FRACTURES IN AMERICA'S MIGHT
September 5, 2005

BILOXI, Miss. _ You don't often see the United States, the world's only superpower, paralyzed. But that is exactly what hurricane Katrina managed to inflict upon the country. The catastrophe exceeded all forecasts and recourses. And in so doing, Katrina revealed gaping cracks in American power.

Several days after one of the greatest natural disasters in the American continent's recent history, the residents of this small, and until a few days ago thriving, coastal city hadn't yet seen a single member of the Army, the National Guard or the Red Cross.

Confronting journalists with fear and fury, they demanded to know when desperately needed help was coming. And we, chagrined that we hadn't the slightest clue, had to admit that we, too, were in the dark.

Another point: When there is no government, there is a breach in authority. I doubt very much that the people seen looting shops and supermarkets in New Orleans were delinquents.

On the contrary, when you have had no food or water or sleep for several days and see no help on the horizon, and when you see your family ill and fading and you've lost you house, your car and your job, it is only natural to behave in desperate ways.

I saw with my own eyes a grandmother carrying in her left arm her five-month-old granddaughter and with her right arm pushing her fuel-less car along with hundreds of other vehicles hopefully lining up at a gas station.

I talked with a Mexican immigrant from Zacatecas who told me he hadn't eaten in two days, but he would rather stay in a hurricane-stricken United States than go back to a Mexico where there is no hope and no jobs.

"Why should I go back?" he asked. "Things are even worse there."

I was there to see how a stretch of Interstate Highway 10 was almost closed when a good Samaritan stopped to distribute bottled water and people dashed out of their cars to get some without thinking of anything else.

And I saw President George W. Bush and his motorcade, in a 14-second drive-by, survey the ruins of houses that before the hurricane had stood proudly there for the more than 100 years. That swift passage certainly gave no cheer to at least one homeless victim who noted that the president had come with nothing to alleviate their deprivations, not even a small bottle of water.

The initial response after the hurricane, it must be said _ and I am witness to this _ was an unfathomable failure. It's absolutely inconceivable and unthinkable that this could happen in the United States.

I saw it in Central America after hurricane Mitch had struck but I never imagined seeing the same thing here. When the government there failed and couldn't provide aid, people started helping each other. That is people power.

The repeated scenes of solidarity and generosity after the havoc caused by Katrina made me recall the amazing example of Mexicans after the devastating earthquake that shook Mexico City 20 years ago. It is only in this way that people realize, both here and there, that presidents and all their adjuncts aren't really as necessary as they would have us believe.

But to be honest, Katrina fooled everyone: the weathermen who were wrong in their meteorological predictions, the politicians who were comfortably on vacation and slow to warn the population of the real danger, and people themselves who simply thought this would be a mini-storm like any other.

I don't know what Katrina can be compared to. Here there is the certainty of many more fatalities than the combined numbers of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the soldiers who, up to now, have died in Iraq.

But never, not in five wars, have I seen such vast destruction. There are blocks after blocks of houses, buildings and businesses swept from their foundations by the sea, from New Orleans to Biloxi. Anyone who defied or underestimated the force of Katrina, lost his bet.

The residents of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi are now reduced to the most basic needs: eating, sleeping, not dying, protecting their families.

We journalists, armed with satellite phones and two or three tricks of the trade, have been almost in the same situation. To eat any hot food in the disaster zone is now a luxury, air conditioning in temperatures that top 95 degrees Fahrenheit is an unattainable privilege, sleeping in a bed is a dream, and any thought of returning to normalcy is an impossibility.

After waiting five or six hours for a quarter tank of a fuel for a gas-guzzler monster, better known as an SUV or all-terrain vehicle, I am now even more conscious and horrified by America's enormous dependency on oil supplied by the rest of the world. Oil is produced there and burned here. The fights I saw break out at gas stations over a few drops of fuel seemed like scenes from a science fiction film.

With all this, perhaps Katrina is trying to tell us something. I heard one local politician suggest that the hurricane was a disaster sent by God, whose message we still don't get. I'm not so sure of that. In my skeptical mind neither destiny nor luck exists. But the lessons are certainly there for anyone who wants to see them.

First, to live in coastal areas, with global and oceanic warming and hurricane cycles intensifying, is a constant summertime risk. And this comes from someone who lives on a vulnerable islet linked by bridge to Miami.

Second, I am not comfortable with the gas dependency that reggaeton musician Daddy Yankee suggests in the words of his song, "Gasolina": those who live for gasoline, die for gasoline. And if Americans don't modify their energy use, they will soon stop dancing.

And third, the nation that thought it could do everything (occupy Afghanistan, send 138,000 soldiers to knock over a dictator in Iraq and defy the world) today is turning its eyes, with grief and despair, on itself.

The United States is realizing, for the first time since the fall of Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that it cannot always win and that its most painful vulnerability doesn't come from abroad.

With Katrina, the day arrived when the United States simply couldn't respond.