GUATEMALA: President Oscar Berger and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu visit site of mudslide in village of Panabaj caused by Hurricane Stan that left 1,400 dead

Record ID: 859235

  • Title: GUATEMALA: President Oscar Berger and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu visit site of mudslide in village of Panabaj caused by Hurricane Stan that left 1,400 dead
  • Date: 12th October 2005
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) 1992 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER RIGOBERTA MENCHU SAYING: "We have felt this with much pain and especially the Mayan communities that have areas we still have not been able to get to. In San Marcos there are still communities that have not been able to remove the remains of even one loved one. It is a national pain."
  • Embargoed: 27th October 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Guatemala
  • City:
  • Country: Guatemala
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVAKRXKAUUQEF5FFLKLEJZL0XLW
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Guatemalan President Oscar Berger flew on Tuesday (October 11, 2005) to the village of Panabaj where up to 1,400 people died in the biggest single tragedy caused caused by hurricane Stan in that country.
    Accompanied by Indian rights activist and Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, who has joined his conservative government, Berger promised to build temporary shelters for the homeless and land for them to resettle on.
    "We are going to begin the process of reconstruction in which Santiago Atitlan plays a very important part. It is one of the country's hardest hit municipalities by this devastating storm, Stan, but we are together and together we will move forward with more will than never before," he said to the thousands of locals who turned out to see him.
    Menchu held a paper mask over her mouth against the stench, and wept as she picked her way through the rubble and remains of homes at the edge of the devastated village.
    "We have felt this with much pain and especially the Mayan communities that have areas we still have not been able to get to...It is a national pain," she said.
    Once the region's dominant culture, Maya Indians fell under Spanish rule around 500 years ago and have remained isolated and impoverished ever since, even though they still make up 60 percent of Guatemala's population.
    During a 36-year war that ended only in 1996, Mayans bore the brunt of brutal army-led campaigns that razed entire villages. An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the war, most of them Indians.
    Mayan villages have the highest levels of malnutrition, illiteracy and poverty, and the lowest levels of government spending on health, education and infrastructure.
    They are isolated and discriminated against, often seen as little more than house-servants to the country's non-Indians.
    When natural disasters hit, they invariably do most damage to Mayan areas where people settle in flimsy homes by rivers and on mountain slopes.
    When Stan's rains battered the country, rescue teams and supplies of food and medicines took days to arrive.
    It was a similar story in other villages hit by mudslides across Guatemala. The official death toll of rains from Hurricane Stan sits at 652 and 398 disappeared but emergency workers say the real number is in the range of 2,000.
    More than 100 others were killed in neighbouring countries and tens of thousands lost their homes across Central America and southern Mexico.
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