Placido Domingo Shakes Up Earthquake Relief : Fund-Raising Opera Star Committed to ‘Real Help’ for Mexico City’s Homeless

So that his fabled voice could be heard by an audience of one, tenor Placido Domingo jetted here, again, for a few hours.

He flew from Los Angeles last Thursday not to sing, but to speak with Gabino Fraga, Mexico’s sub-secretary of housing, and to prod him to do more for the tens of thousands of people who remain homeless or inadequately housed nearly a year after the devastating Mexico City earthquake.

Thousands of people in this city of 18 million now share housing, while others live in rows of tiny corrugated steel sheds, erected with government help. The working poor who live in the one-room sheds, which have neither windows nor insulation, swelter in summer and shiver in winter, enduring an almost daily cacophony from rain and hail beating on the metal roofs.

The Mexican government estimates that 10,000 people died as a result of the quake, which measured 8.1 on the Richter scale, although people on the streets say they believe two or three times that many people lost their lives.

Thousands still suffer from disabling or disfiguring injuries, according to Dr. Rosamaria Durazo, a Mexican national who teaches anesthesiology at the UCLA School of Medicine and volunteers at Mexico City General Hospital.

Lack of Equipment

She said many people with disabilities or disfigurements are awaiting restorative surgery not because there aren’t enough physicians, but because of the lack of equipment, pharmaceuticals and supplies such as sutures.

Part of the 2,200-bed hospital complex, Latin America’s largest, collapsed in the quake and 30 of 40 operating rooms remain unusable, she said. About 60 physicians died when the residents’ dorm, where Durazo lived for three years, fell.

Two out of three collapsed buildings here belonged to the government. Architects and engineers have charged that contractors cheated in the construction of public buildings and that building codes are laxly enforced.

But the scandal of corrupt construction quickly faded here, as did the initial flood of donations from Americans and others around the world moved to alleviate the anguish caused when Mother Earth suddenly rolled over deep beneath her soil covers at 7:18 on the morning of Sept. 19, 1985.

Had the earth moved two hours later, when the government buildings would have been filled with bureaucrats and supplicants, the death toll would have run into the hundreds of thousands, relief experts say.

Domingo’s Mexican Ties

Two days after the quake, Domingo flew here from Chicago to survey the damage. He was born in Spain but identifies closely with Mexico City, where his mother and father live and where an uncle, an aunt and two cousins died in the quake.

“When I went myself to see the terrible destruction I knew that I must do everything that I could,” the opera star explained Thursday on board an Occidental Petroleum corporate jet en route to Mexico City.

Occidental Chairman Armand Hammer has made his company’s jets available seven times in the last year to deliver medical supplies and ferry volunteers from California to Mexico City. On Thursday, the jet was carrying $150,000 worth of donated medical supplies collected by Operation California, a relief organization founded seven years ago.

The supplies went to Mexico City General Hospital and to Clinica Pintores, a 12-foot-square physicians’ office near the flea market in Tepito. The free clinic, its walls sheets of heavy plastic, is located inside a cinder-block building where squatters live separated by partitions and where as many as 13 people crowd into 120 square feet.

Children’s Afflictions

One of four children seen at the clinic suffers from an intestinal infection and one in seven has scabies, a contagious skin disease that has spread due to overcrowding and lack of bathing facilities, according to volunteer administrator Judy Townsend, a Panamanian national.

The clinic’s cash budget is only $200 per month, so supplies must be replenished by supporters, such as Operation California.

The long-term consequences of the quake are what concern Domingo.

“I realized after I arrived last September that it is important when you help somebody that it be not just for two or three days, but make sure it is real help,” Domingo said, glancing out one of the jet’s windows as the Gulf of California was fast disappearing into the Pacific.

“I cannot help everyone,” Domingo said, adding that he realized he could raise money to help a small group of people in Mexico City. One of his major projects here is helping 350 poor families, picked by his mother and others, to get new housing.

Domingo said he had hoped to raise $4 million, but said so far the net total is $1.25 million.

On Tuesday night, Domingo, Frank Sinatra, John Denver and Julie Andrews will sing at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles to raise money for Operation California’s Mexican relief efforts.

With tickets priced from $25 to $250 (the top-priced tickets include a party with the singers), a sell-out concert would gross $400,000 and net about $250,000, according to Operation California founder Richard Walden, who accompanied Domingo to Mexico City.

Domingo said he also decided to get involved in dispersing the money raised from benefit concerts for the quake victims.

“Before this, I used to just trust that when I gave a benefit concert the money would be well used,” he said. “But with the earthquake, I personally am watching where the money is spent.”

Domingo said Operation California’s Walden and actress Valerie Wildman, a consultant to the relief agency, have taught him that with attentive stewardship a little cash can be leveraged into a lot of results.

Leverage was the subject of Domingo’s chat with Fraga, the Mexican housing sub-secretary. They met in the hills above Mexico City, in the marble-floored lobby of the University of Anahuac, a private school with a large social services department.

Surrounded by an informative display about how the university’s students had abandoned classes for two weeks to help the quake victims, making 2,000 trips per day in vans and cars loaded with meals for the survivors, Domingo asked about the lack of new housing for the working poor and the destitute.

Most of Mexico’s social programs are limited to those who earn salaries, excluding many workers who are self-employed or work in unsalaried jobs.

Fraga talked about how costly housing is, about how the collapse of the world oil market has devastated Mexico’s economy, constraining the government’s efforts.

Domingo countered that with a bit of entrepreneurial initiative the government could get more mileage from its pesos. For example, he suggested guaranteeing contractors that, if they ordered extra supplies to get volume discounts, the government would buy the extra supplies in return for getting the entire discount.

He talked about hiring equipment during slack times and about teaching people how to do some of the construction themselves to reduce labor costs.

“I will come again, in a few weeks,” Domingo vowed.