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Devastation, under the radar

Hurricane Stan didn't get the attention of other natural disasters last fall, but it left a Guatemalan village and its proud Mayan culture in ruins.

By TAMARA LUSH
Published January 23, 2006

	[STR/AFP/Getty Images]
	Two residents of Panabaj, Guatemala, bring flowers on All Saints' Day, Nov. 1, to the place where their relatives were buried alive below tons of mud after a cave-in caused by the rains of Hurricane Stan. An estimated 600 to 1,400 people died in the avalanche of water, earth and rocks.
	[Times photo: Tamara Lush]
	The hospitalito, or little hospital, in Panabaj was destroyed in the October landslide. The hospital had been open for only six months.
	[Times photo: Tamara Lush]
	Survivors of the October landslide in Panabaj, Guatemala, live in a city of nylon tents about a five-minute walk from where hundreds are buried under 8 feet of mud. Efforts are under way to build concrete homes.

SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala - The tourists come by boat and stay only a few hours, carrying wads of quetzales in their hidden money belts and the determination to find the perfect, hand-woven Mayan blanket as a souvenir.

Before the tourists sprint toward the craft market, they look back, toward the boat, at the dramatic view. It's difficult not to: Santiago is nestled on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a giant, shimmering blue pool that is surrounded by hulking, dormant volcanoes.

Here's what the tourists don't see: the nearby village of Panabaj.

They don't see the muddy handprints on the stucco wall of the courthouse.

They don't see the memorials, the dirty milk jug filled with wilted flowers, the weathered white cross.

They don't see the heavy, brown earth that covers as many as 1,000 men, women and children, all buried in what was once the middle of town.

They were buried alive, the victims of an avalanche of water and earth and stones, triggered by Hurricane Stan, that roared down the volcano onto this wide, flat plain.

This happened only three months ago. It's easy to understand why the world doesn't remember the hurricane and what happened in Panabaj. Hurricane Stan hit Central America just weeks after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast of the the United States, and just a few days before the devastating earthquake in Pakistan.

But for the people of Panabaj - Mayan Indians who speak a disappearing indigenous language, whose culture was trampled during a long civil war - being forgotten is something of a way of life.

* * *

Until 1990, Panabaj was just one of many small villages tucked in the western highlands of Guatemala, on the shores of Lake Atitlan.

For centuries, the T'zutjil Mayans who lived in Panabaj (pronounced Pah-nah-bah) carried on as they had since the Spanish conquest of Central America.

Most worked on coffee plantations, managing to exist without learning Spanish or wearing Western-style clothing. Most wore traditional, patterned clothing, made from hand-woven fabric.

Although other communities around the lake embraced tourism, Panabaj was mostly overlooked, isolated by its geography and its poverty.

But it wasn't so isolated it didn't suffer during the civil war between leftist guerrilla groups and the right-wing government. More than 200,000 people, many of them Mayan, were either killed or "disappeared" during the war.

"Loved ones were taken away during the middle of the night," said Anita Isaacs, a Haverford (Pa.) College professor who has studied the widows and children of Panabaj's war victims for more than a decade.

On Dec.2, 1990, dozens of civilians protested at a military base in Panabaj; soldiers opened fire, killing 13. The people of Panabaj and neighboring Santiago expelled the military soon after the massacre, and the village became a symbol for war resistance.

In the 10 years since the end of the war, things were looking up for Panabaj. Tourists were starting to visit. The school had 26 computers and purified drinking water. In April 2005, local and international doctors opened a new hospital - the only one in the region.

Things were looking up.

Then it started to rain.

* * *

It started on Oct.2 and kept on for days.

Early on Oct.5, Jorge Mario Geronimo Lopez got word that there might be flooding, so he took his wife and five children to safety in a drier part of the village. Others didn't make the same choice; many didn't want to leave their one-room, corrugated tin-roof shacks for fear that thieves would steal what little they owned.

Lopez remembers running toward the center of town. He remembers the noise that roared down the volcano, like a fleet of tractor-trailers racing at full speed.

"BOOM, BOOM, BOOM," he said.

Lopez is the security guard for the courthouse in Panabaj. The courthouse and the government building were the only two-story buildings in town, and Lopez knew that he would find people who needed help if he went there.

