Article: Disease & Poverty

Guatemala's native peoples suffer from disease, poverty after political turmoil

By Ray Quintanilla
The Orlando Sentinel

Caribe Rubel Tzul, Guatemala - Dozens of curious children stand quietly in front of thatched huts along the mud and gravel road leading into this Mayan village.

The girls wear frayed pink or yellow dresses with bright ribbons in their hair. The boys wear pants - some for the first time. None of them wears shoes.

A group of about 40 doctors and other medical workers are making their way down the road on foot, after an hour-long ride through the bumpy terrain.

As the visitors walk through the swarms of children, gently tapping some of them on the head, as they clear a path into the village, dozens of little hands are pulling on their medical smocks. One of the doctors takes in a sudden deep breath and nervously runs fingers though her hair when she sees a line of 400 patients, many moaning in pain, waiting under a small outdoor canopy.

"Don't let my daughter die," Jesus Choma shouts as the medical team approaches. The 8-year-old girl, squirming in pain, is among the dozens waiting anxiously for their first-ever visit with a doctor.

These were supposed to be Guatemala's boom years, nearly a decade after the end of a 30-year civil war that claimed more than 200,000 lives - many of them native people like these. But this team of Puerto Rican physicians and health care workers arriving here during the summer found hundreds of resettled Mayan families struggling to survive in primitive, alien surroundings that seem sure to snuff out the inhabitants and their rich culture.

"This environment encourages the spread of just about every disease and infection, so we have to treat everyone we can," Dr. Jose Vargas Vidot, leader of the San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Iniciativas de Paz, explained after arriving in this village located an hour from the nearest paved road.

Many of those under the canopy - erected on lands that once were dense jungle - walked more than 20 miles for medical attention. Dozens of men were nearly blind from cataracts, brought on by working long days in the unrelenting sun. Many others learned from the visiting doctors that they have diabetes or another condition that, if left untreated, soon will end their lives.

By the time the medical workers left this village 100 miles from the Mexican border, four days later, they had learned a lot about the environmental and living conditions making this community so sick. And they saw why the optimism at the end of the war had turned into anger and frustration here10 years later - something Mayan leaders say does not bode well for a lasting peace.

Nearly everyone waiting for medical care knows someone who has become ill and died, sometimes from an ailment as simple as a cough.

Medical studies from a nearby village show the most common killers are pneumonia, complications from intestinal parasites, diarrhea, infections to the legs and gastritis - all curable conditions.

That's why Jesus Choma has brought her young daughter, Miro, here. It may be her only chance to be examined by a doctor.

Choma, who has struggled with nausea and headaches for years, said seeing a physician in Guatemala City is out of the question because her husband, Gomez Tum, earns less than $2 per day.

But when doctors examine Miro, the mother suddenly panics.

"What's that in your hands?" Choma asks the doctor, pointing to a stethoscope. "Is that going to hurt her? What are you doing with that? Why can't you tell me what's wrong?"

There's no response from Dr. Ariel Figueroa, who is listening to the girl's heart, while his eyes begin moving to her abdomen and then to her muddy feet. Figueroa is intent on giving each patient at least a cursory examination - about 10 minutes - and he doesn't allow himself to get distracted.

"She's going to live, isn't she?" Choma asks, beads of sweat forming on her brow as outside temperatures hit 100 degrees. "She has to live. There's been too much death in this family already."

Their family's sad saga began in the mid-1980s during one of the bloodiest chapters in Guatemala's history. In an attempt to halt a growing leftist movement, the military began arresting those deemed a threat. Before long, the military missions evolved into death squads.

The Tums, along with a handful of relatives, fled their mountain village to avoid persecution. As soldiers began burning homes, two of Tum's brothers were fired upon. Both were killed in a flurry of automatic weapons fire. The wife of one of those killed also was shot to death.

As the rest of the family fled, a community that stood for nearly 1,000 years was being reduced to ruins.

Tum's surviving brother said friendly government soldiers volunteered to take his ill 3-year-old daughter to a Guatemala City hospital. A week later, the family learned she never arrived.

The Tums continue searching for the girl, but most family members now think she is buried in one of the mass graves that dot Guatemala's countryside as a reminder of the war.

Finally, the family's tortured migration brought them to this village, where living conditions attract disease and harmful bacteria.

During Miro's examination, Figueroa said, he became discouraged by what he learned from the girl's mother.

Their home has a mud floor. They have no screens to keep mosquitoes out. Chickens and a small pig roam in and out of the house.

