As toll from Peru’s storms mount, capitalists see new source of profits
By
Cesar Uco
1 April 2017
As the death toll and the mass misery inflicted predominantly upon the poorer section of Peru’s population by the torrential rains, flooding and landslides caused by the climatic phenomenon known as El Niño mount, sections of the country’s ruling class are seeing the disaster as a golden opportunity to reap new profits.
According to the latest figures from Peru’s National Emergency Operation Center (COEN), at least 97 people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless. Bridges, water supplies, schools, hospitals and other facilities have been destroyed or severely damaged, and large sections of the population are threatened with the spread of disease. Dengue outbreaks in the worst hit region of Piura, in northwestern Peru, have increased by 30 percent. The cost of the damage is estimated in the billions of dollars.
Above all, the ravages of El Niño have exposed the stark social inequality that pervades Peruvian society and the utter indifference of the country’s ruling elite to the conditions of the masses of workers and poor as well as to the social infrastructure upon which they depend.
“This is not a natural disaster, but a natural phenomenon that has led to disaster because of the informal way this country has developed,” Gilberto Romero, the head of Peru’s Center for Disaster Research and Prevention, told the Economist magazine.
While feigning sympathy for the suffering that has been inflicted on the population, Peru’s rapacious ruling class is pushing aggressively to turn the disaster into a new stream of wealth.
In its March 24 edition, the Peruvian business daily Gestion led with the headline, “Entrepreneurs demand…