[NYTr] 'Poorer than we thought'; Mexican floods bare economic divide

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)

The Washington Post via The Chicago Trib - Nov 8, 2007


'Poorer than we thought'; Mexican floods bare economic divide

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington 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 makeshift 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 
carcasses 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.