8 From Our Companions

El Salvador’s Poor Are Hit Hardest

BY NOAH BULLOCK, RESEARCHER IN EL SALVADOR

decimated by unmitigated floodwaters, there are projects to relocate and build temporary housing. Most of the areas affected by the storm have been determined uninhabitable.

The storm’s destruction lends to reflection about what might force so many people to live so precariously on nature’s margins. In one post-Ida landscape riddled with twisted corrugated tin and the foundational remnants of dirt floor homes, one man observed that “the poor have no where else to go.”

Across the country, the poor were the preferred victims of Ida’s rain, and this past November serves as another testament to the fact that poverty and inequality play as great a role in the wake of natural disaster as Mother Nature. Because the storm occurred during the harvest season, many families lost their entire supply of crops to floods and mudslides.

Intense relief efforts are underway in our companion diocese of El Salvador as the country tries to recover from the devastating effects of Hurricane Ida. The hurricane caused heavy rains and mudslides throughout the country during the weekend of November 7-8. The rain has subsided but left a trail of disaster. According to the latest official reports, the death toll has risen to 184, with 14,166 people now in shelters, 2,614 evacuated and many unaccounted for.

In the early morning hours of November 6th, Hurricane Ida dumped torrents of water on the El Salvador countryside. Across the country, mudslides and flooding shut down highways, collapsed bridges, overwhelmed infrastructure, crushed houses, destroyed crops, and wiped out communities in its path.

El Salvador is especially vulnerable to flash flooding, since the nation is the second most deforested country in the Americas, next to Haiti. Approximately 85 - 90 percent of the nation’s forests have been destroyed since the 1960s, and the rate of destruction -- now 1.7 percent per year -- has accelerated since 2000. Most deforestation in El Salvador results from the country’s high population that relies heavily on the collection of fuel wood and subsistence hunting and agriculture. Although the government has protected areas of forest, forestry laws go unenforced due to lack of funds and management.

Nearly a month later, a drive in any direction from San Salvador will detail the storm’s destruction. To the east, the most visible evidence of the storm is the massive trenches that tear down the western face of the Volcano Chichontepec in San Vicente. The trenches are visible from as far away as San Salvador and mark the spot where the mountainside slid and plastered the town of Verapaz in a pungent mixture of mud, boulders, and decaying flesh. Today, excavators are slowly picking away at the debris and the town has

vowed to rebuild, but presently there are still many people without homes.

6,000 people are homeless as a result of Hurricane Ida. Among the displaced people, there are countless stories of fleeing minutes before the landslide, or hopping from rooftop to rooftop to escape surging floodwaters. For every story there is a new name, another place, in a seemingly endless string of communities tucked away in ravines, along riverbanks, or in drainage ditches that were vulnerable to the storm.

In the wake of Ida, there is pressing need for food, clothes, and shelter, but to avoid the repetition of tragedy, disaster relief efforts should be as systemic as the disaster itself. A full disaster response must include long-term commitment to address the root causes of vulnerability. Much of this work must be accomplished by local and national government through the implementation of better policy and practice in three fundamental areas; land rights, correcting corruption and use of public funds, and environmental protection, all of which are factors that intensify the collision of systemic poverty and nature.

In the hill country around Santo Tomás, just south of the capital, a pile of exhumed mattresses lay tangled with other artifacts of a poor family; a single plastic flip flop, green plastic Cantaro for hauling water, and some tattered children’s clothing. The rubble is an informal monument to the family and community that disappeared when the ravine’s edge gave way and swept the neighborhood into the surging rapids below.

The Ministry of Public Works originally estimated the damage to infrastructure at eight hundred million dollars. Thirty-eight bridges collapsed and 93 highways reported major damage. In La Libertad, where the bridges are down, traffic is restricted to vehicles that can ford the rivers. On the riverbanks below, where communities were

“Across the country, the poor were the preferred victims of Ida’s rains.”

Non-governmental organizations and churches can make a significant impact through commitments to support projects that empower the poor, supporting everything from reforestation, risk management planning, infrastructure equality, community organization, education, and initiatives that favor environmentally and

socially conscience economic development.

To help the communities affected by Ida, send donations by check to “Obispo Martín Barahona” c/o The Episcopal Community Federal Credit Union, 840 Echo Park Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90026. You may also donate online: www.cristosal.org. X

Noah Bullock is a member of a research team dedicated to creating a contemporary image of El Salvador in its historic evolution toward a more just society. Learn more at www. elsalvadorproject.org.

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