U.S. Aid Cuts Drying Up Water Projects : Guatemala: Washington lawmakers have slashed funding for foreign countries. Rural villages, in particular, are hard-hit.

Undeterred by heavy rains, Margarito Tzay Aju and his neighbors work tirelessly to install the mountain community’s shiny green pump, which will provide 245 families with clean running water.

The project in this Cachikel Indian village is among the last in the area that will receive aid money from the United States. Money for water programs in Guatemala was slashed this year and the U.S. Congress is making more cuts in foreign aid spending for next year.

“We have been trying for the last five years to get running water for our families, but no one would help us,” said Tzay Aju, head of the village’s development committee. “We are poor and do not have the means to pay for running water. Our government doesn’t have the money either, so we had to ask foreigners for help.”

Now, with the new pump, “Maybe the girls will even be able to go to school, because they won’t have to spend their time carrying water,” Tzay Aju said.

Forty-five percent of rural Guatemalans have no clean running water, and hopes of getting it are vanishing with the cuts in U.S. aid.

Guatemala has been ravaged by civil war for 36 years, and the government stresses military spending at the expense of social services.

The government lacks money to pay for water projects like the one at Xeatzan Bajo, much less for many health, education and job programs for hundreds of poor villages stretching across remote jungles and highlands.

More than 60% of Guatemala’s 10 million people are Indians, and 80% live in poverty. In 1994, 7% of the children under age 5 died in Guatemala--about one-fourth from ailments related to dirty water.

Budget-cutters in Congress find foreign aid “an easy target because it has no constituency,” said Jay Jackson, director of operations in Guatemala for the humanitarian group CARE.

CARE, which receives half its $9-million Guatemala budget from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has been working two years in Xeatzan Bajo, about 50 miles west of Guatemala City.

Villagers provide free labor and 30% of the cost of local projects. CARE is paying 45% and AID the remaining 25% of the $50,000 bill.

For Cecilia Espetan Cachikel, mother of two, clean water piped to her one-room adobe home will save hours of trudging up and down the mountainside.

The World Health Organization says people need at least 20 quarts of water a day. The village’s project will provide each villager with about 80 quarts daily.

Espetan, who carries her year-old son wrapped tightly in a colorful hand-woven cloth on her back, dips and rises with other women as they wash laundry by hand at the community water tank. They take care not to stir up the sludge on the bottom.

“It will be great to turn on a tap at home and have water come out. It will save me so much time that I will be able to dedicate to the house and the kids,” Espetan said.

“I won’t even have to worry about boiling the water . . . and I will be able to save on wood. Maybe I will plant a flower garden in front of the house.”

Over the last two years, CARE has helped finance 40 water projects in Guatemala, using private donations and European and U.S. aid. Then, last April, U.S. officials told CARE that funds were available only to complete projects already under way for another year.

“National governments in Central America do not have a good record on providing water in rural areas,” said Earl Wall, a CARE project coordinator. “I think cuts will have a dramatic effect because the U.S. has been a world leader in water projects in Latin America. A lot of development will be left hanging.”