Article by Michelle Akane Storey
The rains had already begun when we arrived in the crime, corruption, and prostitution-laden immigration-hot-bed-of-a-city, Tapachula, which sits by the coast on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. We had travelled from San Cristóbal to connect with groups working on migration issues. Migration has been gaining increased intention, with the number of factors pushing people from off their homelands in Central America and Southern Mexico increasing. Migrants are compelled to risk long and diffuclt journeys in hopes of attaining an intangible “sueño americano” (American dream), or just an opportunity to survive, on the other side.
We were able to meet with several groups, and then the rains flooded the city. I needed to visit the US embassy in Nicaragua by the end of the week for more passport pages, so I split ways with my companions to head south the next morning.
The rains still had not slept. The bus heading to Managua had not arrived the night before - nobody at the station had the slightest idea why - so I took the station employees’ advice and hit the road on a combi (a mini-van shuttle bus). At the border, already soaked to the bone, I had my first-ever cordial encounter with Mexican immigration officials. Automobiles had not been allowed to cross the bridge since the previous afternoon, when bridges began to fall in Tapachula. Guess that’s why my bus never arrived! I was told I could cross on foot “at my own risk,” so after considering my options for less than a minute, I quickly -- but carefully -- made my way across the wavering bridge, trying to not focus on the violent muddy waters shooting by below me, nor all the debris being carried off to sea.
The next day I was told the bridge no longer existed.
I didn’t get far into Guatemala, and never made it to Nicaragua. I would end up spending several days and nights moneyless and stranded in hurricane shelters, joining with several other bands of random characters who wanted to arrive somewhere so much that they would risk traveling by foot. One of these was a young man named Matias from Tapachula who approached me at the Guatemalan border post after I had returned from my first attempt to travel further inland. Yes, I was uncomfortable that he had seen me wandering alone, semi-lost around Tapachula the day before and knew in which hotel I’d stayed, but somehow I trusted him. I’m glad that I did because he became the closest thing I had to a best friend for the days we would spend stranded together. We tried to get to Guatemala City that same day by taking very indirect combi routes, but were stopped at the first bridge where water now ran over rather than underneath it. Not long before, a group had been tricked by swirling waters, and were confined to a tiny strip of land that would soon be eaten up by the massive river. After several hours waiting on the side of the road, Matias and I went to the nearest town, Malacatán, to find shelter for the night. Neither of us had many
queztales (the Guatemalan currency) left, nor did we know when banks would open again.
At that point, Malacatán was an island. All roads surrounding the town were either cut off by landslides, washed out bridges, or both. Makeshift shelters all over town were filling fast. Many occupants were Central Americans, who, on their way to the US, were caught by Mexican authorities and dumped at the Guatemalan border; rather than in their respective countries, as the law requires. To better their chances of arriving in the US, some had paid as much as $6,000 US dollars in coyote (human trafficker) fees, only to be hurricane-stranded and broke somewhere en route with a weird gringa, also stranded without money, trying to go further south. The only difference was that I happened to be born on the "correct" side of the border - making me immediately welcomed into most countries - and that my lack of funds had more to do with banks being out of service rather than having spent my and my family’s entire life savings to be stranded somewhere between home and where I was aiming to make a new life for myself. Despite our harsh differences I was treated with the kind of respect my Central American migrant friends never would have received had they made it as far as the "land of the free." Other shelter inhabitants were local families whose homes had flooded or washed away. Many had lost all personal belongings, several had missing family members, and all were poor.
Water levels had not died down by the next day, and more people were pouring into the shelters by the hour. Although it was against shelter rules to leave our little squares of blanket for more than 15 minutes to relieve ourselves in the waterless toilets, whose stench permeated into the common area, or to almost hopelessly attempt to find a cell phone reception, Matias and I did escape for a few hours. On our way down to the river we ran into the woman from the shelter whose family occupied the blanket behind us - the same woman who had been informed the prior evening that her brother had been swept away by violent waters - who with a sad smile drawn across her face explained that she had lived down below. Her house used to be where the river now flows, with no traces whatsoever left behind. Down below, close to 50 people were stranded, due to the river's new split course.
We were powerless in a situation where the distance between us and them was just beyond a feasible throw, and the foliage still intact was too small to support the weight of even a child. Ropes and cables would not do. We needed helicopters, but how do you explain to a stranded group of people that first the rain has to stop, then politicians and international relief groups must decide who is in the best position to send a helicopter to Malacatán, Guatemala - especially considering the reports coming in about damage in Tapachula and other parts of Guatemala and El Salvador?... Conditions had gone down hill since morning back at the shelter. I had never been more dehydrated in my life, nor so anxious to be far from so many creepy male relief volunteers telling me I’d be stuck there for months and I should marry one of them rather than try to get to San Cristobal or Nicaragua.
Against the warnings and wishes of all Malacatán municipal employees and volunteers, Matias and I left for Xela the next morning with a crew we’d met several days earlier by the side of the road. I knew that from Xela I would be more likely to get as far as Guatemala City - where according to text-messages from Matias’ friend, the sun was shining. Or if I didn' reach Xela, at least I would be closer to a road that might be less damaged to return to San Cristobal. Everybody said we would never make it, and that the next hurricane was already on its way from either Honduras or Cuba, depending on whom you talked to. But the sun’s half hour debut for the first time in days convinced us to get out of town while we could. I never found out the first names of my entire travel brigade that day - which fluctuated in size as some joined on and others went separate ways - but for nine hours we helped one another hop from combi to combi, scoot across boards balancing upon washed away bridges (waters still whizzing by below), through portions of crumbled highway, up and across the faces of mountainsides, fresh mudslides, and wade through rivers flowing across highways.
