Report on Guatemala and Hurricane Stan
Nov. 3, 2005 - Via Email
Report on Guatemala and Hurricane Stan:
Dear Friends,
I have just returned from a weeklong trip to Guatemala to evaluate the destruction done by hurricane Stan, especially in areas the Everardo Foundation has long supported. Unfortunately, the worst of the damage occurred in the southwestern areas where our partner organizations are located. The San Marcos area has suffered heavily, but our friends in Panabaj,( the Mayan Association "Nueva Sembrador"), lost nearly one third of their neighbors to massive land slides. Although the total number of casualties nation- wide was far lower that that of the Tsunami or the quake in Pakistan, it left countless campesinos without homes or any way to survive. Already suffering from malnutrition and poor health care, they are now sleeping in churches and temporary shelters. In many areas, government officials have simply handed prescriptions to the sick and told them to "go buy their medicines".
During the first few days there, I traveled from Guatemala City to Xela and on to San Marcos in search of my family there. Normally the bus ride to Xela takes four hours, but even the main highways were so damaged that the trip took seven hours instead. I went with friends to see the damage, and large sections of the roadways had simply disappeared, replaced by newly formed ravines. Between San Marcos and the Mexican border, the situation was even worse. The entire area of El Rodeo had simply vanished, and many main roads were still inaccessible. Large areas were covered with enormous boulders, as if half the mountainside had come raining down….more or less what has in fact happened. The Church people in one town were mourning a teenaged boy who had run through the falling stones with a smaller brother, shielding the child with his own body. As he urged the little one to keep running, his own voice became weaker and weaker. Finally the pair toppled over under the shelter of a tree. The child lived, the older brother died of terrible head injuries.
Our partners at the MTC or farmworker movement office, had been working ceaselessly to keep soup kitchens open, find church floors and emergency care for survivors throughout the region. We left them with funds for two machines to build bricks and cinderblocks with. They will work collectively in different areas to help rebuild houses for the displaced.
Miraculously, my own relatives survived, even though one household was located on the banks of a large river. The mother and her children fled to higher land, but their home remains intact. I have to admit I gave a large sigh of relief to see my young nephew, Ismael, quite alive and well and harassing his baby sister. He still looks enough like Everardo to give me quite a start each time we meet.
Panabaj broke my heart. My friend Juan Tacaxoy is one of the last surviving catechistas of father Stan Rother, the American priest who was assassinated by the death squads in Santiago Atitlan in the early 1980s. Forced to choose between death, the mountains, or exile in the US, Juan decided to join the URNG forces despite his very strong religious convictions. Promising to return someday and once again serve his hometown, he spent the next 20 years in the mountains. He kept his word. After the Peace Accords were signed he went home, and went straight to work. Shortly after his return, he was diagnosed with an advanced case of Parkinsons. This did not stop him from organizing a coop in Panabaj, and within a few short years he had created something extraordinary. With our help he built 75 homes for widows with small children, obtained equipment for processing coffee, purchased a small tract of rich land, and cultivated a high quality crop. He also carried out educational programs and a highly successful voter registration campaign. He had a truly golden touch and we were only too glad to support any of his new ideas. Despite his illness he refused a salary.
All of this came to an end during Hurricane Stan. As the winds shrieked through Panabaj, a terrifying rain began. He watched the water rising higher and higher outside his small home and began lashing wood together in the hopes of getting his aging wife and baby granddaughter out to safety. He had little hope of rescue for himself, as even walking had grown difficult. As he worked he heard a child screaming and ran to the window . The child was not running, but rather, was being dragged away in a flow of filthy water and thick mud. Juan could not reach him, but believes he was later rescued. Many of the villagers began to run through the night and the raging hurricane to the center of Santiago Atitlan to the same church where they had taken refuge during the worst days of the army attacks. Others could not flee, or feared to do so. In the middle of the night an enormous avalanche of mud and rock from the surrounding volcanoes rushed down and buried most of the village. Somehow it missed Juan’s home, though not by much. When I visited with them, the enormous slab of earth still covers a huge area….with bits of fence-posts and rooftops sticking out, and forlorn huts standing about the periphery.
