Chile and Haiti: A Tale of Two Earthquakes

Chile and Haiti: A Tale of Two Earthquakes

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Chile early on Feb. 27 was 500 times stronger than the 7.0 quake that killed an estimated 200,000 Haitians last month. And yet the number of casualties in Chile appears to be exponentially smaller, with the official death toll still in the hundreds. Far fewer people were rendered homeless than in Haiti, and much of the telephone service in Santiago and parts of central Chile had been restored within five hours.

To be fair, Haiti has had far less experience with earthquakes, and therefore earthquake preparedness, than Chile has. (Before Jan. 12, the last major quake to hit Port-au-Prince was in 1751.) There will, of course, be the apologists who insist it's unfair to compare a basket case like Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest country, with a showcase like Chile, which has Latin America's highest per capita GDP and is set to become the first South American member of the exclusive, Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Chile can do things right, Haiti defenders argue, because it's more developed.

Wrong. It's the other way around: Chile is more developed because it's doing things right. The same goes for Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica and a handful of other Latin American and Caribbean nations that have decided in the 21st century to stop running their societies like medieval fiefdoms. They've conceded that niceties like rule of law, accountability, education, entrepreneurial opportunity and administrative efficiency actually have merit. And they've stopped making worn-out excuses, like the threats of communism or U.S. imperialism, for not modernizing their political and economic systems.