Had I been alone I might have lost it at many points along the way. The combination of misty rains creeping back into the skies and people yelling "ya viene su hermano" (its sibling is on the way) as we trekked through coffee plantations now clinging to the mountain sides as a result of Stan’s treacherous downpours made me anxious moving even an inch. I did not want to encourage even more damage to the fragile earth. But after our nine-hour journey - in which we traveled a distance that takes two hours under ordinary conditions - we found a comfortable shelter to fill our bellies, dry off, and spend the night. The warm showers we were permitted between 5:00 am and 6:00 am were heavenly. It had been several days, and our constantly wet clothing that had begun to rot, now had a funky stench. I was sad to see my travel partners take off for Guatemala City the next morning, and very tempted to go along. We never came to be on a first name basis, but these compas and I had become family in our adventures helping one another persevere through such daunting conditions. With my own family so far and out of touch, and my friends also stranded somewhere in the storm or in unreachable dryer spots - these folks were all I had. Nevertheless, I was not ready for an even more intense travel day than the day before only to be trapped in Guatemala City - farther away from home - if the next hurricane were to hit.
The inside perspective on relief efforts that I got from helping at shelters was invaluable to me and challenging. It also helped me maintain my sanity until the banks and internet cafes reopened. Regions hit by Stan and the numerous other hurricanes this season continue to be in dire need of basics such as sanitation, potable water, food, shelter and medical supplies. It will take years to even partially reconstruct what has been lost, and many families will never recover. It was terrific to see so many come out to help those worst affected by the hurricane, but it was also depressing that these efforts do nothing to change root problems that force the poor to continue building homes in vulnerable areas. Or likewise, that so many are poor because their governments have opted for foreign aid programs at the cost of neoliberalizing their economies, and that we are experiencig ecological crisis thanks to zealous resource consumption by those involved in a never ending race to become wealthier, more industrialized, and more technological, and thus increasingly prone to natural disasters.
Though there was a lot of miscommunication between the various groups and shelters involved with relief efforts, it was somewhat expected during an event such as a hurricane. While these activities helped me not to focus entirely on the crazy things I had just experienced, it was hard to feel useful sorting clothes, beating eggs, and serving tamales and atol in styrafoam dishware to the shelter occupants, while trying had not to offend “wealthy” Central American relief volunteers whose politial and social beliefs were very much different from my own. I struggled a lot with the preferential treatment I received as a stranded gringa, who was a million times better off than any of my fellow shelter mates, yet treated like I had gone through the most devastating experience of all.
The devastation from this hurricane season will have long lasting effects, and so much can never be recovered. On my way back to Chiapas I was struck with how much damage had been done to the milpa fields (corn, beans, and squash grown together with medicinal plants, creating a natural equilibrium between all organisms involved and providing an economical non-meat source of complete protein) of countless poor campesinos (peasant farmers), many of whom also have damaged or destroyed homes. Their harvests were stolen by the several feet of water that idly sat in their fields, and by the harsh winds that blew stalks parallel to the earth. Equally unfortunate are those who depend on fruit harvests, whose trees will take years to recuperate. What will they depend upon in the meantime? Most will have to migrate, because there are few other options.
In Mexico, the effects of NAFTA have been hard hitting, and countless people are much worse off than before the agreement's implementation. The world market has shocked the Mexican economy leaving local economies based on local products destroyed, and over one million jobs eliminated despite promises of abundant maquila (factory)jobs as compensation. Most of these opportunities have now moved on to China where the labor force is even cheaper and more exploitable. Subsidized US corn, (which is actually illegal under NAFTA) sold at dumping prices in Mexico has led to a 70 percent drop in Mexican corn prices, which does very little for Mexican campesinos trying to compete in the world market. Most corn grown in Mexico is for personal consumption because the price of corn tortillas, which are heavily contaminated with GMO corn, has risen by 50 percent. And thanks to the introduction of the agro-industry’s mono-culture crops, communities are experiencing huge losses of biodiversity, leaving them with lowered capacities for subsistence agriculture and traditional forms of nourishment and health, eliminating thousand-year-old campesino-indigenous traditional knowledge and threatening cultures. While there are innumerable factors forcing people from their lands in the countryside and into urban Mexico and the US , coyote fees for transport to China, where all the maquila jobs are said to have gone, are still too outrageously expensive for most Mexican campesinos. Central America is now awaiting implementation of CAFTA (a Central American Free Trade Agreement), meaning that before long their local products will also feel the shocks of the global market. With the addition of this season’s hurricane damage, the outlook for the future is not too bright. Many will have no other option but to migrate. Arriving back into Chiapas just a few days after the hurricane, militarization had already increased in preperation for inceased flows of imigrants.
The hundreds of thousands affected by Hurricane Stan (600,000 in Chiapas alone) continue to be without access to food, water, sanitation, medical attention, and housing, yet most international (and national) media sources and relief groups have already turned their attention towards more recent disasters, which seem to be occurring on an almost weekly basis. In my opinion, we have fallen out of balance with the Earth’s natural cycles, and caused Gaia a lot of pain. We have become greedy. We are prostituting the body of our Mother Earth, creating wars and injustices over her resources, and we should only expect that she lash back. It has come in the form of tremendous earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes, and it will only worsen unless we change the destructive patters many of us have become content with. Now more than ever, it is important that we remain colorful like the kernels of non-GMO corn, listen to the cries of our mother, and begin working together to find sustainable alternatives before we eliminate ourselves walking this current path. I hope to go back to Central America in December when my visa expires to continue making the contacts I was unable to make on this trip. I hope to go as far as Nicaragua, as I had planned for right now, to see what types of sustainable agriculture practices communities are implementing. There is an agro-ecology project here in Chiapas that some of us would like to get going on ASAP. We must find ways to nourish ourselves while nourishing rather than destroying our planet, before it’s too late!
