CENTRAL AMERICA: The Smell of Death Hovers Over Choluteca

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

CHOLUTECA, Honduras, Nov 9 1998 (IPS) - In the past six years, this region in southern Honduras had been developing as a new hub of economic development; now it is a devastated land over which the smell of death hovers.

The Choluteca river, swollen by Hurricane Mitch, swept people along as it raged through the region a week and a half ago, levelling villages and towns and putting paid to the relative prosperity brought about by a boom in non-traditional exports such as shrimp and melons.

The bridge leading to Choluteca town, located 198 kms from Tegucigalpa, is now a twisted mass of iron as a result of the hurricane, which caused heavy damage.

In the town, capital of a region with the same name, Elizabeth Zuniga wept as she looked at what remained of her town and home, which she fled on the night of Oct. 30.

“When the river started roaring so horribly, all I could do was take my daughter (out of the house) and three changes of clothing,” she told IPS. “I lost everything, my documents, all my things. I never imagined such a huge disaster. We Cholutecas did not think the river would betray us, washing away our hopes of progress and happiness.”

“Thank God I’m alive, but there are areas that disappeared,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Many people were anxiously calling for help because they were drowning in the river.”

Zuniga, a well-know journalist in her region, now shares bread and water with other Choluteca residents who, like her, lost everything in the flood. At night they sleep on the floor since there are no beds in the emergency shelters.

Across Central America and Southern Mexico, some 10,000 people died, some 14,000 are missing and 2.78 million are homeless, according to figures quoted by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO).

In Nicaragua, about 2,000 people died in a giant mudslide that engulfed entire villages and towns near Las Casitas volcano. Thousands of people have been left homeless and hungry in Nicaragua and about 75.000 landmines inherited from a civil war between U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries and the state have been uprooted by the waters.

Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico were also affected, but most of the casualties were in Honduras. The hurricane destroyed or damaged 70 percent of its economy, pounded its road network to bits and smashed its energy and water supply systems. Honduran President Carlos Flores said the three days of disaster had thrown his country half a century backward.

Relatively prosperous areas on the Atlantic coast of this country of 5.8 million people have been wiped off the map and agricultural valleys have been covered by floodwaters. According to preliminary figures, two billion dollars will be needed to rebuild houses, roads, bridges and the economy in Honduras, one of Latin America’s poorest nations.

South of Choluteca, in the municipality of Morolica, the river swallowed up everything but the church and four houses. It all happened overnight but most of the town’s 2,000 inhabitants managed to escape. Now they are refusing to go back for fear of sharing their town’s fate.

“Our town is finished. I couldn’t do anything to save it from the river,” Morolica Mayor Ramon Alberto Espinal told IPS. “I feel bad because even though I saved a lot of people and the only clothes I have are those I’m wearing, I have a hard time believing that we no longer have a town.”

The 42-year-old Espinal said he would convince his people to return to the disaster zone and build “New Moralica”. “That’s how I want it to be called,” he said, “because we have to show that Mitch that we have not been beaten.”

According to the Honduran government, the raging waters of the Choluteca and another river, the Chiquito, caused heavy damage in Tegucigalpa, which has been totally transformed by the disaster. Its centre has been practically destroyed. Old, densely populated residential areas either collapsed or were buried in mud.

Rescue groups made up of Honduran and Mexican volunteers have been searching for bodies beneath the mud and rubble throughout the city. So have soldiers trained in rescue techniques and accompanied by dogs, who were sent by Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

In the south, about 224,000 people lost their homes and the dead have been floating down the river – in Choluteca region an estimated 2,000 people died by drowning.

To get to the south, normally a dry, arid zone, IPS had to cross fallen bridges and now harmless streams which were raging torrents a week ago. Along the way lay the ruins of Las Delicias and Los Mangos, two villages which the disaster erased off the face of the earth, along with their inhabitants.

More than 15 villages were totally destroyed in el Valle, a southern department on the border with El Salvador. Salvadorean soldiers had to fish about 100 corpses from the River Goascoran, since the Honduran military could not get to the area.

Mexico and Cuba were the first countries to send assistance to Honduras. They contributed medicinal drugs, mobile hospitals, electricity generators and food.

Other aid has been coming in. The Inter-American Development Bank has announced loans to the sum of 160 million dollars for reconstruction in Honduras. They are repayable in 40 years after a five-year grace period and at one percent interest

PAHO is co-ordinating foreign health assistance. It issued an emergency appeal last week for aid to the Central American health sector and the United States and Sweden immediately pledged 500,000 dlrs each to Central America.

The U.S. government has since approved a 70-million-dollar aid package for Central America. Canada, which pledged 250,000 dollars, Friday sent a C-130 transport plane with supplies to Honduras and El Salvador.

In Spain, civil society collected about 40 million dollars to help Central America. The Spanish government and civil society, along with European NGOs, have proposed that the region’s foreign debt be forgiven. Madrid has also suspended the deportation of illegal immigrants from the affected countries.

The daily ‘El Mundo’ in Madrid noted on Sunday that the assistance was far from adequate. Central America, it said, was receiving 35 times less money than the speculators of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) firm.

El Mundo recalled that on Sep. 23, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank called on U.S. financiers to come up with 3.5 billion dollars to prevent the collapse of LTCM, which specialises in high-risk investment funds and is controlled by multimillionaires.