Introduction: Many in the U.S. have written to ask how we are--we're fine! But they also ask about the impact of Tuesday's earthquake. The following article relates a reporter's visit to the its epicenter near indigenous communities in Ométepec, Guerrero State.
What strikes me is the resilience of the villagers, their fatalism, their patience with unresponsive government officials, but also their abiding confidence in the essential dualism of the natural world. Yes, Tuesday's earthquake has brought disorden (disorder), but it will yield to a new order: "May this misfortune pass!"
My translation from the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada.
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| Red Cross Volunteers deliver supplies to the people of Huixtepec, Guerrero State, one of the places most damaged by the 7.4 Richter earthquake that hit March 20, 2012. Photo: Pedro Pardo |
La Jornada, March 24: Elida Rodriguez Carmona recalls that at noon on Tuesday, her chickens would not let her nap, so she decided to get up and feed them. She got out of her hammock and went outside seconds before the terrace roof came down on her hammock. The chickens saved her life.
Elida has been a widow for 12 years, but there are dozens of women like her on the Costa Chica ['Little Coast' along the Pacific], the area most affected by earthquakes. Their men have gone north in search of a better life, so now the women are left to face disasters like this alone.
Seventy-six years old, dressed in black, Elida walks barefoot in the backyard of her house, which she will not enter for fear it will collapse. She lives with her granddaughter in a house of adobe and wood in the community of La Guadalupe, municipality of Ométepec, but for now they sleep in a storeroom.
She has some income from the sale of pots that she makes by hand, but since the earthquake last Tuesday, no one is buying or selling anything because the people fear additional damage from the continuing aftershocks.
- Nobody wants to work, schools are closed, the men go to the fields to check the livestock but return promptly because they are afraid, reflected Elida, trembling and wringing her hands.Sitting under a mango tree, she says that during the earthquake of March 20, the only thing that fell from her altar of saints arranged before the Virgin of Guadalupe was the figure of Baby Jesus.
- To whom do you pray? [asked the reporter]
- To the Virgin of Guadalupe every night, maybe that's why she wanted to help me.Nine years ago, Galvez Cyril, husband of Martina Felipa Perez Torres, left Huixtepec to seek work in the United States. He has not been heard from since. His wife inherited an unpayable debt of 20,000 pesos [about US$1,500] that he borrowed to migrate. Their son, now eleven years old, has not seen or heard from his father since he was two.
[Note: Martina is describing the mess the earthquake has made of her house. She is also referring to President Calderón's promise—as yet unfulfilled—to replace the dirt floors of all houses in the republic.]The same uncertainty grips Alfonsina Ceballos Chavez, 48, who lost her husband to diabetes two years ago. She sells tamales on the main street of Guadalupe in order to support four children.
- I was making corn tamales when everything started to shake. The quake broke my pots and all the tamales I had to sell. Now they are giving me food, she said, holding back tears.
God's punishment
Daily activity has come to a halt in the localities of Huixtepec, Huajintepec, La Conception, Guadalupe, Cuadrilla Nueva and Tierras Blancas. The children are not going to school and, although the aftershocks have diminished, men do not want to leave their families.
The hoot of an owl is heard—a reminder of the traditional saying, When the owl hoots, the Indian dies.
Faced with government inaction, villagers have taken the initiative to assess their damaged property. Now they are the ones who possess the cold, hard facts of suffering in their communities. Alberto Santiago de los Santos, a 23-year old farmer from Cuadrilla Nueva, has collected the facts for the settlement of twenty-five families, where twenty wood and adobe houses were damaged.
Data-filled notebook under his arm, Alberto walks back and forth in Huixtepec looking for the official who never arrives.
The same is true in Guadalupe, where residents have counted more than two hundred damaged houses. They formed two guards who waited for hours for an official van that never arrived.
Daily activity has come to a halt in the localities of Huixtepec, Huajintepec, La Conception, Guadalupe, Cuadrilla Nueva and Tierras Blancas. The children are not going to school and, although the aftershocks have diminished, men do not want to leave their families.
- The situation here is very critical, people are not working, all are waiting, says Municipal Commissioner of Huajintepec, Manuel Bautista Morales.At night people sleep on the streets and terraces covered by tarps. It is 10:15 PM, when the sheriff tours Independencia—the town's main street, which is now lined with rubble and broken walls.
The hoot of an owl is heard—a reminder of the traditional saying, When the owl hoots, the Indian dies.
- What do people think of these tremors? [asked the reporter]
- People here are very religious. It is thought to be punishment from God, but we do not deserve what has happened here.May this misfortune pass!
Faced with government inaction, villagers have taken the initiative to assess their damaged property. Now they are the ones who possess the cold, hard facts of suffering in their communities. Alberto Santiago de los Santos, a 23-year old farmer from Cuadrilla Nueva, has collected the facts for the settlement of twenty-five families, where twenty wood and adobe houses were damaged.
Data-filled notebook under his arm, Alberto walks back and forth in Huixtepec looking for the official who never arrives.
The same is true in Guadalupe, where residents have counted more than two hundred damaged houses. They formed two guards who waited for hours for an official van that never arrived.
The village of Huixtepec counted five hundred fifty-nine affected households—thirty-nine are total losses. Friday's aftershocks brought down ten more houses.
In Concepción thirty affected structures are reported. Huajintepec reports five hundred twenty-five damaged structures, and over a hundred are damaged in Tierras Blancas. In total, an estimated 1,400 houses were damaged in this area alone.
A television reporter broadcast the rumor that 'Laura' would give her support. Yet no one ever knew whether it was the governor's wife, Laura del Rocío Herrera, or the blonde, loud-mouthed TV host Laura Bozzo, who is wildly popular with both men and women in the [indigenous] communities.
May this misfortune pass! the people smilingly repeated over and over as we made our way to Guadalupe, while hopefully asking this reporter if he knows what day 'Laura' might arrive.
Spanish original
Still Curious?
Here's my account of last Tuesday's (March 20, 2012) Earthquake 2012: Mexico's Vulnerability to the Forces of Nature.
Here's another first-person account translated from the Mexican press titled Earthquake Update: Ométepec's Longest Night.
Several of Jenny's earlier posts deal with the impact of natural events on the people of Mexico:
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