wfn.org | Family, Friends of Hurricane Mitch Desperately Await Word

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11-November-1998 
98370 
 
    Family, Friends of Hurricane Mitch Desperately 
    Await Word, Search for Hope 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -Floricel Enriques knows now that her father and mother are 
alive. 
 
      Last week, after Hurricane Mitch dumped more than four feet of rain 
on Honduras, she couldn't be sure. With telephone lines down and circuits 
jammed she got only busy signals for four days, as she tried to get through 
to the Honduran town of. Talonga from Rosewell, N.M. 
 
    The only thing left to do was cry. 
 
    "I felt like the most useless person in the world, seeing all this 
happening and I'm not able to do anything," Enriques , 24, said of watching 
newcasts of the wind, the water and the death back home. Enriques, who is 
serving as one of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Reconciliation & 
Mission (R&M) partners in Roswell's Westminster Presbyterian Church, said, 
"I suffered ... anxiety attacks trying to get information, but I couldn't 
find out anything." 
 
    Now she knows, her parents, Isidro and Ramona, are alive.  But there is 
sitting on a patch of high ground that didn't slide when the rivers flooded 
below.   The bridge that connects Talonga to Tegucigalpa, Honduras' 
battered capital, is down.  It is one of seven obliterated bridges that 
tied that city to the rest of the country. 
 
    Enriques' father is not only cut-off from work - in a country without 
insurance or government assistance, he is also without a paycheck.  And 
since the disaster destroyed homes, businesses, crops and roadways - nobody 
knows for how long. 
 
    "My family is fine," Enriques said. "But they are worried.  The 
economic situation is bad." 
 
    The emotional situation is equally bad for families here still awaiting 
word on family there.  With the death toll now hovering around 10,000, 
Hondurans and Nicaraguans, Guatemalans and El Salvadorans living in the 
United States wait for and worry about information coming from back home. 
 
    But even if good news comes, it is most often not the final word. Each 
day seems to bring new complications to recovery efforts. 
 
    That the worst isn't over is not a hard scenario to picture in 
countries where dead and bloated cows and decaying human bodies lay out in 
the open and put entire regions at risk for disease. The infrastructure is 
so destroyed that getting relief supplies to survivors who are still alive 
but stranded is difficult and, in some areas, impossible.  In Nicaragua - 
as if things are not bad enough - Reuters News Service reported that heavy 
flooding has loosened and scattered some 75,000 landmines planted during 
the wars of the 1980s. 
 
    "The pictures you see on the news just flash on," said Amy Shubitz in 
Tucson, Ariz., who has been sitting with Honduran and Guatemalan immigrants 
at the Southside Presbyterian Church there, which has long tied its 
ministries to the needs of Central American refugees.  "And you can see 
people staring to see whether or not the people on the television are 
family members or friends in the mud and the water ... People just feel so 
helpless, so far away." 
 
    So churches with Honduran, Nicaraguan and Guatemalan members are doing 
what anyone might expect: packing up as much medicine, non-perishable food 
and clothing as they can and shipping it south.  The Task Force on Central 
America, which is housed in the Southside church, has packed up 60 boxes of 
supplies for a Pastors for Peace caravan to Chiapas, Mexico, and Nicaragua. 
A worship service in response to the tragedy was held at the bilingual 
Mission Presbyterian Church in San Francisco last Sunday, with the offering 
earmarked to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. The Canto Esperanza 
congregation - a Hispanic new church development outside Chicago - is 
taking up special offerings and funneling them to Honduras through the 
Honduran Embassy. 
 
    "We've got one woman who thinks she lost her sister," said the Rev. 
Jose Casal, pastor of Canto Esperanza. He said Tegucigalpa is so 
incapacitated by the water that relatives outside the city cannot get in to 
check on friends and relatives there.  Phone service is unpredictable, some 
lines are still down.  "What she knows is where her sister lived in the 
city ... everybody is dead," Casal said. "The river came up and everybody 
is gone, so she thinks that maybe her sister is dead ... we're trying to 
show her our solidarity and support." 
 
