But in an important sense, her strong political convictions were tempered by the fighting: she resolved that “whatever we did in Honduras, it would be without guns.”^[8]

Inspired also by the Zapatista struggle in Mexico and by Guatemala’s feminist leader Rigoberta Menchú, Berta and Salvador created COPINH in 1993 to demand indigenous rights for the Lenca people, organising their first march on the capital Tegucigalpa in 1994. From this point Berta began to learn of the experiences of Honduras’s other indigenous groups, especially the Garífuna on its northern coast, and saw how they fitted within a pattern repeated across Latin America. As Lakhani says, “she always understood local struggles in political and geopolitical terms.”^[9] By 2001 she was speaking at international conferences challenging the neo-liberal economic model, basing her arguments on the exploitation experienced by the Honduran communities she now knew well. She warned of an impending “death sentence” for the Lenca people, tragically foreseeing the fate of herself and other Lenca leaders. Mexican activist Gustavo Castro, later to be targeted alongside her, said “Berta helped make Honduras visible. Until then, its social movement, political struggles and resistance were largely unknown to the rest of the region.”^[10]

In Río Blanco, where the Lenca community voted 401 to 7 against the dam, COPINH’s struggle continued. By 2013, the community seemed close to winning, at the cost of activists being killed or injured by soldiers guarding the construction. They had blocked the access road to the site for a whole year and the Chinese engineering firm had given up its contract. The World Bank allegedly pulled its funding, although Lakhani shows that its money later went back into the project via a bank owned by the Atala Faraj family. In April 2015 Berta was awarded the Goldman Prize^[11] for her “grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam.”^[12]

Then in July 2015, DESA decided to go ahead by itself. Peaceful protests were met by violent repression and bulldozers demolished settlements. Threats against the leaders, and Berta in particular, increased. Protective measures granted to her by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights were never properly implemented. On February 20 2016, a peaceful march was stopped and 100 protesters were detained by DESA guards. On February 25, 50 families had to watch the demolition of their houses in the community of La Jarcia.

The horrific events on the night of Wednesday March 2 are retold by Nina Lakhani. Armed men burst through the back door of Berta’s house and shot her. They also injured Gustavo Castro, who was visiting Berta; he waited until the men had left, found her, and she died in his arms. Early the following morning, police and army officers arrived, dealing aggressively with the family and community members who were waiting to speak to them. Attempted robbery, a jilted lover and rivalry within COPINH were all considered as motives for the crime. Eventually, investigators turned their attention to those who had threatened to kill her in the preceding months. By the first anniversary of Berta’s death the stuttering investigation had led to eight arrests, but the people who ordered the murder were still enjoying impunity. Some of the accused were connected to the military, which was not surprising since Lakhani later revealed in a report for The Guardian that she had uncovered a military hit list with Berta’s name on it.^[13] In the book she reports that the ex-soldier who told her about it is still in hiding: he had seen not only the list but also one of the secret torture centers maintained by the military.

Nina Lakhani is a brave reporter. She had to be. Since the coup in Honduras, 83 journalists have been killed; 21 were thrown in prison during the period when Lakhani was writing her book.^[14] She poses the question “would we ever know who killed Berta Cáceres?” and sets out to answer it. Despite her diligent and often risky investigation, she can only give a partial answer. Those arrested and since convicted almost certainly include the hitmen who carried out the murder, but it is far from the clear that the intellectual authors of the crime have been caught. In 2017 Lakhani interviewed or attempted to interview all eight of those imprisoned and awaiting trial, casting a sometimes-sympathetic light on their likely involvement and why they took part.

It took almost two years before one of the crime’s likely instigators, David Castillo, the president of DESA, was arrested. Lakhani heads back to prison to interview him, too, and finds that Castillo disquietingly thinks she is the reason he’s in prison. “There is no way I am ever sitting down to talk to her,” he says to the guard.^[15] Nevertheless they talk, with Castillo both denying his involvement in the murder and accusing Lakhani of implicating him. Afterwards she takes “a big breath” and writes down what he’s said.

