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'Poorer than we thought'; Mexican floods bare economic divide
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)
The Wa****ngton Post via The Chicago Trib - Nov 8, 2007
'Poorer than we thought'; Mexican floods bare economic divide
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Wa****ngton Post
VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico--Roofs rot underwater, stretched out by the
thousands over miles and miles. But it is the roofs jutting just above
the brown, stinking floodwaters that truly make the heart ache.
Those roofs are make****ft homes now, refuges to weary men, women and
children too scared to leave behind what little they have. The
streets below are liquid highways clotted with dugout canoes, but the
people up on the roofs and in the fetid second-story rooms just watch
them go past.
"They'd take everything if I weren't here," Manuel Vazquez said
Tuesday as he clung to a railing above his waterlogged Villahermosa
home. "I'm resigned to staying here."
When the Grijalva River turned vicious over the weekend, when it
slipped over its banks and ran wild across the state of Tabasco, its
brown waters exposed a socioeconomic divide far deeper than its
channel. The flood that President Felipe Calderon called "one of the
worst natural disasters in Mexican history" swallowed a place called
Gaviotas Sur. It has long been a place where Villahermosa's poor
hacked through flood-prone jungle to clear space for cinder-block
shacks and corrugated metal lean-tos.
The rich and middle class of this city live north of the river. The
rest live south of it, in Gaviotas Sur, or as some here call it, "the
Bronx." In much the same way as the ruined Lower 9th Ward in New
Orleans forced the United States to face its class divide after
Hurricane Katrina, Gaviotas Sur is exposing uncomfortable truths in
this boggy Gulf of Mexico state.
"The message is that we are poorer than we thought," said Raul Abreu
Lastra, a native of Tabasco and founder of a Mexico City think tank,
Fundacion Idea, which examines poverty and education. "We have
thousands of people living down by the river who shouldn't be living
there."
The perilous nature of life here crystallized last week. Torrential
rains battered Tabasco, swelling the rivers that crisscross Mexico's
most perpetually soggy state. By early Friday, the Grijalva, which
runs through downtown Villahermosa, and other rivers were cascading
over their banks and filling low-lying areas, such as Gaviotas Sur.
The homes of as many as 1 million people have been destroyed or
heavily damaged in the days since by floodwaters that rose as high as
19 feet. Water levels have subsided in many areas. Still, Gov. Andres
Granier estimated that the flooding has caused $4.7 billion in damage
to homes, banana fields and cattle ranches.
The death toll has been low -- three killed, 24 missing. But the
widespread displacement and misery rivals the worst of the natural
disasters, including hurricanes, that Mexicans have seen in years.
Tabasco is Mexico's fourth-poorest state, with 59 percent of the
population living below the poverty line, according to Mexico's
National Center for Policy Evaluation and Social Development. But the
river made the poverty less obvious, separating its day-to-day face
from people living in better conditions on the other side.
For those not willing to swim, the only way into Gaviotas Sur now is by
boat.
Emma Alvarado Rodriguez flagged a ride on a boat donated by an oil
services company and pointed to the deepest corner of Gaviotas Sur.
She had been coaxed out of her home by Mexican military crews over
the weekend. On Monday, she took a canoe and made it up to her roof
line, only to be startled by what she said was a tlacuache, an
opossumlike marsupial that plays a role in many indigenous legends.
Terrified, she jumped into her canoe and left.
On Tuesday, she tried to make it back with her two sons.
The oil company boat passed over streets that had buckled under the
force of the water, leaving slabs of asphalt tilted toward the sky,
forming mini-waterfalls on city streets. The stench of rotting animal
carc***** was in the air; sun beating down on spilled oil made murky
rainbows in the water. Her ears were assaulted by the whines and
howls of stranded dogs, some left tied to posts and struggling to
keep their mouths and noses above water.
"I still can't believe it," she said.
*
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