Grade B for Compassion for Peru

Two weeks after the massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake that cracked open south-central Peru, homelessness, disease, and despair still lay in all directions while international aid has been staggered at best and painfully inadequate at worst. But the magnitude of the statistics wrung up by the natural calamity is graphically illuminated in headlines of the BBC, New York Times, and CNN: 514 are dead, 1,090 are injured, and 39,741 are homeless with the range of all of those stricken or affected by the earthquake running as high as 200,000. The United Nations has revealed that save for the initial wave of relief, substantive emergency aid provided by the European Union, Japan, the United States, New Zealand, and countries throughout the Americas, has not been sustained. As of now, the goal of the U.N. is to raise an additional $37 million more in assistance for Peru. As Peruvian President Alan Garcia has estimated, the total cost of infrastructure rehabilitation which will be needed in the coastal regions devastated by the quake will be as much as $220 million. Bureaucratic red tape has already ensnarled the road to recovery, compounding the humanitarian crisis and slowing the distribution of the relatively modest funds that already have arrived.

Quite naturally, politics has wormed its way into the disaster relief saga. Venezuelan aid deliveries, as well as its good will and personnel, were clearly being recorded by Peruvians even before the earthquake struck, and it has continued to grow in its aftermath as Venezuelan assistance, pledged and delivered, is about to surpass the U.S. figure, despite Venezuela’s comparative size and wealth. The scope of the international community’s aid effort to Peru was confirmed by reports that food, produce, and supplies were being dispatched to the affected areas with the emblazoned likenesses of both Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his political soul-brother Peruvian Nationalist Party Leader Ollanta Humala, who is a close friend of Chávez and a political enemy of President Garcia. Garcia’s cabinet condemned Chavez’s blatant politicization of the disaster relief.

To put it in raw numbers, the latest data shows that the total volume of funds that each country has made available for disaster relief comes up pathetically short. The United States has sent approximately $3 million dollars, an amount matched by the European Union. The Japanese have contributed approximately $1.5 million dollars and New Zealand $500,000. Given the contrast of the graphic difference in their respective populations, the New Zealand gift vastly dwarfs that of the U.S. These numbers come in addition to hundreds of tons of food, medicine, water, tents, blankets, and supplies along with search and rescue and medical teams sent from all over the hemisphere and the world.

In comparable disasters, victims will immediately turn to those who cared enough for their plight to reach out and help them. At first, let this be a lesson to the U.S. Washington should have properly prepared to respond to Peru’s emergency (or any other counterpart for that matter) when first informed that such a disaster was at hand — along with a prompt announcement of initial aid to the country as well as the deployment of teams of emergency responders — not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the only thing to do.