Countless Guatemalan villagers left homeless in aftermath of mudslides

Jennifer Harbury, director of UUSC's STOP (Stop Torture Permanently) Campaign, recently visited the southwest region of Guatemala where she experienced firsthand the impact of Hurricane Stan. This is her report.

I have just returned from a weeklong trip to Guatemala to evaluate the destruction done by Hurricane Stan. The worst of the damage occurred in the southwestern areas. The San Marcos area has suffered heavily, but our friends in Panabaj (the Mayan cooperative Nueva Sembrador), lost nearly one third of their neighbors to massive landslides.

Although the total number of casualties nationwide was far lower that that of the tsunami or the quake in Pakistan, it left countless villagers without homes or any means of survival. Already suffering from severe 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.” With what? There is nothing left.

During my 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 destruction, and large sections of the roadways had simply disappeared, replaced by newly formed ravines.

Grief and hope in the aftermath of the mudslides
Between San Marcos and the Mexican border, the situation was even worse. The entire area of El Rodeo, a major crossroad, 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, which was more or less what in fact happened.

In one town, they 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, but the older brother died of terrible head injuries.

Our partners at the MTC, or farm-worker movement office, had been working day and night to keep soup kitchens open, and find church floors and emergency care for survivors throughout the region. We left them with funds for two machines to build bricks and cinderblocks. They will work collectively in different areas to help rebuild houses for the displaced. All this despite the fact that they themselves have long been under death threats and attacks because of their opposition to the mining in the area, and their insistence on basic labor rights.

Ruined communities mourn terrible losses
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 government death squads in Santiago Atitlan in the early 1981. After the Peace Accords were signed, he went straight to work. Shortly after his return, he was diagnosed with an advanced case of Parkinson's. This did not stop him from organizing a cooperative 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 to receive a salary.

All of this came to an end during Hurricane Stan. As the winds shrieked through Panabaj, a terrifying rain began. Juan watched the water rising higher and higher outside his small home and began lashing wood together with the hope of getting his aging wife and baby granddaughter out to safety. He had little hope of rescue for himself, as even walking had become difficult.

As he worked he heard a child screaming and ran to the window. A little boy was being dragged away in a flow of filthy water and thick mud. Juan could not reach him.

Meanwhile, many of the villagers began to run through the darkness 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, the enormous slab of earth still covered 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 one last massacre there in 1990 that with the help of the international human rights community, the soldiers were driven out of town for once and for all.

There was no way the villagers would ever allow a return visit. They did receive international help, however, and great strides were being made. Unfortunately, the mud remains very unstable, and in the end officials called off the dig to prevent further disaster.

Most of the members of the co-op survived somehow, though many lost their homes. Two families were wiped out. More than 1,500 people were killed in the tiny neighborhood. I met with the survivors at the half-buried co-op they had so lovingly tended, and we spoke back and forth in Spanish and Tzutuil. They could not stop crying. All had worked frantically, many with their bare hands, to dig out their friends, but they found only the dead. Children were found dead, clinging to fences and doorposts. A pregnant woman lay dead in her bed, the midwife fallen across her legs. The woman had been in labor. Already traumatized by 35 years of army death squads, the survivors shuddered and wept as they spoke.

As for the co-op 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. Even now, I remember a frail, wraith-like woman smiling at me from one of the neat block houses he had built. Juan bowed his head and said there was not one house left. I began to ask if any of the women and children had survived, but he closed his eyes and wept.

Jennifer Harbury
November 3, 2005

For more information or to make a donation to the UUSC Guatemalan Relief Fund,
visit www.uusc.org/guatemala .