When rescuers from the Guatemalan military reached a village located in a remote and mountainous region of the country, the death toll brought on by the calamitous storm Eta quickly rose to well over 50 people, with a total of approximately 150 either dead or missing. The village, Queja, was consumed by a landslide that buried half of the community, and only a handful of the 100+ have been rescued from the ground, adding to Central America’s growing death toll.

On Thursday, inhabitants of the small farming town, composed of around 1,200 Poqomchi Maya, fell victims to a massive landslide that occurred when the mountainside above them gave way around noon. The disaster comes after days on end of heavy rains as Tropical Storm Eta tears its way through Central America, destroying cities and small islands in its path.

It took rescuers a day to arrive at the scene since other landslides in the area were blocking highways, meaning that the majority of supplies sent to survivors had to be flown in by helicopter. As a result of the flooding and overall damage brought on by the rain, Guatemala’s national disaster management agency estimated around 33 dead and over 100 missing.

The former director of this agency, Alejandro Maldonado, stated that Guatemala is ranked among the highest-risk countries for natural disasters in the Southern Hemisphere, citing the World Risk Index as his source. Maldonado has said that the problem is increasingly structural and does not only have to do with the threat or the probability of producing elements like Eta but has direct ties to the development of the country and how it makes its population vulnerable.

Another Guatemalan town that has been gravely affected by Storm Eta is San Cristóbal Verapaz, responsible for at least half of the nationwide casualties. Rescue workers have had extremely limited access to the area as landslides keep occurring, leading them to arrive on foot because “there’s no other way”, according to Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.

This is not the first time Guatemala has suffered disasters that bury entire communities under rubble. In 2018, southern Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted, leaving 201 dead and 1,000 victims buried under the debris left behind by the explosion. Since then, official numbers show that over 200 people are still missing today.

Three years earlier in 2015, the Cambray neighborhood inside the capital experienced a landslide similar to that of Queja right now, killing 250 people and leaving around 80 missing. Even though experts had deemed the area to be dangerous, authorities in the area didn’t hesitate to allow homes to be built there, a situation similar to a community called Los Chorros, an area that is under the constant threat of landslides.

Eta has not been limited to Guatemala, however; Nicaragua and Honduras have also taken hard hits from the storm. It first hit Nicaragua as a Category Four hurricane with torrential rains, but swiftly died down into a tropical depression and moved into neighboring Honduras and Guatemala. Nicaragua oversaw the evacuation of tens of thousands of people to shelters before the hurricane striking, however, two men were killed after a landslide buried the mine they were working in.

Honduras on the other hand was already extremely vulnerable, suffering from the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, governmental corruption, and increasing Neo-colonialism, conditions the hurricane is further exacerbating. So far, around 2,000 people have been either displaced or evacuated, 400 homes have been flooded and impacted, 6 rivers have overflown, and consistent communication has been next to impossible due to frequent power outages.

Destruction is consistently spreading to the north as well, affecting Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico as well. In Panama, there are approximately 17 dead, compared to Costa Rica’s two, and El Salvador’s one. In Chiapas, a state in the south of Mexico, flooding has claimed 19 lives and two more in Tabasco, a state on Chiapas’ northern border, according to the federal government. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have also been evacuating since Saturday.

In Queja, decisions are still being made as to what should be done next. Landslides in the area have not ceased, meaning that rescuers are frequently forced to leave the field of debris. In past crises, the searches are eventually called off and the victims remain buried; as a result, the sites are sometimes referenced as “sacred ground.”

Communities in Guatemala, and also across Latin America, do not have the resources or funds to invest in proper mitigation measures that will help the development of their communities. Villages that are in remote regions are particularly vulnerable in this type of scenario seeing as they lack adequate planning and sufficient aid. Another big factor at play is deforestation and how it is destabilizing mountainsides in the area.

“There is never going to be development in Guatemala nor reduction of poverty if there is not an effort to reduce the risk of disasters, and that way save lives.”

Alejandro Maldonado

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