Lidia Hernandez-Yojcom's daughter stands in front of a temporary shelter. (Loi/TYG)

The Guatemalan government has blamed its sluggish construction of new homes on the difficulty of buying available lower-risk land. According to the government’s year-after report, Reconstrucción con Transformación, real estate speculation after Stan “raised the price of the lands to more than 300% of their real value.” According to the director of Catholic Relief Services in Guatemala, Lane Bunkers, the government responded compassionately to the crisis but made extravagant promises, only “60% or 70% of which are feasible.” For instance, in January 2007, San Juan mayor Flavio Yojcom Garcia explained to the Globalist that new land has already been bought and that current delays have been due to trouble building the new houses. While Yojcom insisted that Stan victims “will be able to move into homes by the end of the month,” it was unclear where the land would come from and how the houses would be completed within the next few weeks. Miscalculations by the government have also slowed its response. Roughly two dozen houses for Stan victims in Santiago Atitlán, near San Juan, were close to completion when surveyors realized that the houses and nearby temporary shelters were located in the middle of a floodplain.

Instead of waiting, many Stan victims have turned to other sources of funds and housing. For example, many in San Juan received money and land for new houses from a local church. This assistance, however, was limited to congregants only.

With limited government response and only ad hoc charity, the hardest hit have been rural Guatemala’s Mayan population, which depends on land for subsistence and income. This includes many people in towns like predominantly Mayan San Juan and Santiago Atitlán. One San Juan resident, Francisca Tepas, explained that rocks from Stan’s mudslides made her farmland unusable for planting the coffee and that the government has not made up for the lost income.

Poor education has also limited job opportunities— Spanish speakers are difficult to locate among the few dozen families at one temporary camp in Santiago Atitlán. One flood survivor there, Diego Chiuiliu, lamented the lack of housing and good work opportunities. When asked about the economic situation before Stan, he answered, “It was the same as it is now.” With little government economic intervention, those who lost land like Tepas now have lower incomes, and other rural Guatemalans are, at best, as poorly off as before.

Struggling as before means living without proper storm warnings. Francisco Tepas Tiata, a divisional director of the Christian aid organization World Vision, said that many residents of San Juan were unaware that the heavy rains were part of a major storm and, as such, were completely unprepared when Stan hit. Despite government efforts, many parts of the country are still missing an early alarm system.

Given meager government resources and limited local aid, much of the emergency response has succeeded due to international organizations like the UN and USAID. Guatemala has seen little local initiative apart from efforts by affected groups. According to Tobin Nelson, a manager of the local non-governmental organization SHARE Guatemala, “The notion of people volunteering…hasn’t caught on here.” Until it does, the complacency of the Guatemalan government and the inaction of its people have foreboding implications for Guatemala’s capacity to respond to another natural disaster.

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