The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Torrential rains swept across the high mountain towns of western Guatemala, washing the mud from the steep slopes downward onto highways, cornfields and the tiny villages populated mostly by the indigenous Mayan people.

As the furious winds of Hurricane Stan rocked countries across Central America just this last week, Guatemala's poor was perhaps hardest hit by the devastating mud, which cascaded onto their homes.

"The official death toll of rains from Hurricane Stan sits at 652 and 398 disappeared but emergency workers say the real number is in the range of 2,000," reports Catherine Bremer of Reuters news service. Communities now go about the grim task of digging for corpses as officials allow other sites to become mass graves.

While Guatemalan officials are asking for $21.5 million in assistance from the United Nations, many in the indigenous Mayan population who have been so hard hit are complaining that, despite these pleas for assistance, their villages and people are seeing very little in the way of government assistance from these same officials.

Indeed, a legacy of discrimination against the indigenous population of Guatemala by the non-indigenous elite appears to be surfacing in the face of this epic tragedy.

"Five centuries after the Spanish conquest of Central America, the population of Guatemala is divided into the overwhelmingly poor, indigenous population (predominantly Mayan) and the more prosperous ladino (non-Indian) population," reports Kevin Pepper in a release from the international aid organization, Oxfam America.

Making up an estimated 70 percent of the population (according to Oxfam), the indigenous population has seen much ethnic discrimination and violence from the elite that makes up the government. A brutal civil war that spanned 36 years (ending only in 1996) saw an estimated 200,000 (mostly indigenous) people killed, Reuters notes.

"Mayan villages have the highest levels of malnutrition, illiteracy and poverty in the country and the lowest levels of government spending on health, education and infrastructure," Bremer continues in her Reuters report.

This discrimination appears to be contributing to the continued tragedy spurred by the hurricane, many indigenous villagers are noting. Frank Jack Daniel for Reuters reported, "Mayan Indian residents complained on Sunday [that] the government was far too slow to react to the tragedy."

Indeed, many villages complained of not receiving the supplies of beans, rice and pasta the government sent out from the capital. "We are forgotten," said Eulalio Bravo, a villager, in Bremer's article.

The way in which the bodies of the dead are being treated by government workers is also raising ire amongst the indigenous populations, who, according to Mark Stevenson of the Associated Press, "for centuries... have practiced strict burial traditions."

With bodies being disposed of in mass graves as per the official's orders, many of the indigenous people are being deprived of their chance to see off their loved ones in accordance with their traditions. While the government claims this is a public safety measure, it nonetheless has the effect of further alienating indigenous communities.

Besides these immediate problems that appear to be discrimination against the indigenous population, the tragic consequences of the mudslide themselves can be seen as tied to this long-term racism.

As Ale Renderos and Reed Johnson of the Los Angeles Times report, "Some agronomists and land experts have speculated that erosion caused by deforestation and farming on the volcanic slopes might have played a role in the disaster. Deforestation has been rampant throughout Central America, including Guatemala."

Amnesty International reports that many activities of unauthorized logging and extraction of natural resources is being conducted by the large, elite landowners that serve to deny indigenous peoples the rights to their lands and threatening their environment. Clearly, these environmental threats have manifested themselves in a dangerous and tragic event that has taken the lives of many.

Like with the tragedy brought about by the hurricane here in the American South, we must insist upon the examination of the way in which discrimination and racism has played into tragic consequences in yet another country. "There is sadness, hunger and desperation," says Alfonso Ochoa, a reporter for El Orbe newspaper in the L.A. Times story. "We need help."

This disaster again points to the need for those of us who are fortunate to open our eyes to the ways in which ethnic discrimination, environmental degradation and neglect of indigenous people's rights throughout the world are at the base of much of the tragedy suffered after natural disasters.

Clearly, the need to overcome systemic racial and ethnic discrimination is something we should see as necessary to saving more lives throughout the world.

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