    Central Americans have traditionally drawn together in the face of 
overwhelming odds, whether it is war, an earthquake, or like now, a flood. 
 
    "Part of what overwhelms me about this whole situation is that [Central 
Americans] have already suffered so much," said Anne Dunlap of Santa Fe, 
N.M., who coordinates the R&M program, which places Central American 
volunteers in U.S. churches and vice versa. "We're talking about folks that 
lived through war, torture and disappearances.  Now, what little bit they 
have is gone, especially in Honduras." 
 
    Dunlap described how the Rev. Jennifer Parker of Chicago, a PC(USA) R&M 
worker in Managua, desperately thumbs through her Spanish dictionary to 
find the pastoral words she needs when talking with displaced Nicaraguans 
in the city's shelters and barrios. "There are tremendous material needs 
right now for food and clothing, but at least as great is the need for 
pastoral care," she said. 
 
      "That was true before," Dunlap added describing the emotional trauma 
that is a legacy of the brutal wars of the 1980s that killed and tortured 
hundreds of thousands of Central Americans. "It is even more true now." 
 
     According to the denomination's Hispanic Congregational Enhancement 
Office, most of the Presbyterian churches that have Central American 
members are located in California, usually in San Francisco or Los Angeles. 
The majority of those people are Guatemalan, since the National Evangelical 
Presbyterian Church of Guatemala is a sizeable denomination. There are 
fewer Presbyterians in Honduras, Nicaragua or El Salvador. 
 
    Communidad Christiana - an Hispanic congregation that is nestled within 
the Canoga Park Presbyterian Church in Canoga Park., Calif.,  has held a 
special worship to offer "comfort and courage (in the aftermath of 
Hurricane Mitch,)" as the Rev. Daniel Beteta said.  The church's women's 
group is pulling together food, clothing and medicine for shipment and the 
deacons have been sending cards to the 12 or so families waiting on 
information about families in Honduras and Guatemala. 
 
     "It is really hard," said Beteta. 
 
    Nicaraguan Elena Juarez of Miami's First Spanish Presbyterian Church 
agrees.  Along with her parents, Juarez waited nearly one week for word 
about her grandparents whose rural home was in the province of Chinandega, 
one of the areas hardest hit by Mitch.  When rescue teams got into the 
area, her grandmother used a cell phone to contact a son in Managua who 
then called Juarez here.  She assumes her grandparents' straw house is gone 
and that their two horses are probably gone too. 
 
    "We thought the worst," she said of the days she spent just waiting. 
"My uncles tried to go to the area, but couldn't.  There were no bridges. 
We are happy with the fact that they are okay, but we're worried about 
them.  I heard a few days ago that food was to be delivered.  But there are 
just a few helicopters available for transport.  So we're wondering, `Are 
they getting enough food?' 
 
    "We know they're okay.  They're alive.  But we're worried," Juarez 
said. 
 
    Nancy Rosas of Santa Fe, N.M.., a member of First Presbyterian Church 
there,  knows just how that feels. 
 
      Rosas waited in the United States for news from her parents and a 
brother who live in Honduras.  Her brothers and sisters in Guatemala waited 
as well, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst as the rain kept 
coming down and the newsreports became more horrific. 
 
    When she learned that her parents, Domingo and Yolanda, are alive and 
well, with a dry house, she was elated. Rosas was soon overcome, however, 
by their tales of roadways clogged with displaced Hondurans begging for 
clean water, food and medicine. Struggling to find hope in the tragedy, she 
wrote a poem titled "Mitch: A Challenge for a New Genesis" 
 
    "Hearing again my parent's voice on the phone 
        the feeling of resurrection became real, 
        a sign of life after so much death and destruction. 
 
    A familiar voice reminding me 
    the duality of life in Central America 
    life-death, death-life 
    the constant challenge to rise again 
 
    The awaited waters of life 
        brought back the forgotten chaos 
        to challenge my people for a new Genesis 
 
    Like a baptism, 
        my people have been submerged in the waters of death 
        to experience the power of resurrection 
 
    Arise and shine Centroamerica 
    Your light will glow as the dawn, 
    Friday will end 
    and Sunday will come with the good news of resurrection! 

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