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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2005 
Desperate Town Waiting For Help
 Wire services
| | A print depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's Patron Saint, remain amid the ruins of one of the houses at Las Americas neighborhood, devastated by the overflowed Coatan River, in Tapachulas, Chiapas, Mexico. The death toll from devastating mudslides in Guatemala topped 2,000, as rescuers called off their search for hundreds of people buried for six days under solidifying mud. Forty-two others were killed in Mexico, 72 in El Salvador and 11 in Nicaragua.(AFP/Alfredo Estrella) |
Motozintla, Chiapas - Stranded and still waiting for aid a week after torrential rains, desperate villagers have been forced to walk for days along hillside trails in search of food for their hungry children.
Residents from the surrounding communities have gravitated here to look for essential supplies, only to find Motozintla's residents in an equally dire situation.
Francisco Castillo, who lives in nearby Siltepec, walked for five days to arrive. On Thursday, he waited in vain at the door of one of the 70 shelters here to get something he could take back to his wife and three children in his ruined village.
"We have nothing. The river took the house and we got out however we could," said Castillo, who managed to take refuge along with his neighbors in the hills, where they remained for five days until the rain ended.
Heavy rains following Hurricane Stan's impact on the Gulf coast lashed much of southern Mexico and Central America late last week, spawning mudslides and floods blamed for the deaths of well over 1,000 people.
"I began to walk because there wasn't anything to eat there and the kids had bad coughs. They don't have jackets," he said.
At his side was Genaro González, from the "November 20" communal farming cooperative. González said he needs to get food and medicine to a dozen injured people pulled out of the river a week ago.
"I've been here three days, in Motozintla, and they haven't given me anything. The people who came with me returned with empty hands to see if they could find more compassion elsewhere," he said.
He said his community wasn't warned of Stan's strength.
"They didn't tell us anything. We ran out of there; the corn, the beans we had, everything is gone. The women cook the chayote leaves that are left for the children and the old people," he said, referring to a local vegetable.
When a helicopter landed in Motozintla, everyone stood up. Children ran over to the aircraft hoping to get something to eat.
"There's not enough for everyone," said a state government worker, asking for patience.
A woman begged desperately for a bag of food for her daughter, saying "she's an invalid up there. She's gone days without eating."
When the official hesitates to give her the bag, another woman pushes forward and tells him point-blank, "If you're going to give her something, give us all something."
Amid the isolation, some have received help from independent groups that have distributed limited amounts of blankets and food.
But some doubt whether all of the beggars are really in need.
"There are many opportunists," said Motozintla resident Idolina Sánchez. "They go from shelter to shelter grabbing stuff and we have to be guarding our few things or when we get back they're not there any more."
An estimated 800 houses were swept away when three rivers that flow through Motozintla overflowed into the town.
The local residents are angry because they say that half of those 800 houses were built by the government six years ago in what were claimed to be non-flood zones and according to strict safety standards after the 1998 rains washed away half the town, killing 20 people.
On that occasion, two-thirds of Motozintla was damaged and although the preliminary death toll stands at 10 this time around, the suffering residents fear that more bodies are buried under the mud that covers dozens of houses. |
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