The digging had gone on for two weeks, but only the dead were recovered. The army offered to help dig, but were turned away by the villagers. They remembered only too well the many years of terror and torture inflicted by the army on their town. It was only after a massacre there in the late 1980s that with the help of the international community, the soldiers were driven out of town for once and for all. There was no way the villagers would allow a return visit. They did receive international help, however, and great strides were being made. Unfortunately, the mud remains very unstable, and officials called off the dig to prevent further disaster.
Most of the members of our coop survived somehow, though many lost their homes. Two families were wiped out. More than 1500 neighbors were killed in the tiny neighborhood. I met with them at the half buried coop they had so lovingly tended, and we spoke back and forth in Spanish and Tzutuil. They could not stop crying. All had worked frantically to fig out their friends, but found only the dead. Children were found clinging to fences and doorposts. A pregnant woman lay dead in her bed, the mid-wife fallen across her legs. The woman had been in labor.
As for the coop itself, the animals were all killed. The materials they had just purchased for building a natural drying terrace had washed away. The processing equipment had been dug out but was very badly damaged by the mud and sand. The entire garden was simply gone. The fields of beautiful coffee plants had been battered and half buried. The members had cleaned the plants and are working with an agronomist, but apparently the large amount of sand in the mud has damaged the land. Much of the crop will die, and it takes three years for a new plant to yield. It will be a few years for the once rich strip of collective land to recover…and some of it never will.
As I arrived, Juan stumbled out of the temporary shack. He was having difficulty walking and looked exhausted and ill. We talked about the losses and what needed to be done. I asked about the 75 homes for the widows he had built long ago with almost no funding. He bowed his head and said there was not one left. I began to ask if any of the women had survived, remembering the fragile women and how happy they had once been to have homes. He closed his eyes and wept.
We left some funding from the Everardo Foundation. The Tzutuiles are already back to work at their coop, fiercely determined to survive yet again. I left with a promise to find further funding to help get them back on their feet, and returned to the US, as always, both moved and amazed by the strength and grace of these people.
Abrazos, Jennifer Harbury
...
Report on Guatemala and Hurricane Stan:
Dear Friends,
I have just returned from a weeklong trip to Guatemala to evaluate the destruction done by hurricane Stan, especially in areas the Everardo Foundation has long supported. Unfortunately, the worst of the damage occurred in the southwestern areas where our partner organizations are located. The San Marcos area has suffered heavily, but our friends in Panabaj,( the Mayan Association "Nueva Sembrador"), lost nearly one third of their neighbors to massive land slides. Although the total number of casualties nation- wide was far lower that that of the Tsunami or the quake in Pakistan, it left countless campesinos without homes or any way to survive. Already suffering from malnutrition and poor health care, they are now sleeping in churches and temporary shelters. In many areas, government officials have simply handed prescriptions to the sick and told them to "go buy their medicines".
During the first few days there, I traveled from Guatemala City to Xela and on to San Marcos in search of my family there. Normally the bus ride to Xela takes four hours, but even the main highways were so damaged that the trip took seven hours instead. I went with friends to see the damage, and large sections of the roadways had simply disappeared, replaced by newly formed ravines. Between San Marcos and the Mexican border, the situation was even worse. The entire area of El Rodeo had simply vanished, and many main roads were still inaccessible. Large areas were covered with enormous boulders, as if half the mountainside had come raining down….more or less what has in fact happened. The Church people in one town were mourning a teenaged boy who had run through the falling stones with a smaller brother, shielding the child with his own body. As he urged the little one to keep running, his own voice became weaker and weaker. Finally the pair toppled over under the shelter of a tree. The child lived, the older brother died of terrible head injuries.
Our partners at the MTC or farmworker movement office, had been working ceaselessly to keep soup kitchens open, find church floors and emergency care for survivors throughout the region. We left them with funds for two machines to build bricks and cinderblocks with. They will work collectively in different areas to help rebuild houses for the displaced.
Miraculously, my own relatives survived, even though one household was located on the banks of a large river. The mother and her children fled to higher land, but their home remains intact. I have to admit I gave a large sigh of relief to see my young nephew, Ismael, quite alive and well and harassing his baby sister. He still looks enough like Everardo to give me quite a start each time we meet.
