‘God Must Be Angry’ : Homeless Feel Ire Rising in Quake’s Wake

Not long after Mexico City’s devastating earthquake on Sept. 19, residents of a vast complex of apartment buildings in the Tlatelolco district complained lustily that government inspectors had declared their damaged buildings safe and ready to be reinhabited. A whitewash, the residents called the inspection.

This week, another group of official inspectors appeared, condemned several of the buildings and ordered them demolished.

But then the residents, confronted suddenly with the loss of their homes, did an about-face. Characterizing the inspection as incomplete, they filed a court injunction to block demolition.

Three weeks after the earthquake and a violent aftershock the following day heavily damaged parts of central Mexico City, conflicts between the government and suspicious victims of the quake are continuing to flare.

The government’s slow pace of finding housing for the homeless, of certifying buildings as either safe or uninhabitable and of restoring damaged services to millions of residents is increasing tensions in neighborhoods affected by the temblor.

And much of the euphoric good will toward government and neighbors that immediately followed the quake has given way to frustration as part of the city has returned to normal while the badly damaged sections are mired in uncertainty.

Even the weather conspired to aggravate the already difficult situation: A hailstorm knocked down makeshift street shelters for the homeless.

Problems After Problems

“God must be angry,” said Benigna Gonzalez, a displaced resident of downtown’s First Square neighborhood. “Problems are following problems.”

The national government has responded by institutionalizing what originally was an ad hoc effort to get the city back on its feet. President Miguel de la Madrid has formally established six committees to organize housing, health and other relief programs.

But he cautioned Mexicans not to expect the government to solve all the problems arising from the quake.

“The enormous and complex consequences of the earthquake cannot be confronted by the government alone,” he said. “The activities taken during the emergency showed our capacity for mobilization and vitality and our spirit of solidarity. In the reconstruction, we must maintain this momentum.”

Figures Still Sketchy

The true magnitude of leftover problems is difficult to measure, in no small part because the government has stopped issuing estimates of destruction or even numbers of deaths in Mexico City from the quake.

A government report released this week listed the dead from Pacific Coast states affected by the quake--a total of 47--but provided no figures for Mexico City, where police figures more than a week ago put the number of dead at 7,000.

A few days after the earthquake, city officials had estimated the number of homeless at 31,000. But since then, more than that number have been evacuated from two government housing projects alone--in the Tlatelolco and Juarez neighborhoods.

In any case, it is clear that there is not enough safe housing in the city to cope with the numbers of displaced. Residents of damaged neighborhoods hold almost daily demonstrations to vent their anger at the seeming lack of action.

Late Friday, Mexico City Mayor Ramon Aguirre announced that the government was going to expropriate about 7,000 buildings damaged by the earthquake, clear the lots where they stood and build public housing. The decision makes about 600 acres in various areas near downtown available for new homes, Mexico City newspapers reported.

At Tlatelolco, a 1960s project just northeast of downtown Mexico City, residents have formed at least four self-help associations to battle government plans to level 23 buildings. On the day of the quake, two-thirds of the vast Nuevo Leon apartment building at Tlatelolco collapsed, killing hundreds of residents.

Buildings Tilting

Several other buildings were damaged and some are tilting precariously.

“We don’t want to move into buildings that are unsafe,” Cuauhtemoc Abarca, a member of one of the residents’ associations, said. “But the inspectors are the same ones who built the apartments. How do we know they just don’t want to clear us out and sell the land?”

The government Urban Development Council has recommended that, because earthquake insurance will not cover the replacement cost of their apartments, the displaced at Tlatelolco should plan to take out loans to buy new housing. “The government is not in any condition to give away housing,” a spokesman for the department said.

Meanwhile, at the Multifamiliar Juarez apartment complex, residents called a press conference to demand that 650 apartments be immediately made available to the homeless. “And we want them here, in the capital,” said community representative Israel Chinas.

Want to Stay in Capital

Many residents of the Juarez neighborhood oppose plans to send them to available housing in provinces adjoining Mexico City.

The Juarez complex was built in the 1950s and is managed by the Mexican Social Security Institute, a government welfare agency. It housed between 15,000 and 20,000 residents, many of them present and former Social Security employees.

Homeless people in the Juarez complex complained that they have seen little of the tons of aid donated by foreign countries for Mexico’s relief effort.

Presidential spokesman Manuel Alonso responded by showing a reporter computerized lists of goods that have arrived from abroad--everything from clothes to water bottles--to emphasize the government’s inventory control. “The problem is that we have too much of some things, like clothes and plasma,” Alonso said. “Naturally, we are not just handing everything out.”

But residents are suspicious of government decisions. Parents in parts of Cuauhtemoc Borough are refusing to send their children to school because they believe inspectors took only a cursory look at the damaged buildings before approving them for use.

Residents Suspicious

Residents of Tepito neighborhood, a part of the city populated in part by sellers of contraband goods, suspect that the quick condemnation of their homes is part of a government plan to break up the neighborhood. Newly formed neighborhood associations in Tepito have held several protest marches demanding resources to rebuild their homes at the same locations.

Conflicting reports on the restoration of water services to damaged neighborhoods have also contributed to the uncertainty. Some government officials have predicted the restoration of water service in days; others say it will take months.

Inspectors are finding new leaks in city pipes almost daily. Residents of the populous Carranza and Cuauhtemoc boroughs line up at government-supplied tank trucks to obtain water and dip buckets into manholes to collect leaking and contaminated water.

The clearing of rubble from the sites of most major structures that were destroyed has proceeded rapidly, but many private owners of downed buildings are apparently delaying the clean-up of their properties. The Roma neighborhood, for example, where many private apartments were destroyed, is virtually untouched by bulldozers.

In other places, the use of hand labor makes progress slow. One three-story building that pancaked downtown is being removed entirely through the use of picks and shovels, a process that could take months.