All stats and quotes are from "Venezuela Steps Up Aid Effort to Haiti, Questions U.S. Military Deployment," published on January 20th 2010, by Kiraz Janicke – Venezuelanalysis.com.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5086----------------
"As of today, the US has donated $130 million (according to US AID), sent more than 11,200 military personal, 265 government medical personal, five Navy ships, as well as five Coast Guard cutters and seven cargo planes 'to assist in aid delivery, support and evacuations,' Associated Press (AP) reported. The US has delivered “more than 90,000 pounds” or 40 metric tonnes of aid and supplies the AP report continued. The US has also taken control of the airport at Port-au-Prince."
----
"Venezuela was the first country to send aid after the disaster struck on January 12, with an advance team of doctors, search and rescue experts as well as food, water, medical supplies and rescue equipment arriving in Port-au-Prince on the morning of January 13. However, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicholas Maduro said since than aid shipments to Haiti were being diverted via the neighbouring Dominican Republic to avoid restrictions imposed by the US at the Port-au-Prince airport.
"So far Venezuela has sent 616 metric tons of food aid and 116 metric tons of equipment, including water purification systems, electrical generators and heavy equipment for moving rubble.
"Venezuela, the largest oil exporter in South America, is also sending free fuel to the devastated country, with Chavez pledging 'The Venezuelan people will donate all the fuel the Haitian people need.”'
"The fuel will be used to operate power plants and public transportation. 'We are coordinating with the president of the Dominican Republic Leonel Fernández, who put the terminal of the refinery of his country at our service,' the Venezuelan president continued.
"A tanker with 225 000 barrels (worth approximately US$18 million) of diesel fuel and gasoline departed from Venezuela on Sunday.
"The Venezuela-Cuba initiated Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas (ALBA) fair trade bloc, which also includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbados, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has also sent two ships carrying 4,761 metric tons of food aid."-----------------
Criticism of the US prioritizing of soldiers over medical and other aid (from this article):
Doctors Without Borders said that "planes carrying urgently needed surgical equipment and drugs have been turned away five times, even though the agency received prior authorisation to land.
“'Urgent and vital attention to the people has been delayed (for) military logistics,' Francoise Saulnier, head of the Doctors Without Borders legal department was quoted by Reuters today. 'So it's just apocalyptic at the moment with people in a very, very bad and deteriorating condition,' she added."
France's Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet said the priority should be “helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti.”
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega accused the United States of “manipulating the tragedy to install North American troops in Haiti.”
Venezuela's President Chavez: "It seems that the United States is militarily occupying Haiti, taking advantage of the tragedy...Thousands of men are disembarking in Haiti as if it were a war.”
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5086----------------------------------------------------
This article doesn't mention it, but the UN Food Program and Brazil have also issued this criticism. Such a broad swath of critics is unusual in an aid situation and certainly underpins the substance of the criticism. All disaster aid has confusion, snafus, ego battles, politics, people under stress. Usually you don't hear about it--people tend to keep their lips zipped--unless it's a really big fuckup like Katrina. And Haiti is a BIG disaster--200,000 dead, tens of thousands of injured, 2-3 million people without water, food or shelter. There are bound to be problems, but those who immediately called Chavez a "fool" and a "clown" and a "showboater," when he was first with this criticism--since Venezuela was first with aid and ran into the US military and had to divert the aid through the Dominican Republic--are wrong. And they won't likely ever admit it. They used Chavez's criticism to beat up on him some more--trumpets that they are, for the US State Department and the corpo-fascist media. Then Doctors Without Borders said the same thing. Then France, and so on.
By providing these comparative stats on aid to Haiti, I am trying to point out how unfair this was. Venezuela is giving a lot of aid and has a right to object when its aid is not getting to the people who need it--as do Doctors Without Borders and others who have seen critically needed supplies diverted in favor of US soldiers who were not needed. Brazil had 9,000 UN peacekeepers from 17 countries on the ground in Haiti when the quake hit. How many more soldiers do you need to provide security in a largely orderly population who have had the patients of saints, it seems to me? There have been very few instances of disorder, and what has been called "looting," by our corpo-fascist press, has been starving people foraging for food and water. You're starving and haven't had a drink of potable water in 48 hours--i.e., you are dying--and you see a grocery store in ruins--what is the best thing to do? Get people organized to move the rubble at get at the food and water, and distribute it? Or sit down on the sidewalk and die because this is "private property"?
See this great video from The Real News about what's really going on in Haiti--"Haiti: Guns or food?" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_gs7f-o2EcJust to be clear, I am in no way criticizing ANY of the aid givers on the ground, on the sea or in the air, in and near Haiti or on their way. All of them are heroes, including the USAF personnel who got Haiti's airport up and running and the helicopter crews and engineers aboard the USS Carl Vinson. But they do not call the shots, such as landing troops instead of medical supplies. Those shots are being called in Washington DC by Sec of State Hillary Clinton, Dumbya, Bill Clinton and President Obama and by military brass and associated war profiteers. And their trotting Dumbya out--the curse of New Orleans, the slaughterer of a million innocent people in Iraq, to steal their oil, and the SOB who had Haiti's elected president kidnapped and removed from Haiti by force in 2004--is, very unfortunately, all too indicative of where their sympathies lie, as to the devastated people of Honduras vs US corporate and military interests in the region.
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