Surviving Mitch
Maldonado, Victoria
The survivors of last October's devastation in Honduras and Nicaragua have lived through a double hurricane: a four-day meteorological event named Mitch and a social/ecological disaster compounded...
...Everyone in the shelters is getting desperate...
...We have been left in the street without tables, without dishes, without clothing, without anything...
...But we don't know...
...We have carefully studied the results of organic farming like these little ditches, which allow us to gather organic material...
...And it's a problem because we won't have any work there and we won't be able to take food with us to last us the amount of time they tell us we will be there...
...Intrafamily violence has always been present in Nicaragua...
...Some of the neighbors escaped...
...I have to say we were surprised by this...
...The trickiest thing is the price we can get on international markets...
...Juana Lanza (below) is a sur- vivor of the devastation...
...12 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA 7ae unsustainable use of the land-the deforestation I and soil erosion resulting from large-scale commercial land use, as well as the slash-and-burn techniques of subsistence farming-made the natural devastation of Mitch much worse...
...We all got pretty banged up by the current...
...We thought we were hearing the current on the other side but no, it was the current that was right in front of us, coming after us...
...Then we realized that our neighborhood was in danger...
...I had to cultivate two vegetable gardens by myself because I didn't want to get everything in the market...
...She recorded these testimonies while making her most recent documentary video, Hurricane Mitch: Uncovering the Costs of the External Debt...
...The government told us that it is going to relocate us, but it has been a long time...
...Our group tried to initiate a discussion about this three years ago, but it has remained hidden, as if it were a family secret...
...Later they gave me clothes in the school where we took refuge...
...The lake had been further away but then it got very close...
...Throughout this post-Mitch process, we have been analyzing the ways in which women are becoming resigned to the houses and shelters in which they find themselves...
...When it reached a crest it came at us, breaking down walls and carrying everything with it...
...We are sincerely Practicing minimal tainable agriculture...
...We looked for her but we never found her...
...We have a little piece of land that the river washed away...
...Without clothes, without anything...
...Fishing in Lake Managua-severely polluted by untreated sewage-has traditionally provided both income and subsistence for the families of this neighborhood...
...She was five years old...
...VOL XXXIII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 13REPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA Mitch poured three days worth of torrential rains onto the unprepared I city of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras...
...The following testimonies from survivors of Mitch were recorded this past January, some three months after the hurricane...
...The government says they are going to take us to El Zamorano, but in El Zamorano they don't know us and we don't know them...
...11REPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA It was raining and raining and we saw the current on the other side of the hill, on the other side of the canyon...
...So I know what it takes to be productive...
...The accompanying photographs are taken from that documentary...
...I'm going to die by your side," he said to me, "I'm not going to run away...
...And all the crops that were planted using soil-conservation techniques are still here...
...The day before yesterday there was another meeting and they promised us land...
...When interviewed in January, she was still living in a refugee shelter...
...Her "family's house was left standing...
...We are also trying to provide an alternative for women by helping them find land they can cultivate...
...It troubles me to have lost the soul of my little girl...
...But where do they want to send us...
...This is what we are all afraid of...
...People told me she was buried with her arms all bruised and her feet broken...
...VOL XXXIII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 Victoria Maldonado is an independent filmmaker from Colombia...
...Look at this plot of la And that one, nearly years to terrace thes are...
...Many women have told us, "If I could have a few acres of land I am sure I could make it productive because I have always worked the land...
...I don't think that those of us in the shelters are going to go because life is much too difficult, and we won't have the resources to live on and to get ahead...
...And they ate there because they had earned a little money...
...We heard on the radio that there was a hurricane somewhere else in the country and we said to ourselves, "pity those poor people who are suffering and dying," not knowing that we were about to suffer the same fate...
...For the first seven years I had to work hard to make my own farm...
...We call the program "health in the hands of women...
...ZORAIDA SOSA SANCHEZ SAN FRANCISCO LIBRE, MANAGUA, NICARAGUA This program tries to help women in San Francisco Libre develop in an autonomous way with a program of holistic health...
...With what I earned, I planted two plots of coffee, and now I produce enough to pay a few employees to help me...
...There were people killed and houses covered with water...
...Everyone here is like family...
...So we see how much stress these women are living under...
...Whenever there is an overproduction in the big coffee-growing countries like Brazil and Colombia, prices fall all over Latin America...
...And we build terraces in order to plant along level contours in the land...
...Irma Guti6rrez (below left) is a member of the Guacamaya Cooperative of organic coffee growers in San Pedro Sula, and the owner of a small organic coffee plantation as well as a commercial vegetable garden...
...And they simply take their earnings to buy liquor...
...We can search the capital for what we need for our children...
...But we missed a lot of classes because of the hurricane...
...What I remember is that the bridge was covered with water and garbage from the lake...
...We have held three workshops in which about 25 women have participated...
...He told us to work the land, not to burn it or wear it out...
...At first we didn't take it seriously because the river had risen many times before, but not like this...
...We have been here three months and they still haven't been able to place us...
...The small children, including my five-year-old daughter, were led away first, along the side of the canal, but my oldest boy said to me that he wanted to stay with me...
...They need a space to raise their own families because they are the ones who take care of the children...
...So he stayed with me and we crossed the current together...
...I always worked in the orchard with my husband...
...We hadn't known the current was coming until we actually saw it in front of us...
...We are still waiting...
...I don't want to lose my children...
...I was all torn up and naked like the day I came into the world...
...Now it's different...
...My tent is out back...
...We have also examined how they dedicate themselves to childcare, as though they were clinging to the children that thank God they didn't lose...
...Everything was washed away...
...I have four children, three girls and a boy, and they are all more or less following in my footsteps...
...There used to be little houses here but everything has collapsed...
...There is no plan...
...None of the houses are left...
...My boy went first, and I followed carrying my littlest one...
...KAREN SILVA Ruiz ACAHUALINCA, MANAGUA, NICARAGUA I remember how the people were flooded out during the hurricane...
...The government says they are going to help us with land but who knows when...
...Because of the large numbers of houses washed away, mostly by the furious Choluteca River, and because of the uncertainty of rebuilding, many people remain in in shelters nearly a year after the hurricane...
...We have a governing board that keeps track of prices, but they are out of our hands...
...So we try to give them support so that they can continue to respond to the needs of their families and at the same time not exhaust themselves...
...Who knows how much help we can really expect...
...I like this work, though I have to start very early in the morning and leave the housework for later, sometimes until 10 o'clock because I am out in the fields...
...We need someone to give us a hand because we don't have anything...
...everything was washed away...
...We all had small houses but they were all destroyed...
...We hope they can take us off this hill before there is another danger, like the collapse of the hill...
...We think we are going to return to the land we lived on before Hurricane Mitch came...
...One of the main things we did was to aid the emotional recovery of women from the trauma they had experienced...
...some were washed away by the current...
...Everybody was down by the lake because they worked there...
...Antonia P6rez (above right) moved into a large temporary shelter in a convention center in downtown Tegucigalpa and was made coordinator of one of the shelter's pavilions...
...Her terraced crops (below right) survived the hurricane...
...maybe that's not true...
...And I feel strange because I lost my little girl...
...They try to earn their living there but nobody wants to buy their fish because they say the fish are contaminated...
...Our mission is to work the soil...
...Now the people go there to bathe...
...In the school over there they were helping with clothes...
...But now the people who live here go to the lake to eat because nobody else will buy contaminated fish...
...We didn't know...
...All we know is that there are now four of us instead of five...
...And now that I am successful, the banks keep offering me loans, but now I don't need them and I don't want them...
...We are now convinced because if Mitch couldn't destroy this land, what can...
...Our children could die there of diseases, of hunger, of bronchitis, of the cold weather, of who knows what...
...We were five neighbors here...
...They didn't wash away...
...Now we have a cooperative of organic coffee growers and we export our coffee, mainly to Germany...
...Also here we can send our children to school to study at least the basics, and maybe to learn a trade so that they can find work and defend us...
...We know that women are the principal protectors of life in our families...
...And we had to fend for ourselves...
...Instead of burning and discarding, we use all the leftovers as organic compost for the next crop...
...I couldn't bear it because they were suffering, and their suffering was like my suffering...
...We share the mission of teaching sustainable agriculture-not with chalk on a blackboard but by example...
...We feel privileged by God because he has protected us, but above all, we now feel we can say to the world that the fight for soil conservation is the fight for a weapon with which we can feed ourselves...
...and the youngest is still in secondary school...
...I prayed almost every day and it pained me to see what was happening to people...
...What we all used to do here was to strip a plot of land, burn it and plant a crop...
...I was able to save myself and my baby by climbing onto a tree trunk and I waited there for more people...
...There are many single mothers who have separated from their husbands or who have left or been thrown out of their homes, and who are living with their mothers...
...Over the decade preceding the storm, they had become even more impoverished, demoralized and alienated from the institutions of state power-institutions which remained notably unhelpful throughout the natural disaster...
...We have a small emergency committee for San Francisco Libre and one of the things that we have succeeded in doing has been to attract the UN World Food Program for disaster victims...