The watery mud was 3 feet high and sliding down the side of the volcano. Lopez saw the body of a toddler slip past him. Those who died probably never knew what happened - many of the residents had no radios or televisions, no electricity.

Lopez heard people screaming and crying, half-running, half-swimming into the government buildings. "Thank God these buildings were here," said Lopez. "If these buildings hadn't been here, everyone would have died."

Three or four days after the avalanche, the magnitude of the destruction sank in.

The mud was 20 feet thick in some places, and a half-mile wide.

Only 80 bodies were recovered. (Death estimates range from 600 to 1,400, and hundreds are missing).

At least 1,000 others lost their homes; it's difficult to say how many people lived in Panabaj because there is no official census, but residents say about 3,000 lived there before the avalanche.

The hospital, open only six months, was half submerged. The school building was still standing, but thieves stole the computers.

"So much had gone into the community and so much was lost," said Susan Gunn-Glanville, the American owner of a nearby hotel.

The cause of the avalanche wasn't exactly due to the hurricane - Panabaj is in the middle of the country, surrounded by mountains, so the path of Stan never actually crossed the village - only strong rain bands.

The flooding had more to do with the fact that for years, locals had deforested the verdant volcano slopes so they would have firewood for cooking. Villagers think otherwise.

"The will of God," Lopez says, firmly. "We have not been good to God in Panabaj."

* * *

In the days after the avalanche, Guatemalan troops offered to help the people of Panabaj.

Their answer: no.

"The people don't want soldiers to come in here. They won't accept it," Panabaj Mayor Diego Esquina told reporters.

But the government also had a mandate: The town would be declared a cemetery.

The people of Panabaj wanted the bodies to be dug up; in the Mayan culture, people must be buried 24 hours after death. The government cited cost and health reasons for not unearthing the mass grave.

Many people in Panabaj were offended. Isaacs said that the Mayans wanted to perform traditional funeral rituals and grant their family members a peaceful burial.

"In the Mayan culture, it's important to be able to visit with the dead," said Isaacs. "And it's important that the dead lie comfortably."

* * *

The hundreds of survivors - the ones who haven't gone to another part of the country to look for work - live in a tent city less than a mile from the giant cemetery.

The nylon tents, provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are about as big as an American garden shed. They are meant to house five people. Pit toilets are on one side, away from the tents; communal washing and cooking areas are in the middle of the complex. They draw water from giant blue plastic barrels.

People are settling into their new homes reluctantly. Government officials worry that the people of Panabaj will make this a permanent settlement - some have already planted cornstalks and others have set up small stores - and efforts are under way to build concrete homes.

What is striking in the tent city is how few people wear the traditional, colorful Mayan clothing. The women wear western T-shirts and skirts, and men wear jeans. They received the clothes in aid shipments and from donations from local Westerners.

This concerns many Mayan activists.

"Losing the traditional type of dress means that the external identity of the village is at risk," said Jorge Morales Toj, an indigenous rights leader in Guatemala.

Toj explains that folks in Panabaj lost everything, and can't afford the textiles - or the looms, or the thread - to make the clothing.

These things are too expensive for the poor of Panabaj, yet a few miles away, tourists visit the markets of Santiago and buy yards of the colorful fabric, a perfect souvenir of a vacation in Guatemala.

--Tamara Lush can be reached at lush@sptimes.com or 727 893-8612.

Ways to help the victims

www.hurricaneaction.org: Led by executives from three companies -- Pepsi, SunTrust Bank and Deere & Co. -- this group is raising money in an attempt to help victims of Hurricane Stan in Central America and Mexico. For more information, call toll-free 1-800-638-8079.

www.afsc.org/hurricane/stan.php: This is the Web site for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that promotes peace, justice and aid to people around the world. For more information, call toll-free 1-888-588-2372.

www.puebloapueblo.org: This group of doctors and volunteers from Guatemala and around the world provide medical services for the people of Panabaj. Before the landslide, it ran the town's only hospital. The group is raising money to find new land and rebuild the hospital. It is also looking for volunteers. For more information, call (202) 302-0622.

[Last modified January 23, 2006, 14:09:55]