Panabaj broke my heart. My friend Juan Tacaxoy is one of the last surviving catechistas of father Stan Rother, the American priest who was assassinated by the death squads in Santiago Atitlan in the early 1980s. Forced to choose between death, the mountains, or exile in the US, Juan decided to join the URNG forces despite his very strong religious convictions. Promising to return someday and once again serve his hometown, he spent the next 20 years in the mountains. He kept his word. After the Peace Accords were signed he went home, and went straight to work. Shortly after his return, he was diagnosed with an advanced case of Parkinsons. This did not stop him from organizing a coop in Panabaj, and within a few short years he had created something extraordinary. With our help he built 75 homes for widows with small children, obtained equipment for processing coffee, purchased a small tract of rich land, and cultivated a high quality crop. He also carried out educational programs and a highly successful voter registration campaign. He had a truly golden touch and we were only too glad to support any of his new ideas. Despite his illness he refused a salary.
All of this came to an end during Hurricane Stan. As the winds shrieked through Panabaj, a terrifying rain began. He watched the water rising higher and higher outside his small home and began lashing wood together in the hopes of getting his aging wife and baby granddaughter out to safety. He had little hope of rescue for himself, as even walking had grown difficult. As he worked he heard a child screaming and ran to the window . The child was not running, but rather, was being dragged away in a flow of filthy water and thick mud. Juan could not reach him, but believes he was later rescued. Many of the villagers began to run through the night and the raging hurricane to the center of Santiago Atitlan to the same church where they had taken refuge during the worst days of the army attacks. Others could not flee, or feared to do so. In the middle of the night an enormous avalanche of mud and rock from the surrounding volcanoes rushed down and buried most of the village. Somehow it missed Juan’s home, though not by much. When I visited with them, the enormous slab of earth still covers a huge area….with bits of fence-posts and rooftops sticking out, and forlorn huts standing about the periphery.
The digging had gone on for two weeks, but only the dead were recovered. The army offered to help dig, but were turned away by the villagers. They remembered only too well the many years of terror and torture inflicted by the army on their town. It was only after a massacre there in the late 1980s that with the help of the international community, the soldiers were driven out of town for once and for all. There was no way the villagers would allow a return visit. They did receive international help, however, and great strides were being made. Unfortunately, the mud remains very unstable, and officials called off the dig to prevent further disaster.
Most of the members of our coop survived somehow, though many lost their homes. Two families were wiped out. More than 1500 neighbors were killed in the tiny neighborhood. I met with them at the half buried coop they had so lovingly tended, and we spoke back and forth in Spanish and Tzutuil. They could not stop crying. All had worked frantically to fig out their friends, but found only the dead. Children were found clinging to fences and doorposts. A pregnant woman lay dead in her bed, the mid-wife fallen across her legs. The woman had been in labor.
As for the coop itself, the animals were all killed. The materials they had just purchased for building a natural drying terrace had washed away. The processing equipment had been dug out but was very badly damaged by the mud and sand. The entire garden was simply gone. The fields of beautiful coffee plants had been battered and half buried. The members had cleaned the plants and are working with an agronomist, but apparently the large amount of sand in the mud has damaged the land. Much of the crop will die, and it takes three years for a new plant to yield. It will be a few years for the once rich strip of collective land to recover…and some of it never will.
As I arrived, Juan stumbled out of the temporary shack. He was having difficulty walking and looked exhausted and ill. We talked about the losses and what needed to be done. I asked about the 75 homes for the widows he had built long ago with almost no funding. He bowed his head and said there was not one left. I began to ask if any of the women had survived, remembering the fragile women and how happy they had once been to have homes. He closed his eyes and wept.
We left some funding from the Everardo Foundation. The Tzutuiles are already back to work at their coop, fiercely determined to survive yet again. I left with a promise to find further funding to help get them back on their feet, and returned to the US, as always, both moved and amazed by the strength and grace of these people.
Abrazos, Jennifer Harbury
...
posted by Red por la Paz y Desarrollo de Guatemala at 7:48 PM
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