[NYTr] 'Poorer than we thought'; Mexican floods bare economic divide Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 09:36:58 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * 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. * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================