September 22, 2017

Text: Ma. Teresa Montaño

Photos: Marco A. Castro

Ocuilan, Méx.- In communities such as Ahuatenco, San Juan Atzingo and Tlatempa, all of them part of the rural municipality called Ocuilan, located a step away from Cuernavaca, people are struggling to be standing up; here there aren’t huge buildings or avenues, in some cases not even sidewalks, just trees, mountains and nature, but devastation is the same as in Mexico City.

In Joquicingo, located also here in the southeast of the state, the landscape is similar, maybe even worse. The 7.1 degrees earthquake completely destroyed houses, yards, churches, schools; there are some places that look like warzones after being bombed and their effect step on everything around.

Both municipalities, Ocuilan and Joquicingo, were in the first place to be impacted by that earthquake that shook the center of the country that Wednesday’s afternoon. Devastation in Joquicingo is visible everywhere, there are more than 300 houses completely destroyed as well as the parish and the main schools. In Ocuilan there have been numbered 768 damaged properties, out of them, 300 are considered as total lost, 16 churches and 120 schools.

In the middle of the streets, some of them stuck in the middle of the countryside, the piles of debris stop everything and everyone who tries to pass by. Most of the houses were very modest, some of them made out of tiling, some others made of metal sheets, and many others of adobe, they became into dust anyway.

Many structures with two floors collapsed over their bases so they lost height and the higher floors now are at the bottom and they are stand almost due to a miracle, shaking and about to collapse as well; this is why the zone represents a huge danger in many points, as a mined area.

Help to both localities was arriving slowly, even more in Joquicingo, where the presence of the Mexican army has brought hope to the inhabitants, today more organized also due to the presence of dozens of volunteers that have arrived from schools and faculties of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM); UNAM; and people from Morelos and Toluca.

In Ocuilan the situation is different though. The neighbors found out that the “new governor” (as they call him), visited the town but only the government palace. A 35 year old woman who along her kids, parents, parents in law and neighbors have built kind of a shelter with sticks, plastics and fabrics to spend the night said: “I wish he would have come to see the conditions we are going through”. Then in the morning they go the destroyed houses to keep taking away the debris.

And there, over the sidewalks, on the backyards or under trees, there are dozens of broken and dusty dishes, deformed toys, piles of dirty clothes which was buried in 2 minutes, women’s purses, shoes without heels, sheets, mattresses, beds, chairs… everyday life exposed outdoors in the blink of an eye.

Don Juan, in Atzingo, is taking a rest after struggling more than 10 hours straight with the mountains of stones, joists, and debris that surround his community. He says that they aren’t sorry for Del Mazo’s absence but for the fact that the help isn’t arriving there as it is in Joquicingo, they are completely on their own.

He says that what is urgent now it’s to start rebuilding labors, but here they lack of everything, from strength to clean everything faster till machinery, cement, sand, wood, and tools as well. Ahuatenco, San Juan Atzingo and Tlatempa want to stand up, but there isn’t a way to make it possible.