There's no running water in the house. No sink, or toilet.

The girl likely has parasites in her stomach, the doctor said. But with conditions inside the home so poor, the medication he offered might not provide a permanent solution.

"You have to do what is right, even if that means solving the problem for a little while," Figueroa said. "What's really bad is knowing you cannot do what is needed for people here. They need so much."

Of the 40 Puerto Rican medical people on the trip, there were three general practitioners, two pediatricians, three dentists and an optometrist. The rest were nurses or were certified to dispense medication.

By the time the first day in the clinic was complete, more than 1,000 pairs of donated glasses were given away and many of those in line to see a dentist had gotten teeth extracted. More than 1,000 bottles of painkillers and antibiotics were gone.

Tum has cataracts growing over his eyes. In addition to medical care for her stomach, Miro needs two teeth pulled because they're broken and decaying. Choma needs glasses, because she grew up cross-eyed and never received corrective care.

"I guess like everything, my eyes are about to give out," Tum says, lamenting that he has never been able to pay for his family to see a doctor. "When my vision goes," Tum, 46, says, "there won't be any way for me to make a living. This will be where we meet the end. Right here."

After Miro's medical exam the doctor tells Choma he has done all he can.

"This is very kind of you," Choma replies, lifting the girl from a small chair. "If she dies, I don't know what will become of us. Will there be a reason for any of us to carry on?"

As they leave, Miro turns to Figueroa and touches his hand. The two exchange a brief smile.

"Gracias," the girl whispers.

There was a time when life for the Tums - distant relatives of Guatemala Refugee and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Rigoberto Menchu - was much better.

In those days, Tum said, "curanderos" would come into his home offering herbal remedies. Back then, villagers never had to deal with such things as cataracts, parasites, cancer or diabetes because their lands were much more hospitable.

Before the military chased them away from their mountain homelands about 20 year ago, they lived in harmony with the environment. A more temperate climate enabled crops to flourish. Water came from clear springs.

No one needed to worry about money, because vegetables, textiles, and other goods, were their primary sources of currency in a bartering society.

In 1996 Guatemala's military and the rebel militias - some made up of indigenous peoples like these - put down arms in return for government promises of greater prosperity, expanded human rights, medical care and lands of their own.

But this is not where Mayans wanted to resettle. Since arriving, they've discovered this lower climate is too hot. The ground is too full of rocks for growing corn or other vegetables; nearly half their crops are lost in the fields.

Most people can't communicate with those from surrounding villages because their first language is Q'eqchi, one of the 12 Mayan dialects, not Spanish.

Some tried to reclaim their former lands shortly after the peace treaty was signed. But they discovered new people living in their homes and working their fields.

"Do you think this is where we would want to be forever," Anselmo Rivera, 67, exclaimed while standing outside two cinder block buildings used to dispense medication.

"This is land many of us don't even own," he said, peering over a rugged and muddy field. "The people you see living in these terrible houses used to have nice villages in the mountains. We were a proud people, but today all we have is a struggle for life from one day to the next."

Growing government resentment is evident. Someone in the village cracked a state-owned oil supply line that runs through town, spilling thousands of gallons of crude onto the ground and leaving the stench of oil hanging in the humid air. Two nearby oil wells have been vandalized as well.

Even the government's patchwork efforts to modernize the village have caused harm to the people who live there.

Officials began running power lines into the area about two years ago. Since then, however, at least two homes per month have burned because of poorly installed electrical lines.

About a half dozen locals have died in these fires. One home even burned to the ground while doctors were tending to the village's medical needs.

The Mayan people cannot endure these conditions for much longer, said handyman Nicholas Popchen, 34.

"We are losing our history," Popchen said, adding that although most of the 10,000 or so who live in the El Caribe area earn less than $2 per day, they have given up their longstanding custom of trading goods with nearby villages and are using currency.

"We don't make the pottery we once did or the textiles," he said, pointing to vendors selling Coca-Cola and fruit to the people lined up to see doctors. "Our women now walk with plastic jugs on their heads."

Jose Maria Saqui May, the village's shaman, said he recently completed a reading of ancient Mayan stones to see what villagers might expect in the coming days. The rocks, he said, have been in use by his people for centuries.

"The reading showed peace has been a good thing for everyone," he explained, peering at an assembly of smooth edge stones aligned on the floor of his one-room home. "This is where the gods want us to be right now. They also tell us, we should not be made to suffer. We should not allow that to happen."

Posted by elcanche at October 7, 2004 11:46 PM