Hungry Storm Victims Feel Left Out

Despite warehouses of donated food that are being restocked daily, many Central American victims of tropical storm Mitch say they’re afraid that their families will go hungry this Christmas.

“We will have no gifts, no Santa Claus and no nacatamales,” a traditional holiday dish, said Angela Garcia, a 37-year-old mother of three, as she stood recently at the side of a cliff created when her Tegucigalpa neighborhood slid into the Choluteca River. “What kind of a Christmas will this be for my children?”

In the wake of the October storm, the Honduran and Nicaraguan governments turned over food distribution to churches to avoid accusations that donations would be stolen, charges that historically follow aid distribution in Central American disasters.

But because churches don’t have warehouses to store the goods, the depots are being run by a government reconstruction committee in Nicaragua and an emergency committee in Honduras that is, in effect, administered by the armed forces--leading to accusations of corruption when donated goods do not reach victims. To make matters worse, the shipments have been plagued by logistics problems and a lack of foodstuffs, the most desperately needed aid.

Storm victims living in shelters said food distribution is dependable and sufficient. But people outside the shelters--both city dwellers who want to guard building materials they have salvaged from their houses and those living in remote areas--say they are being overlooked.

Honduran emergency officials say they simply cannot reach people who live in rural areas where the few roads were destroyed by the storm.

But when the U.S. military offered to fly food into one such remote region, the Patuca River basin in eastern Honduras, emergency officials sent truckloads of unneeded distilled water and clothes rather than the basic foodstuffs the Americans had requested.

With each round-trip flight to the river communities costing $5,000, “it is too expensive to send clothing and water,” said U.S. Army Maj. Jose Saucedo, the officer coordinating the loading of the helicopters. “We have more clothing than food.”

Despite urgent requests to the Honduran army officers sending the supplies, the trucks arriving at the makeshift airstrip here in El Aguacate in northeastern Honduras continued to bring the unwanted goods and not enough food. One truck driver said he had brought a load of rice from the port to army warehouses and that the rice was unloaded and replaced with bottles of water and bags of clothing for shipment here.

The Americans have given up on getting the tents that they had requested for river residents left without homes.

Donated tents were distributed to storm victims in southern Honduras, said Honduran army Capt. Osmel Banegas, who was commanding the soldiers sent to guard the donations here.

“They have also been used when needed, as they are here,” he added, gesturing toward the eight bright purple tents that housed the soldier-guards.

“The Honduran government has phenomenal logistical challenges in bringing food, water and clothing overland,” Charles Cragin, an official with the U.S. Defense Department, said during a visit to this airstrip.

Referring to the lack of food shipments, Cragin added: “That happens in any sort of emergency relief action. There are a lot of caring people who are not necessarily trained for this.”

The U.S. soldiers faced with disappointed, hungry people were less sanguine. The Honduran emergency committee “wants to get rid of clothes,” a frustrated Saucedo concluded.

And the food that did arrive was only marginally useful for peasants accustomed to a diet of beans and rice cooked in lard. Cans of ravioli, peas and New England clam chowder were stacked on tarps, ready for loading in helicopters.

Flood victims unloading the cans from the helicopters looked at the labels with curiosity and suspicion.

From Honduras’ emergency committee, church groups administering food distributions at shelters have received such inappropriate food as cake mixes--for people who do not have ovens, volunteers said. But in the cities, churches have been able to keep up a steady flow of useful provisions. People living in church-administered shelters said they have plenty of food.

But victims such as Garcia, who is camping out with her children in back of a friend’s shanty in order to keep an eye on the salvaged materials she is not allowed to store in a shelter, say they have not received any official donations. They depend on the few people who have seen their plight and brought them woolen shirts and some rice.

Similarly, residents of Nueva Esperanza, a new neighborhood created for flood victims in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, said earlier this month that the only food they had received came directly from international donors who appeared in the neighborhood with their gifts.

Esperanza Bermudez, president of the Nicaraguan Red Cross, said his agency had directed the donors to Nueva Esperanza. “The victims are never going to get as much as they really need because their needs are so great,” she said.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Managua, which is responsible for distributing donations, said residents of Nueva Esperanza, as well as people who have not left their flooded communities on the northern side of Lake Managua--across from the capital--will begin receiving regularly scheduled donations of food this week, in time for Christmas.

Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo obtained the World Food Program’s promise of a six-month supply of corn, soy, rice and cereal for storm victims in the Managua area, said Mocardo Zepeda, director of the diocese’s social programs. Until Obando y Bravo made the request, no one had asked for food for those people, he said.

But here in El Aguacate, time has run out. Airlifts to the Patuca River were scheduled to end today: The helicopters are needed elsewhere.

One truck driver who brought goods to the airstrip here watched, bemused, as Saucedo collected and cleaned the rice that had spilled from bags onto a tarp. “No need to waste it,” explained the Texas-born major. “I’ll wash it and cook it for dinner.”

“Do you realize that in the warehouses there are rice and beans scattered all over the floor and everyone just walks over them?” asked the driver.

Saucedo sadly shook his head.