Schuller & Morales — Tectonic Shifts — Chapter Notes Source file: schuller morales tectonic shifts haiti Introduction — Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales Pages 1–9 (read) The Event and Its Scale
January 12, 2010: 35 seconds; 316,0 dead (official estimate); 1-in-7 Haitians suddenly rendered homeless
The earthquake as two simultaneous things: a catastrophe, and a "platform for a series of other changes"
For figures like Bill Clinton, it was an opportunity to "build back better" — to undo damage from policies he championed as president (i.e., the rice import liberalization that destroyed Haitian agriculture in the 1990s)
From a structural standpoint, it was "a manifestation of the social ills that beset the island nation in the United States' diplomatic and geopolitical shadow" The Haitian Response vs. the Media Narrative
The youn ede lòt (Haitian Creole: one helping the other) tradition was the first emergency response — community brigades pulling out bodies, neighbors sharing food and water, homeowners opening their lakou (family compound) to strangers
International media broadcast a different story: the most horrific scenes, looting imagery, helplessness
In the first week, private US citizens contributed $275 million — mostly to large NGOs like the Red Cross
For comparison: Japan's March 2011 earthquake (nuclear crisis, 18,0+ dead) raised $87 million in its first week — a stark disparity reflecting how international empathy is shaped
Donations to Haiti reached $1.4 billion for the year; 60% of US households contributed; 80%+ of African American families
Total international contribution: $2 billion from private citizens + foreign governments, IFIs, the UN
March 31, 2010 UN conference: 58 donor agencies pledged $5.3 billion over 18 months The Narrative Problem
"The story of Haiti's earthquake has been told and retold in tens of thousands of blog entries, news stories, YouTube videos, and at least 10 English-language books"
"Given the inequalities that marginalize Haiti, particularly the poor majority, the points of view presented to date are dominated by white, foreign do-gooders, either volunteer missions or professional humanitarians"
Tectonic Shifts as deliberate corrective: 46 pieces, half by Haitians — scholars, journalists, and activists living in Haiti before, during, and after the earthquake The Structural Causes
Haiti "was punished — not by God but by France": the 1825 indemnity for the Haitian Revolution; 120 years of debt that plunged Haiti into underdevelopment
The US invasion of 1915 "set into motion the centralization of power, resources, and people in Port-au-Prince"
Port-au-Prince population: 732,0 in the 1980s → 3 million by 2008 (contributor Alex Dupuy's figures, Ch. 1)
This growth was driven by neoliberal "push and pull factors" — agricultural displacement (peasants pushed off land) + low-wage factory jobs (pulling migrants to the capital)
Unplanned, uncoordinated bidonvil (shantytowns) absorbed 2 million new residents with no building code enforcement, no infrastructure, no state planning
The death toll was not caused by the earthquake's magnitude per se but by this extreme urban density built on structural vulnerability The Three-Part Frame
The editors explain the Tectonic Shifts metaphor through three geological analogies:
Structural/plate movement — the geopolitical structures (neoliberalism, foreign domination) that caused Haiti to be vulnerable in the first place; these are the deep tectonic plates
Social rubble — the on-the-ground effects (displacement, camps, evictions, public health collapse); this requires "direct on-the-ground reporting, which we have taken care to include"
Shock waves — the political movements created by the earthquake: a "round of questionable elections" and social movements "attempting to move the earth under their feet" Part 1: Geopolitical Structures Chapter 1 — Haiti's Vulnerability to Disasters (pp.