wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Widows of mudslide victims,

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Note #8832 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05402
August 5, 2005

No time for grieving

Widows, families of mudslide victims face desperate struggle to survive

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - When church leaders, disaster-aid workers and rights activists
brainstorm for ways for Guatemalan widows to earn money to support their
families, few options come to mind.

	This is no small problem in a country where thousands of husbands
were killed in a bitter civil war three decades ago.

	A widow lives in a remote town - where jobs are scarce - might have
to go elsewhere to work. She may wind up hiring on as a field hand on a big
plantation, where she will be paid less than men who do the same job. In
Guatemala, it's legal to pay women less.

	If she has a house or a small plot of land, she can stay put and sell
whatever she can to earn her family's daily bread.

	She might whip up a pot of beans and sell them by the roadside. Or
send her youngest kids out to hawk homemade tamales in the streets. She can
sell homespun crafts. She can walk to the nearest city, buy such things as
toilet paper, pots and umbrellas, and return home to sell them for a tiny
profit. If she has a bit of money, she might buy a pig and sell piglets.

	Widows often live day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, with no guaranteed
income for tomorrow. Any aid they may get, from the church, the government or
non-governmental organizations, will be intermittent at best.

	"A pan of beans, some crafts. She'll get some money ... but it is not
permanent. It is nothing she can rely on. It just allows her to survive,"
says Maria Everarda Tista, general coordinator of the National Guatemalan
Council of Widows (CONAVIGUA), the nation's only organized voice for widows. 

	"There are more than 50,000 widows, because they lost their husbands
due to the violence and due to other causes," says Tista, who has talked with
many of them about the struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over
their children's heads.

	According to CONAVIGUA, more than 44 percent of Guatemalan widows
live below the poverty line - in an economy where $4 is the average monthly
minimum wage. Female field hands may earn as little as $2 a month.

	There is no welfare, no government safety net.

	"There is no insurance here, no government help that I can see," says
Ellen Dozier, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker who has spent the
past decade working with church women in Guatemala. "Family and friends do
help out ... But the industrious ones are out trying to sell anything and
everything. For most of the women that I know, widows or not, their only way
of getting income is by selling something."

	According to Dozier, a garden plot of beans and corns allows women to
keep their families fed and still have staples that can be turned into
tamales or other salable products.

	"They can't go to a factory and get a job," she says.
	
	Mourning rituals in Guatemala include food gifts and even collections
of money for grieving families - a few quetzales and some flowers. It is not
long before a grief-struck widow begins plotting how to replace her dead
husband's income, however small.

	"The church always has something to give, either locally or through
the presbytery," says the Rev. Carlos Lara, executive secretary of the
Presbyterian Church of Guatemala, which is headquartered in Guatemala City.
"But there is no national program to help."

	According to Lara, only 50 of the denomination's 250 pastors pay into
the retirement plan, so most pastors' widows have no pension income.

	Most pastors earn less than $16 a month. So putting money aside for a
retirement plan isn't a priority. The notion is so counter-cultural that it
is always a hard sell. "They either don't have the money or don't see the
benefit," Lara says. "If the church pays  $16 a month, that's why pastors do
something else."

	Many ministers are also farmers, because preaching seldom pays the
bills.

	In crises, collections are taken up. But the money doesn't last long.

	Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) Coordinator Susan Ryan is
still gathering data and deciding how to help the families decimated by the
June 15 mudslides in Senahu, a remote Mayan town in the Guatemalan highlands
- among them the family of Pastor Jose Pop, who was killed along with his
youngest daughter, Anna Teresa, 8.

	In all, 22 people were killed.

	Pop's widow, Elvira, 36, has five surviving children.

	PDA has sent an emergency grant of $10,000 to Senahu, where about 100
families were displaced by the mudslides. Ryan says she will send more when a
rehabilitation strategy is in place. She is trying to determine how else PDA
can help the families, including five new widows and their children.

	"We're looking, perhaps, at school fees for the widows' kids," says
Ryan, adding that public education isn't free in Guatemala. "Otherwise, the
family may get so far behind that they can't get ahead. We need to keep them
from dropping through the cracks."

	Church professionals say some widows have avoided poverty by banding
together and securing grants or loans to help them establish small
businesses. Lara says one widows' collective with European backing operates
two restaurants along the highway to Shayla, a mountain city a few hours from
the capital. The women began by selling cookies and pies, then invested in
the restaurants.

	Dozier says that most widows don't have the luxury of grieving. 

	"For me, there isn't just the need for financial help, but
emotional," she says. "Some of these women have been married most of their
adult lives. I find that a lot of people are not able to express their grief.
They just have to be stoic."

	And industrious.

	"The reality is: Many people here are just subsisting," says Dozier,
adding skeptically: "It'll be interesting to see the impact of the CAFTA"
(the Central American Free Trade Act, passed recently by the U.S. Congress).

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