On June 3rd, the Volcan de Fuego in Guatemala, located between Antigua and Escuintla, erupted. Pyroclastic flows of ash accompanied by hot gases raced down the volcano at high speeds, and small towns such as El Rodeo and Los Lotes were essentially destroyed. At least 65 people were killed; I suspect that number will be over 100 by the time this is over. Thousands were displaced.
Here’s a sattelite view of the affected area, before the disaster. The volcano is in the northwest of this map. The main pyroclastic flow emerged southeast following the existing rivers. Where those split in two on this map, the flow was more chaotic, and hit the town of El Rodeo in between those two more or less head on. The smaller town of Los Lotes, just to the north, was also hit. The image above of the buildings and trucks is located in between the Antigua Golf Club and “Granja Porcino Toledo”.
From 2003 to 2006, I lived in La Trinidad, located in between El Zapote and El Rodeo, visible at the south edge of this view. La Trinidad was not directly hit by a dangerous pyroclastic flow but it has nevertheless been buried in fallen ash and evacuated.
La Trinidad is a community of returned refugees. During the Guatemalan civl war in the 80s, the genocidal campaign of the government forced them to flee from their home in the west of the country across the border to Mexico. There in Mexico, strong community organization was an essential survival strategy, as they built relationships with local communities to find work, with the local Catholic Church to help build a voice capable of articulating their concerns, and with NGOs and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to establish their legal status in the country and get logistical aid in rebuilding their community as they were forced to move several times. After the peace accords in 1996, the UNHCR helped them buy a coffee plantation in the south of the country, an area less affected by the civil war.
They maintained their strong community organization through such structures as their new coffee cooperative. Their coffee and agricultural land has now been badly damaged through ash-fall. It will surely be fertile again soon, but in the mean time, they will probably need to invest thousands of quetzales per family — tens of thousands of dollars overall — in rebuilding their houses and restoring their agricultural land. Also, some members of the community were in the harder-hit areas during the eruption; we know of one family where two people had serious burns and one of them was charged over $1500 for a single night of emergency treatment in a private hospital.
My wife and I became connected to this community through her undergraduate thesis research in anthropology. She had also grown up as a refugee in Mexico, although her more-urban experience differed from the rural story of La Trinidad. After she finished organizing a community mural for her thesis, the town approached us to ask our help in opening an afternoon middle school in the same rooms as the elementary school in the mornings. We organized and taught at the middle school for two years, and it’s still going today. Our daughter was born while we lived there.
When disaster strikes, direct assistance is often the most effective. The problem is that it can be difficult to know how and where to give such direct assistance. When there is an existing community structure, this is ideal; I believe this kind of organization is exactly what it takes to avoid corruption and use the funds efficiently. La Trinidad is not the hardest-hit community by this eruption; those are El Rodeo and Los Lotes. But in my opinion, La Trinidad, because of its pre-existing organizational solidarity, is where my support can do the most good.
I’ve set up a gofundme with an ambitious goal of $20,000 at www.gofundme.com/.