wfn.org | Salvadoran quake victims long for resurrection

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Note #6487 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

11-April-2001
01130

Salvadoran quake victims long for resurrection

Shaken people cling to hope amid rubble of houses and hometowns

by Alexa Smith

SANTA ESTEBAN CATARINA, El Salvador - The meeting broke up when the second
tremor hit, shaking the sidewalk, the streets, city hall.

	And making the people tremble. Many are still shaken after two major
earthquakes rumbled through here last winter.

	The memory is hard to shake in Santa Esteban Catarina, where 600 families,
lacing money to build permanent homes, now live in partly demolished houses,
or, worse, in temporary makeshift shacks.

	Plastic sheets are molded into tents. The luckiest survivors have mud huts
with stick walls. Camouflaged soldiers go street to street, soldering the
aluminum shelters with aluminum sides and roofs that become ovens when it is
hot. The packed-dirt floors, hardened by heat, will simply go soggy when it
rains.

	All this - with Central America's monsoon-like rainy season just weeks away
- has kept emergency teams working through Holy Week. Any other year, the
whole country would shut down for Easter and for summer vacation.

	A meeting of workers was quickly adjourned, the tremors coming just minutes
apart.

	People moved fast, getting out of the building and into the open. Among
them were three members of the town council, a few representatives of the
Iglesia Reformanda Calvinista y ALFALIT de El Salvador, a church-based
community development agency, and a few from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
They had been talking about how to pay for the massive work that lies ahead.

	Others hurried away to catch buses to check out homes that may not be
sturdy enough to withstand much more shaking. Soldiers napping after work
jumped up from foam mattresses strewn across the courtyard.

	When the earth stopped rocking, there was some nervous laughter - but not
much.

	"Even though the tremors are constant, people still panic. No one is
certain this isn't another major earthquake," said David Barnhart of
Atlanta, the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance liaison to Latin America, who
is in El Salvador to help the church's partners assess the damage and plan
the recovery.

	"This has been a traumatic experience ... and they relive it every time
there is a tremor," Barnhart said.

	There is a human cost, and there is a cost in dollars, too. And someone's
got to pick up the tab.

	Ramone Ramos, one of the city council members, put it this way: "The
provisional housing was put into place immediately, but that's not a
solution. People are raising the question now: What about permanent houses?"
Ramos paused before adding, "We're asking for help ...

	"There's not enough resources to do this ourselves," he said, noting that
government stipends were used up before the second earthquake even hit.

	Nationwide, the numbers are staggering, according to "El Latino," a major
newspaper here.

	There are towns like Santa Esteban Catarina all over El Salvador. More than
1.5 million residences are said to have been damaged by the quakes, which
killed about 1,000 people and left more than 5,000 wounded.

	Three months later, many major highways are still blocked by landslides.
More than 400 schools and 150 churches were damaged. Many people are still
missing.

	The city council has petitioned the Reformed church to build, or at least
to help pay for the reconstruction of, 330 homes in Santa Esteban Catarina.
But the church doesn't have that kind of money.

	ACT, the relief agency of the World Council of Churches, issued a
$3-million appeal months ago, but has received less than one-quarter of the
money it set out to raise. The Reformed Church here estimates that the
disaster relief money El Salvador is receiving now is about 10 percent of
the amount that came through church channels to Nicaragua and Honduras after
Hurricane Mitch wreaked havoc in Central America three years ago.

	"This appeal just virtually didn't get funded," said Susan Ryan, PDA's
coordinator, who sent $80,000 after the first quake in January for emergency
supplies, and intends to send another $200,000 when the damage assessment is
complete. "This just got eclipsed by (the) India earthquake."

	So, after distributing tons of emergency beans and rice, the Iglesia
Reformada Calvinista is beginning to help with the rebuilding, said the Rev.
Santiago Flores, the executive director of ALFALIT. He said the church hopes
to rebuild 500 houses, at a cost estimated at $2,000 apiece.

	Flores said securing the necessary $1 million is just going to take longer
than he thought - and raising money for the 4,500 other homes church
administrators would like to replace will take much longer. He'd like to see
a program in which owners of rebuilt homes would pay slowly into a fund,
like paying for a mortgage, so that money will be available to pay for the
rebuilding of other residences. And he's counting on the owners of the homes
to provide much of the labor that goes into their reconstruction.

	"There's a whole system that needs to be set up to regulate this," Flores
said from the denomination's offices in San Salvador. He said he is acutely
aware that families stuck in provisional housing want out as soon as
possible. His own mother is living in a makeshift shed in the front yard of
her wrecked house. Several members of AFALIT's staff lost their houses as
well.

	It is even more troubling to know that heavy rains are just two weeks away
and that the side streets in too many tumbledown towns will soon be awash.
Meanwhile, desperate public officials are trying frantically to get
commitments for money.

	That is why Reformed church deacons like Manuel Alvarenga - who teaches
Bible studies and community development workshops in the region near Santa
Esteban Catarina - are sitting in on meetings with local government leaders
to figure out what to do while awaiting the money.

	In nearby Santa Esteban, where 140 families eke out an existence as day
laborers in the fields, the tiny Reformed church will farm a rented plot of
land to feed the families of those who volunteer to help with rebuilding
damaged houses. Santa Esteban's main street now has a row of aluminum
shanties. In many neighboring towns, such as Santa Elena, no houses fell
down, but every dwelling has some damage.

	There is plenty of work to go around. In an economy where laborers earn
about $2 a day for cutting watermelons and picking beans and corn,
guaranteed rations are essential if one is to assemble a labor force.

	"We can't just give the food away," said Alvarenga, who is opposed to
creating dependency. Instead, the Reformed church here is beginning to
outline what it calls a "Food-for-Work Program" as a way of hastening the
recovery while preparing local people to assume leadership roles.

	Alvarenga said he is sure that the Reformed church will put its dollars
first into areas where the church already has a presence, like Santa Esteban
Catarina.

	Barnhardt, who has done this kind of work for three years, told the
Presbyterian News Service that, because the international response has been
tepid, El Salvadoran Christians need to keep reminding their partner
churches about the enormity of the crisis.

	"Even though El Salvador has fallen out of the headlines, the needs are
overwhelming, and reconstruction has only just begun," Barnhart said, noting
that AFALIT is only now launching its first reconstruction project.

	The poignancy of the crisis wasn't lost on 21-year-old Maritza Flores of
Santa Esteban, who has grown up in the midst of grinding poverty. Early in
Holy Week, it wasn't hard for her to link the suffering of Jesus with the
suffering she sees all around her - or with the stubborn hope of a
resurrection.

	"We're living a Calvary here, too," she said. "When we celebrate this Holy
Week, the Calvary of Jesus reflects our own Calvary. ... This is not just
(about) the suffering of Him, but us, too. And when we celebrate Jesus'
suffering, it seems (we can let) go of our own suffering. It helps to free
us a bit from this hard life."

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