In September 2018, the murder case finally went to trial, and Lakhani is at court to hear it, but the hearing is suspended. On the same day she starts to receive threats, reported in London’s Press Gazette^[16] and duly receiving international attention. Not surprisingly she sees this as an attempt to intimidate her into not covering the trial. Nevertheless, when it reopens on October 25, she is there.

The trial reveals a weird mix of diligent police work and careful forensic evidence, together with the investigation’s obvious gaps. Not the least of these was the absence of Gustavo Castro, the only witness, whose return to Honduras was obstructed by the attorney general’s office. Castillo, though by then charged with masterminding the murder, was not part of the trial. Most of the evidence was not made public or even revealed to the accused. The Cáceres family’s lawyers were denied a part in the trial.

“The who did what, why and how was missing,” says Lakhani, “until we got the phone evidence which was the game changer.”^[17] The phone evidence benefitted from an expert witness who explained in detail how it implicated the accused. She revealed that an earlier plan to carry out the murder in February was postponed. She showed the positions of the accused on the night in the following month when Berta was killed. She also made clear that members of the Atala family were involved.

When the verdict was delivered on November 29 2018, seven of the eight accused were found guilty, but it wasn’t until December 2019 that they were given long sentences. That’s where Nina Lakhani’s story ends. By then Honduras had endured a fraudulent election, its president’s brother had been found guilty of drug running in the US, and tens of thousands of Hondurans were heading north in migrant caravans. David Castillo hasn’t yet been brought to trial, and last year was accused by the School of Americas Watch of involvement in a wider range of crimes.^[18] Lakhani revealed in The Guardian that he owns a luxury home in Texas.^[19] He’s in preventative detention, but according to COPINH enjoys “VIP” conditions and may well be released because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of those already imprisoned may also be released. Daniel Atala Midence, accused by COPINH of being a key intellectual author of the crime as DESA’s chief financial officer, has never been indicted.^[20]

The Agua Zarca dam project has not been officially cancelled although DESA’s phone number and email address are no longer in service.^[21] Other environmentally disastrous projects continue to face opposition by COPINH and its sister organisations representing different Honduran communities. And a full answer to the question “Who Killed Berta Cáceres?” is still awaited.

End notes

^[1] Lakhani, N. (2020) Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet. London: Verso.

^[2] “The Hernández Brothers,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/october/the-hernandez-brothers

^[3] “Honduran President’s Brother Is Found Guilty of Drug Trafficking,” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/americas/honduras-president-brother-drug-trafficking.html

^[4] “Murder in Honduras,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/march/murder-in-honduras

^[5] Lakhani, op.cit., p.89.

^[6] “Honduras, open for business,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/may/honduras-open-for-business

^[7] Lakhani, op.cit., p.24.

^[8] Quoted by Lakhani, op.cit., p.35.

^[9] Lakhani, op.cit., p.44.

^[10] Lakhani, op.cit., p.56.

^[11] The Goldman Prize is sometimes described as the “Nobel Prize” for environmental and human rights defenders. See http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/

^[12] “Introducing the 2015 Goldman Prize Winners,” https://www.goldmanprize.org/blog/introducing-the-2015-goldman-environmental-prize-winners/

^[13] “Berta Cáceres’s name was on Honduran military hitlist, says former soldier,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/21/berta-caceres-name-honduran-military-hitlist-former-soldier

^[14] “Entre balas y cárcel: 35 periodistas exiliados en tres años,” https://www.reporterosdeinvestigacion.com/2020/05/23/entre-balas-y-carcel-la-prensa-hondurena/

^[15] Lakhani, op.cit., p.219.

^[16] “Guardian stringer covering notorious Honduras murder trial shares safety fears amid online smear campaign,” https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-stringer-covering-notorious-honduras-murder-trial-shares-safety-fears-amid-online-smear-campaign/

^[17] Lakhani, op.cit., p.252.

