| KATRINA'S PAIN FELT ON HONDURAN SOIL |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Tuesday, September 27 2005 |
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| KATRINA'S PAIN FELT ON HONDURAN SOIL
BY MARIA ELENA SALINAS
The waters of the Gulf of Mexico divide New Orleans from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, but the pain and suffering left behind by Hurricane Katrina are deeply felt on Honduran soil. There are historic and economic factors that link the two cities together, and family ties that can't keep them apart.
Before Katrina struck, there were more Hondurans living in the New Orleans metropolitan area than anywhere else outside their native land. The flow of Hondurans to the Big Easy began in the late 1800s when Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit Company, based in Louisiana, began importing bananas from Honduras. Rich Honduran families were established in New Orleans to educate their children, poor families to take advantage of the thriving labor market.
The Honduran government estimates that there were about 125,000 Hondurans in New Orleans and the surrounding areas when Katrina swept ashore; 80 percent of them were affected by the storm. Immediately after the catastrophe, Honduran consular personnel from around the U.S. began to search in shelters, homes and churches for their nationals.
The first few days, the consul general of Honduras in New Orleans, Maria Eugenia Lobo, was herself among the missing. She finally resurfaced, having lost her home and all her belongings. There is grave concern among thousands of Honduran families who still have not been able to contact their loved ones who lived in the areas ravaged by Katrina. But their government representatives have been hard at work, trying to help in the process.
The first thing they did was establish an information center in Houston with toll-free numbers in both Honduras and the United States where family members can try to locate their loved ones. Other consulates around the country have been providing aid and shelter to Hondurans who relocate to their cities. Carlos Cirque, consul general of Honduras in Miami, told me that three weeks after the storm, there were reports of only one fatality and a few dozen Honduran nationals missing. Most Hondurans, he said, heeded the advice of the authorities to evacuate when the storm was coming.
Hondurans know all too well what it is like to have a hurricane leave your country in ruins. In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through several Central American countries, leaving behind death and devastation. Ten thousand people died, 12,000 disappeared and 3 million were left homeless. The majority of them were in Honduras and Nicaragua.
In one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, with limited resources, the response to Hurricane Mitch was massive and immediate. Shelters were set up at stadiums, schools and churches. Victims were provided with food, water and clothing.
Covering the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, I flew by helicopter with the Honduran army in search of survivors stranded in hard-to-reach areas. The scene was much like the one we've seen in New Orleans, except that it wasn't one city alone, but 90 percent of the country that was completely flooded. People waved from their rooftops to rescuers who rode speedboats and wave runners through the rivers that were once streets and highways to reach the needy. The military airlifted the injured and transported them to makeshift hospitals on dry land.
Of the estimated 1 million Hondurans in the United States, some 85,000 enjoy a special temporary protection status because they are victims of Hurricane Mitch. About a quarter of a million more are thought to be here illegally, and the rest are either U.S. citizens or legal residents. Together they send approximately $1.5 billion in remittances to their homeland, equaling 15 percent of the country's gross national product. Hurricane Katrina could knock off about $100 million from the annual remittances sent to that country, leaving thousands of poor families who depend on their loved ones abroad as indirect victims of the deadly storm.
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