Rebuilding Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Mitch

Mary McCann Sanchez is co-representative, along with her husband José Trinidad Sánchez, of the AFSC in Central America. Based in Honduras, she has worked in support and advocacy efforts with human rights and women's organizations, and most recently in economic justice efforts.

The statistics begin to shift a bit, some weeks after Hurricane Mitch devastated parts of Honduras and its neighboring countries. As rescue missions continue and the debris of this 'Category Five' hurricane is cleared, Honduras, a small country approximately the size of Tennessee, presents an alarming dossier of destruction-7079 confirmed deaths and 9,014 missing, with the expectation that the number of confirmed deaths will increase. Family and relatives of those who have not appeared conduct journeys to the affected areas throughout the country and conduct radio searches for their loved ones. The search is not easy-it is estimated that 20% of the Honduran population had to flee their homes initially during the flooding, with at least 80,000 homes now completely lost and hundreds of thousands of others damaged. Entire communities of people live in makeshift shelters in schools, churches, and warehouses, with relatives or friends, or simply in the rubble.

New categories appear daily. There is increase in disease, particularly skin disease, conjunctivitis, malaria, and dengue. Damages to the national industry have now been assessed, with the Sustainable Development Network of the United Nations Development Program reporting losses of $200 million to agroindustry, $800 million to the banana plantations, $150 million to the shrimp industry, and a continuing litany of numbers that defy the imagination.

Of course, the numbers are only partial representations of the human condition. For those of us who live and work in Honduras, the impact of Mitch is felt not only because of its magnitude, but with each face that forms part of the statistics: Angela who drowned just outside of Tegucigalpa; Maria Guadalupe who lost her home and the family store when the river rose across the plains of the palm plantations; Feliciano who evacuated his family just before the walls of their adobe home in a mountain village crashed in under the weight of the rain; Arturo whose loan to his nephew to start up a business will never be recovered; Blanca whose upstairs law office became her family home and a shelter for others in the wake of the storm; Manuel whose sleep is interrupted nightly with visions of a family member being carried away in the floodwaters; Cristina and son Juan Carlos whose whereabouts we still hope to confirm.

Nonetheless, there are figures which substantiate hope. Thousands of students and teachers offer volunteer service across the country in clean-up campaigns, in assistance to the new refugee population, in emergency food packaging and delivery. Hundreds of grassroots campaigns within Honduras and throughout the world raise emergency assistance. Governments continue to respond with financial and technical assistance. The crucial issue of debt relief has finally taken center stage.

Recovery and rebuilding, however, depend on looking back at what existed in Central America before the turning point presented by Mitch in October 1998. In different degrees, the four countries most affected by the hurricane-Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador-have experienced other crises of long duration. Endemic poverty, intense political polarization, unequal distribution of natural resources and wealth, violation of human rights, and civil war are noted parts of the history of the isthmus.

The Honduran economy has traditionally been based on the exportation of raw materials, particularly via mining, and agricultural products such as bananas, palm oil, coffee, lumber, and most recently shrimp. Much of the agroexport and mining has been in the hands of transnational corporations. The United States used Honduras as part of its counterinsurgency policy in Central America in the 1980s and built a military base which is still under US control. In the 1990s Honduras experienced serious economic setbacks, in part due to its underdeveloped national industry, setbacks in land reform, and the heavy burden of the debt. Following the trend throughout Central America and the Caribbean, Honduras competes with its neighboring countries for unemployment reduction via the proliferation of maquilas-highly controversial, very-low-wage assembly plants brought in and managed with foreign capital.

Food security has also been a major issue, and the destruction of thousands of acres of small scale farms presents an even more difficult panorama for that sector of society and for the country as a whole. Internal emigration due to problems with land tenure, insufficient governmental attention to the production of basic grains, and rural unemployment have contributed to the rapid growth of rings of poverty around the capital and other major cities.

Many would argue that health and housing are life and death issues in Central America. In a recent report, the Catholic Church of Honduras notes that there was a housing deficit of some 700,000 homes before the hurricane and that only one third of the houses in the country could be classified as adequate. The precarious location of many of the homes which were lost in Mitch-on hillsides and next to rivers-give testimony to the problems of land tenure, the lack of water systems, and public services that did not serve the public as a whole.

Hurricane Mitch brings to the forefront the need for new relationships among people and for a new relationship with nature. As compelling as the storm losses are, the houses and families which remain exist at the edge, quite literally at the brink, of another tragedy. The imperative that the Honduran people and the government of Honduras face is a recovery that encompasses a new future. Some call this a Kairos moment-traditionally a sacred time, the converging of many forces and opportunities-and a window for the emergence of something far better.

