Hell’s Half Acre

I’m really very dumbfounded. I can’t believe how generous and trusting you all are and it humbles me. Thank you so much for all the donations; we’re at $2625 USD right now!!! Again, Thank You, so very very much.

We’ve seen a lot of poverty here in Mexico and I know it exists everywhere. Driving down the carretera in Quintana Roo you really don’t see it, and shopping at the supers in Playa del Carmen you certainly don’t see it; this is a very middle class society. The poverty is elsewhere; beyond the tourquoise seas, beyond the blazing white sands, beyond the line of jungle marking the carretera, beyond the plethora of middle class Mexicans, all with cars, new shoes, Europeans filling the community, beyond all of that which has become the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo.

Inland, well within the forests of trees small villages of Mayans eek out a living off the land or the men commute to the ginormous resorts to build and labor or commute to colonias such as ours to work as palaperos, building the homes of the rich gringos. While we were traveling around the country we weren’t as protected from the poverty but here in the “Riviera Maya” we see none of the Mayan people, other than those working as palaperos, laboring at the ginormous resorts or walking home from a day of labor. We’ve gotten soft and have become those Ugly Americans you read about.

And I’m not sure there is a solution to any of it. We spent the day with Noe, dividing out the dispensas. We’d brought down 30 but he decided that it would be best for everyone to get Something rather than an entire family get two bags, plus eggs, plus water. So, some families got a litro of Clorox and 5 litres of water. The old folks got food and eggs. Some families of 10 children got Maseca, rice, beans, etc. and water. Almost everyone, even the “rich”, got something. Some families got a kilo of laundry detergent. It was so very hard for him, deciding who received, who received a full lot and who received nothing. For many families he’d tell them, “they’ll be back another day and that day YOU’LL get something”. It would have been impossible without him; he knew the neediest families in town and who could wait.

I expected much more selfishness from him, knowing his history and he kept smashing stereotypes left and right. Both of Noe’s sons were born in the US; one in Oregon and one in Atlanta. I’m pretty sure Noe was an undocumented worker and I don’t know how long he worked in the US, but he definitely got around. He was born in Majahual but all his family lives in Avila Camacho. He has two homes and he built the second just before Dean arrived. He lives with his Tio, Tia, Abuela, Abuelo (106 years young) and parents along with lots of kids. I don’t think there are any brothers and sisters living there. He speaks English, Spanish and Maya.

At first, on the trip to his town, we kept trying to guage “just how bad” they’d been hit. “That’s not so bad” we’d decide and then around the next corner we’d see absolute devistation. I thought only tornadoes did hit and miss damage, and while the damage was everywhere, it was weird how some trees would be upright and full of leaves and across the street we’d see trees stripped of leaves and laying on the ground. We left Noe’s town deciding that while each family seemed to have a structure, if not a house, still standing (or leaning, as the case may be) after Dean, and some in Majahual do not, Majahual is getting a lot of dispensas from the gringo community and the Mayan villages inland are pretty much forgotten.

I don’t think that there can be a long term solution to this problem. We are nothing more than many little bandaids flittering here and there. The tourist economy that Majahual and many of these towns depended on is now gone and Noe, including many others, will have no job for at least a year. No-one waits for the government or Red Cross or DIF to step in, no-one sits around waiting for a handout; most of the men have left, in search of work and the women and children wait behind. In the meanwhile, until the port is rebuilt there will be no work. But as long as you allow us to, we will purchase food and water for the woman and children left behind. And that is the only bandaid I can think of at the moment.