...The current government created a ministry of the family, but it doesn't recognize a household headed by a single mother as a family, despite the fact that here in Nicaragua, there are a great number of women in that situation...
...But we have cleaned up all the debris and the rocks, and we are NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14REPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA W men have overwhelmingly borne the burden of the everyday tasks of sustenance and recovery in the communities and shelters of hurricane survivors...
...And now we have nowhere to live and we are waiting for help...
...They all expressed a great sadness over the losses they have suffered, which they say robs them of their energy and strength...
...The three of us managed to save ourselves, and so did my husband...
...Twelve-year-old Karen de los Angeles Silva Ruiz (right) lives a few blocks from the flooded area...
...That is what we are working for...
...And then we heard a noise that sounded like an airplane...
...Children can die of anything...
...What we are trying to do now is to help the women become owners of their homes and their land...
...But I lost my little girl...
...That's why I couldn't bear it...
...And we stayed there for 11 days with other refugees from the storm...
...About three years ago, fishing reached its peak as the fishermen were successfully selling their fish in El Salvador, but the fishermen have lost their boats and equipment in the storm, and the fishing has become less productive...
...re Acahualinca neighborhood in Managua, a shanty- I town along the shores of Lake Managua, was also hard hit...
...That way the water collects gradually and it's less likely that the crops will wash away...
...Within a week of the WFP's decision to extend its food support, one woman told me that the fishermen began telling their wives, "Look, the World Food Program is giving us food, and other people are bringing us clothing...
...Their husbands, meanwhile, have doubled their consumption of alcohol...
...We are all together but I feel strange because it's not my home...
...The principal victims of Mitch were poor Hondurans and Nicaraguans, people already reeling from social, economic and ecological devastation of monumental proportions...
...We have what we need to live, so you don't need this money...
...And people came from the municipality to help them and to take them to the tent community called Nueva Vida...
...Everything happened in the school...
...And with this increased consumption of liquor, the women tell us that the men have become increasingly violent...
...Medicine is more available here...
...If there is another danger here they should help us get out before more children die...
...I asked God to help them, and they were getting help little by little...
...I felt very bad for my friends who died in the storm or were injured...
...Zoraida Sosa Sanchez (below) coordinates a program called "Women and Community" in the neighborhood of San Francisco Libre in Managua...
...People ate in the school...
...It has been a constant struggle...
...ANTONIA P9REZ TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS We were first advised about Hurricane Mitch at eight o'clock that night by the firemen who warned us that the river was rising...
...So they have barely begun to fish again, but many of them have taken their paltry earnings to consume more alcohol...
...So our mission is to help these women get houses and land...
...The survivors of last October's devastation in Honduras and Nicaragua have lived through a double hurricane: a four-day meteorological event named Mitch and a social/ecological disaster compounded by debt and economic "adjustment" many years in the making...
...After two years the land was useless and we would abandon it...
...Thank God we had time to escape with our lives, but our houses and possessions were all carried away...
...some gringos came to hand out some clothes because the people didn't have anything to wear...
...The next oldest is studying ecology sustainable and unsustainable uses of the land...
...Because, to be honest, I don't want to go through all that destruction again...
...It's important for women to have houses and land in their own name, to help them build their self-esteem...
...The shelter, called Expocentro-INFOP, continues to house people who lived along the banks of the river (below right...
...JUANA LANZA POSOLTEGA, NICARAGUA When a friend came and told me, "look Juana, here comes the flood," I quickly got ready to go and said to my children, "let's get out of here right away...
...Here there was no salvation...
...I cried every night...
...O n October 30, floods and mudslides in the area near the town of Posoltega killed upwards of 2,000 people The greatest loss of life took place in three small communities built on the unstable, deforested hillside of the active Casitas volcano...
...To recover in the short run from all that loss means they have to confront the insecurity that comes as much from within as from the day-to-day conditions they face...
...Every time we sit down to eat I remember her...
...My son is an agronomist and my oldest daughter is a schoolteacher...
...During the hurricane we provided emergency assistance for San Francisco Libre...
...In northern Honduras, near the city of San Pedro Sula, some contrasts can be seen between IRMA GUTIERREZ SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS After it rained for seven days and seven nights, thank God, these terraced plots of land were still here...
...That's why we want to stay in the capital...
...going to have to build our homes on the shore of the river again because we have nowhere else to go...
...I tell you that I was one to practice organic doing this for 12 years...
...Since the area is near the lake, one of the means of survival has always been fishing...
...This is the work God entrusted us with...
Vol. 33 • September 1999 • No. 2