In AFSC's work in Honduras with associations of small-scale rural producers, women's organizations, and those who struggle for respect for human rights at different levels, we have been able to participate in a complex network of human and community relationships which operate on a daily basis in creative ways. The vision is to establish a just order; the objectives are specific: access to land; access to markets; equal opportunities for public services; an end to domestic violence; respect for human rights. As in the case of community building throughout the world, the processes are slow, requiring a considerable amount of faith in one's neighbor and a special combination of righteous indignation and patience.

Hurricane Mitch has not destroyed the social organization of Honduras nor of its neighboring countries. On the contrary, community-based organizations and national networks within civil society acted quickly during the emergency and are anxious to reactivate the economy, to rebuild. The extent to which they are successful-or not-will be manifest in the medium and long-term in terms of the traditional economic trends and indicators, such as public security at home and emigration to the North.

A major challenge in all of this is the need for coordinated action and for a national dialogue which had not been achieved prior to Mitch. The emergency measures taken by the Honduran government when the capital city was at its highest point of suffering have been applauded by many: price controls which prevented speculating on urgent food items; a curfew which kept city streets a bit safer; limitations of the use of vehicles so that precious fuel could be conserved until the lines of communication and transportation were re-established. Yet the challenge to that same government is to establish fairness in the economy, ensure public security, and be a responsible steward of natural and human resources on a permanent basis. Indifference to the suffering caused by Mitch is unthinkable; indifference to the injustices prior to Mitch must also be considered unacceptable.

The task goes beyond the newly proposed Ministry of Reconstruction and indeed beyond government itself. Private enterprise is responsible for reviewing investment practice and labor relations and for opening spaces for the vast majority of the population which lives in poverty. Foreign investors, such as the maquila, must take a good look at the housing their employees can afford on a salary of $90 per month and rethink their margin of profit. International relief and development agencies and churches need to assess the ways in which they relate to the poor of Honduras so that patterns of dependency are not fostered. Popular organizations and community-based organizations must implement leadership styles and plans of actions which promote greater grassroots participation. Aid, both to governments and to civil society, should be carefully monitored to ensure that both emergency and recovery relief is well placed. There must be pressure for education reform as Honduras badly needs more qualified professionals with high standards and a basic respect for human life.

If these new relationships could be forged, we would also see a new relationship with nature itself. The tropics will always be the tropics and hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes will not cease to exist. Nonetheless, there are ways to cherish the environment and to protect water and forest resources with stricter enforcement of environmental standards. Alarming health situations-five cases of leptospirosis in La Lima and highly contaminated stagnated waters in the Choluteca River in downtown Tegucigalpa-are urgent reminders that what is toxic to nature is also dangerous for us.

While the contamination is to some extent storm-related, as Mitch sucked organic and inorganic debris into the many rivers of Honduras, there has been longstanding environmental abuse. The estimated ten million dollars needed to clean the Choluteca River is a valid recovery expense but will only be a temporary measure without new standards of environmental safeguarding and greater sanctions for toxic dumping and industial wastes. At the same time, government and industry must provide alternatives for those who have used the river to wash clothes and satisfy basic needs. Long-term environmental recovery requires that the government provide housing and sanitation.

The constant reminders of the indigenous peoples and environmentalists of Central America throughout the 1990s regarding protection of the land, water, and air and specific struggles to protect the 'biosphere' of the Mosquitia and the forests throughout each country all reflect the wisdom of centuries and must be heard. As Central America seeks to reactivate its economy, it is essential that agrobusiness leave behind practices of slash-and-burn clearing, the overuse of chemical fertilizers, cattle grazing on fertile lands, and depletion of soil nutrients. Likewise, industry must control toxic waste. Exceptions cannot be made for foreign investors; the equilibrium between nature and humanity is essential.

The ever famous 'globalization' presents a myth of endless possibilities, of communication opportunities, of the 'greatest of ease' in making links across the planet. Mitch pulls the blinders away, exposing the simple fact that the 'economic boom' which Central Americans hear discussed in the international media has little to do with their lives. To the contrary, the images of Nicaragua and Honduras, shown repeatedly during the last week of October and the first week of November throughout the world, convey what many economic analysts on this end have been saying for years, that there are winners and losers in the globalized economy.

Nonetheless, those of us who live in Central America and who on a daily basis live the consequences of Mitch have experienced a renewed sense of human solidarity, made possible by technological links, but even more so by the human heart. It has been said that true hope emerges in the most dire of circumstances, defying physical limitations and transforming even the deepest loss. The appreciation of life itself, emanating so strongly from within Central America in this period of emergency and recovery and conveyed so readily from across the world, renews our hope that with continued commitment and well conceived action, Honduras and the rest of Central America will more than see through this storm.