| TRAGEDY STRIKES GUATEMALA |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Tuesday, October 18 2005 |
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| SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala -- I've crossed this path before. The images are so eerily familiar to me. The smell is so utterly disturbing. It is the smell of death emanating from decomposing bodies. It is the sound of desperation as women cry for the loved ones they have lost.
On Wednesday, Oct. 5, at about 5 a.m., the hillside of the Toliman Volcano in Santiago Atitlan gave way to a gigantic mudslide. It had been raining for days. Stan came through here as a tropical storm before becoming a hurricane. The soil could no longer take it.
Tons of mud came tumbling down, literally obliterating the community of Panabaj, wiping out everything in its path: trees, homes, animals, entire families. Panabaj no longer exists. Such was the scale of the destruction that authorities gave up on trying to dig out the bodies of victims. How many? Who knows. Villagers here tell me it could be thousands.
One woman cried inconsolably as she walked down the muddy roads of what had been her hometown. Days had gone by, and she had not been able to find her 13-year-old son. "When the mud began filling our house," her husband told me, "we told our son to run, but he didn't understand because he was half-asleep." They were able to grab their 7-year-old boy, but the eldest simply disappeared.
What was once a humble but vibrant community is today a mass grave. Almost all of the dead were Mayan Indians whose primary language was Tzutujil. In this area -- the largest indigenous community in all of Central America -- they practice their traditions and keep to themselves. It is a community hit hard by the bloody civil war that ended in 1996. Some still have open wounds from the memories of massacres at the hands of the military -- so much so that many were hesitant to accept the aid of military personnel who came after the storms.
As I did in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch killed thousands in Honduras, and in 2001 when a devastating earthquake triggered a mudslide in San Salvador, I found myself in Santiago Atitlan, walking on death. Below my feet, there were remnants of the lives of people who had the misfortune of being poor and living in a vulnerable land.
Central America is used to natural disasters. If it's not a hurricane, it's an earthquake or volcanic activity. And every time it is struck by disaster, the question arises: Why? Why is it that, knowing their vulnerability, these countries are not prepared to deal with such calamities?
Guatemala is a poor country. Eighty percent of the population is poor. Many live at the edges of lakes and rivers, or at the foot of mountains and volcanoes in shanty towns that are unable to withstand the wrath of Mother Nature. And as if that weren't enough, deforestation has left their lands at risk.
Yet they continue to build their homes in these dangerous places. That's the only thing they can afford. And when tragedy strikes, like it did in this tiny enclave on Atitlan Lake, there's another foothill that will become fertile ground, on which they will someday build what they can call home |
