International
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
CIHUATLÁN, Mexico — While neighbors gathered their personal documents into backpacks and placed irons, fans and other electronics atop shelves and refrigerators, Irving Manzo made a list of things to take to the church that men in the town needed, mostly edibles like eggs, sausages, tuna, cookies, coffee.
Others took thin mattresses to sleep on. For his part, he took the stove from his home. And so when the state police and marines arrived in El Rebalse on Thursday to evacuate its residents ahead of Hurricane Patricia, Manzo and about two dozen others in the town stubbornly stayed behind.
“We don’t really like to have to go over there. I don’t know why,” said Manzo, 24, looking out over the town square on Sunday morning, about 24 hours after the storm passed. The streets surrounding the square were submerged knee deep in muddy water. “Besides, we have to stay here and take care of things.”
El Rebalse, which residents estimate is home to 70 to 80 families, is a humble agricultural community in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco. While most of the homes are concrete, others are made of wood planks. There is no running water. It’s the same area where Jova, a Category 2 hurricane, slammed into Jalisco’s Pacific coast in 2011.
After Hurricane Patricia made landfall Friday night on Mexico’s mountainous Pacific coast, it quickly lost force. The country breathed a huge collective sigh of relief that no fatalities were registered and tourist destinations such as Puerta Vallarta were largely spared.
Much less attention was paid to smaller, more isolated areas like El Rebalse, where the Marabasco River busted through its banks, flooding an area of banana plantations and papaya, lime and coconut trees. Power lines came down, and the road into El Rebalse collapsed and became impassable.
Worse than the flooded homes, some of which had their roofs blown off, was the 5,000 or more acres of banana plantations that were flattened.
“We are worried because almost all of our husbands work in the banana plantations around Rebalse,” said Deisy Miranda. “And now that they have all been knocked down, it’s really going to affect us, because that’s where the men earn money to put food on the table.”
She said her husband earns 1,000 pesos ($60) per week working the fields.
After the hurricane passed, Alejandro Miranda and his daughter were ready to wade through the waters to survey the damage in El Rebalse.
“All this is destroyed,” he said, pointing out the fields of toppled banana plants. “No one in the news has been reporting on this area because it’s not a tourist zone … Whatever happens in the countryside, they never mention.”
The father and daughter set off on the hourlong trek past fallen power lines, mud heaps, partially submerged homes and water that at times reached their chests, forcing them to pivot their backpacks atop their shoulders.
Immediately on entering El Rebalse, Miranda noticed his sister’s corner store was open.
Rosa Miranda opened her door minutes after the water finally dropped below the store’s floor level, which sits a couple of feet off the ground. Inside, lower shelves had been cleared of merchandise and relocated to higher spaces. Coolers and refrigerators stocked with milk, cheese and lunchmeats had lost their power.
“It’s worthless,” Miranda said, lifting the top of a small case filled with melted ice cream bars and frozen snacks.
She and her husband stayed in the store (they live in the attached rooms) instead of evacuating because they were worried about losing everything. While the walls of the store were marked with a waterline more than a foot above the floor, Miranda considers herself one of the lucky ones.
“People further down lost everything, 100 percent,” she said.
Around the corner, Alejandro’s house weathered better than expected.
“I feel sad but at the same time good, because my house and my stuff is all fine,” he said. However, he said, the house behind him — a modest wood structure where his mother-in-law lives with her husband, daughter and grandchild — did not fare as well. “It’s all ruined,” he said, “the stove, clothes …”
Inside a two-story home a short distance away, 15 family members had bunkered in a bedroom on the second floor as winds from various directions pounded the walls for hours.
Among them was Rosalinda Hernandez, 45. She would have evacuated, she said, but her mother has diabetes and a leg injury. It would have been difficult to get her downstairs in order to evacuate, Hernandez explained, and then lift her into the trucks.
As Hernandez spoke, small waves of brown water spurted from the front door. Inside, a man and a young woman chased the water out with brooms.
“Right now, we just keep cleaning and getting mud and dirt out to have the house nice and clean for the people whose house it is,” Hernandez said.
Nowhere were spirits higher than at the local church, where about 10 men who had taken refuge there were now eating freshly made breakfast tacos of scrambled eggs, tomatoes and onions.
José de Jesús Manzo, 16, spoke fondly of the three nights he spent at the church as the storm approached and then passed, hanging out with the men, drinking coffee and joking around.
“Very good, very nice,” Irving Manzo, who coordinated the stay, said of the shared experience. “You value things more, like food, in situations like this.”
As the men finished their tacos and drank water from freshly chopped coconuts, a disaster-relief team from the Mexican army arrived in green fatigues, bearing rifles and shovels.
“They came to help clean but we can do that,” said Manzo. “What is needed more is food supplies.”
In the nearby city of Cihuatlán, Mayor Fernando Martínez, less than a month on the job, said food aid will be on the way to El Rebalse as soon as vehicles can pass the road.
He discounted rumors that the area will not receive attention because it is not a tourist destination.
“All of Cihuatlán has been declared an emergency zone,” Martínez said. “Thirty-four municipalities were declared emergency zones, and we are one of the most affected.”
He said government representatives are going house to house to inspect the damage in order to request federal and state assistance in the form of machines, vehicles, food and money.
According to preliminary estimates, he said, pulling out his cellphone to read off the numbers, as many as 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) might be damaged. “Half the population of Cihuatlán survive from agriculture, directly or indirectly,” he said.
While the ultimate damage was less than he anticipated, Martínez said, the economic losses would be a serious blow to both workers and landowners. “From the time a seed is planted until harvest,” he said banana plantations “cost 35,000 pesos per hectare. Some owners will replace their crops, but many can’t.”
“It’s going to be a tough few months in the banana plantations,” said José Barragán, who went to where the road collapsed to check if the water level had gone down. “Since everything is destroyed, finished, it’s going to take four or five months for the plants to be productive again, and even the bosses are going to feel it. There will not be any production of fruit.”
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