^[18] “Violence, Corruption & Impunity in the Honduran Energy Industry: A profile of Roberto David Castillo Mejía,” http://www.soaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Violence-Corruption-Impunity-A-Profile-of-Roberto-David-Castillo.pdf

^[19] “Family of slain Honduran activist appeal to US court for help in her murder trial,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/31/berta-caceres-murder-trial-subpoena-david-castillo

^[20] See COPINH’s web page on the aftermath of the Berta Cáceres trial, https://copinh.org/2020/05/actualizacion-causa-berta-caceres-2/; see also “Indígenas piden acusación penal contra Daniel Atala como supuesto «asesino intelectual» de Berta Cáceres,” https://www.reporterosdeinvestigacion.com/2020/05/15/indigenas-piden-acusacion-penal-contra-daniel-atala-como-supuesto-asesino-intelectual-de-berta-caceres/

^[21] “Inside the Plot to Murder Honduran Activist Berta Cáceres,” https://theintercept.com/2019/12/21/berta-caceres-murder-plot-honduras/

COHA urges Washington to allow safe passage of the Iranian fuel tankers. Any action to impede their arrival at Venezuelan ports would be illegal, counter-productive, and could ignite an international conflict with unforeseeable consequences. It is time for the US to end the use of economic sanctions and join international efforts to fight the pandemic and save lives everywhere, regardless of ideological differences.

COHA Editorial
Washington DC

Tensions between the US and two governments it has targeted for regime change –Iran and Venezuela– are mounting, as five Iranian oil tankers carrying approximately 60 million gallons of gasoline and other fuel products make their way to the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. This act of mutual assistance challenges a US blockade that limits access of millions of Venezuelans to food, fuel,  and medical supplies. The delivery of gasoline is now of vital importance to the very survival of the Bolivarian revolution.

According to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) the illegal sanctions implemented by the US government have caused an estimated 40,000 deaths from 2017 to 2018. In March 2020, human rights expert, Alfred de Zayas, said that fatalities had risen to 100,000, principally on account of a dearth of medicines caused by sanctions. Now, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging this crime against humanity takes on even more urgency. COHA maintains that Venezuela has every legal and moral right to solicit and accept urgently needed supplies and trade with any nation it chooses. 

The battle of ideas proceeds at full steam as Iranian tankers are scheduled to arrive at Venezuelan ports in the coming days. Washington and its allies in Bogota argue that Iranian fuel shipments to Venezuela represent a new chapter of Iranian inroads in the US “neighborhood”, and that with this comes the threat of terrorism. Iran and Venezuela, however, have been close allies for more than two decades. They have collaborated on oil production policy through their memberships in OPEC and often have raised their diplomatic voices in unison in favor of a multipolar world and against US interventions in Latin America and the Middle East. In 2005 VenIran was established in the state of Bolivar to assemble tractors. In 2009 Chavez committed to selling gasoline to Iran when it was suffering shortages. The only acts of terrorism in the “neighborhood,” recently have been the foiled mercenary incursions into Venezuela. This paramilitary operation was launched from Colombia, not Iran, and it has been directly linked to the US backed self-declared president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.

The Maduro administration and its international allies have been appealing to the UN to defend Venezuela’s right to engage in commerce without interference. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has called for the lifting or suspension of sanctions to allow nations to obtain the materials they need to deal with the crisis. Venezuela maintains that there is nothing illegal per se about trade between two sovereign nations and rejects the dubious legal doctrine that US unilateral coercive measures constitute legitimate additions to international law. In the face of a pandemic, economic warfare, and paramilitary attacks, Venezuela continues to defend its sovereignty.

This battle of ideas parallels actions on the ground. According to Reuters, an anonymous senior Trump administration official said the Iranian fuel shipment “is not only unwelcome by the United States but it’s unwelcome by the region, and we’re looking at measures that can be taken.” The US has deployed additional navy ships to augment its military presence in the Caribbean, ostensibly as part of counter-narcotics operations. Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladamir Padrino announced that ships and planes of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) will escort the Iranian oil tankers once they reach Venezuela’s economic zone. Iran, meanwhile, is warning of retaliation in areas of the Middle East where it can do damage to US interests should its tankers come under attack. The stage is set for a possible confrontation.

COHA urges Washington to allow safe passage of the Iranian fuel tankers. Any action to impede their arrival at Venezuelan ports would be illegal, counter-productive, and could ignite an international conflict with unforeseeable consequences. It is time for the US to end the use of economic sanctions and join international efforts to fight the pandemic and save lives everywhere, regardless of ideological differences.

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