By IPS Correspondents
QUITO, Aug 22 2006 (IPS)

While the Tungurahua volcano, 150 kilometres south of Quito, has literally masked its vicinity in thick ash, the eruption has exposed Ecuador’s vulnerability to natural disasters and the extreme poverty in which the majority of this Andean country’s indigenous communities live.

Ten villages near the volcano were bombarded by rocks, lava and ashes, and had to be evacuated. More than 5,000 people lost their homes and crops, while ash carried by the wind has affected one million urban and rural dwellers, and 40,000 hectares of fruit and vegetable crops were ruined. Seven people died and more than 30 are reported missing.

The volcano’s latest eruption cycle began in 1999, escalating in intensity a little over a month ago, on Jul. 14, when a large explosion spewed molten rock, lava, ash and gas into the surrounding area. Things then calmed down until the Aug. 16 eruption, which the country’s Geophysics Institute called the largest ever since the 18th century.

In El Altar, a community now devastated by lava and molten rock, indigenous elder Dolores Chicaiza just days previously had told IPS that “at least Mama Tungurahua’s roar has made the government and journalists aware of the poverty here.”

With the volcano’s low thunder in the background and the ground shaking, Chicaiza expressed her respect for Mama Tungurahua, as the Quechua indigenous people call the volcano. “She is crying out in pain about our poor, dry lands, and on behalf of our guinea pigs, our chickens, and us,” she said.

“Only two things are strongly rooted here – us, and our onions. We have survived for 500 years and will go on, with or without the volcano; the onion is also sturdy and can survive the dry earth, the cold, the ash, the rubble and the attacks of Mama Tungurahua, who always sends a reminder to the authorities when they forget,” said the campesina.

“We are staying. When my son told me they had given him a key to a room in a municipal shelter to protect his family, I said I wouldn’t leave, and so did his daughters. The earth is moving, but we and the onions have strong roots,” said Chicaiza, just before a mushroom cloud of ash burst from the volcano and the noise quieted for a few seconds.

Some curious local and foreign onlookers had made the trek to the village to “watch the volcano and its people,” as if the whole thing were a show.

Just a few metres away, Dioselinda Sisa, with her children aged one, three and four, said she was not afraid because the volcano was like a grandfather to her – one who sometimes tells stories and sometimes grumbles. But, she admitted, “the children cry at night when he roars like this.”

Her calm, sad eyes observed the large grey cloud that shot up and rapidly spilled its ash over the region’s small farms.

“When the volcano erupted the other day, it scattered rubble and molten rock this far, and we had to run for cover in the house. We gathered up the guinea pigs and brought them inside. You have to shelter the animals. It was like a loud gunshot – it hurt our ears, but then it was over. Everything eventually passes,” she said, watching her children.

In the distance, to the right of Tungurahua, another peak was vibrant with a different kind of white – snow.

Fifty metres away, a woman fed scraps to two pigs; tied to a pole, the animals reacted skittishly to the sounds of the volcano.

Ángel Chicaiza said the worst part is not being able to feed or protect the animals that give them nourishment. “We never had very much, but now we have even less,” he said in a way that asked for no pity, but reflected his heavy heart.

No one in the community was complaining, and nobody asked the authorities to provide assistance.

“It’s like when we don’t have credit or government help for planting or for raising our guinea pigs. Or when we don’t have water for our crops or doctors to fight all the illness we have here,” said Ángel.

But nothing had prepared them for what they encountered the night of Aug. 15, when together with other community members, they fled, in the face of the volcano’s unusually active rumbling. Thanks to this decision, they escaped the rocks and lava.

On Monday, with the volcano relatively calm, the people of El Altar returned to assess the damage. They discovered dead cows, guinea pigs, chickens and pigs, onion crops buried in ash, and the corrugated metal roofs of their houses punctured by Tungurahua’s stones.

Geophysics Institute Director Hugo Yépez has for years warned of the urgent need for Ecuador to establish prevention and disaster preparedness programmes in zones vulnerable to natural phenomena like the Tungurahua eruption.

Yépez said the efforts should not be limited to relocating communities near the volcano; they should also include measures such as making sure houses even farther away from the volcano can withstand an eruption, as the most recent incident shows they also can be affected.

A volcanic eruption or earthquake always causes much greater damage in Ecuador than in Japan, for example, because buildings are inadequate, no prevention initiatives are in place, animals have nowhere to take shelter and campesinos lack ways of storing water and medication for themselves and their livestock. Each of these factors further increases the country’s vulnerability, observed Yépez.

Luis Macas, president of Ecuador’s Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities and presidential candidate backed by indigenous movement and other social organisations, concurred that such natural disasters bring native poverty out of the shadows.

“I’ve visited communities close to Tungurahua dozens of times; indigenous people have always been poor, and this is not going to change unless the country makes some major changes,” he said.

“The poverty is suddenly catapulted into the limelight because of the volcano, which caught the attention of national authorities and the media. These humble plots of land are the only thing many of these indigenous people have, which is why they don’t want to leave them,” said Macas.

Interior Minister Antonio Andretta said Monday that the effects of the eruption are “so dire and have so many consequences that the government must focus on the most urgent issues first.”

“It is a national problem that needs to be addressed as a serious reality,” he added.

Health Minister Guillermo Wagner stated on television that an additional problem is the “attachment to the land” displayed by people who, despite the risk and destruction, want to return to their communities.

The government has provided not only material assistance for victims, but also medical brigades to treat people who have been hurt, he said.

Early reports from the Geophysics Institute stated that the ash cloud released by the Aug. 16 eruption reached the stratosphere and had a diametre of 280 kilometres. The gases, rocks and molten streams spewed by Tungurahua soared up to eight kilometres high.

The latest Geophysics Institute report, released Monday, maintains a high state of alert because, despite the relative calm, the period of activity has not ended, and another eruption is still a possibility.

Excerpt: