The smell of death permeates Cauto el Paso. For two weeks the stench emanating from the remains of horses, goats, cows and pigs has invaded this town in the province of Granma. Located near the Cauto River, the largest in Cuba, this waterway – far from living up to its name – overflowed in the early hours of October 31, following the passage of the powerful Hurricane Melissa. Carcasses appear at regular intervals along the road, caught in the thick mud left by the floods that have submerged the area for several days. They are a harsh reminder of the helplessness of the inhabitants of this eastern region of the island, so dependent on their animals, where the hurricane came to take almost everything and further disrupt their already precarious lives.
Around 1 a.m. on the last day of October, after the hurricane had already crossed the island and continued its journey across the Caribbean, some residents of Cautious El Paso noticed that the water was reaching levels they hadn’t seen in 50 years. They alerted each other and a race against time began to protect their belongings, moving them to the upper floors of the houses and even onto the roofs. Everyone expected the hurricane to damage their homes and blow off some roofs, but no one had warned them of the possibility of floods. With no other choice, the residents of Río Cauto and Cauto Cristo rushed to save their lives and took refuge, waiting to be evacuated by Cuban civil protection workers.
According to the United Nations mission in Cuba, Hurricane Melissa affected more than 3.5 million people, damaged or destroyed 90,000 homes and damaged approximately 100,000 hectares of crops. Unlike other Caribbean islands, such as Haiti and Jamaica, where the hurricane claimed dozens of lives, no casualties were reported as Cuban authorities – who are used to dealing with these types of storms every hurricane season – had evacuated nearly a million residents from the eastern part of the island. But just when the life of Cubans was already chaotic, between rampant inflation, high cost of living, spread of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, unsanitary conditions and constant power outages, the cyclone arrived to shake things up even more.
More than two weeks after the storm, families who lost everything now face the challenge of rebuilding under the weight of pre-existing shortages of food, fuel and medicine on the island, bewildered by how to restart their lives under these circumstances. The UN said Cuban authorities were “overwhelmed” by the devastation caused by Melissa.
In Cauto el Paso, with the waters receding, families are returning to their homes, almost all still standing but submerged in thick, wet mud. The only way to reach the village is by tractor, one of the few vehicles capable of traveling along the road without getting stuck in the mud left by the flood waters, which have cut off the community.
Aid that does not solve the problems of the victims
The streets are improvised stalls selling dismantled electrical equipment and mattresses drying in the sun. “I still don’t know if all that stuff I have in the sun still works, and I have things inside that I can’t turn off. What’s the point of so much sun? If they work, great, otherwise we’ll see,” says Elisa Batista, 28, a school librarian in Cauto el Paso, on the porch of her wooden house with a zinc roof. Batista, who lives with her young daughter, dismantled her bed frame and placed the mattress in the sun, along with the little girl’s books and the television. They’ve been doing it for five days. Like her, everyone in the community expected the typical damage of strong winds and rain, so they demolished everything above for fear of losing their roofs. “They didn’t tell us anything about the flood, otherwise we would have moved our things to higher ground,” complains the young woman.
The situation is critical in communities like Cauto el Paso, where pre-existing poverty has been exacerbated by a lack of basic resources. External aid began to arrive and various countries, multilateral organizations and United Nations agencies channeled material resources, funds and technical assistance to the areas most affected by the hurricane. Fernando Hiraldo del Castillo, resident representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Cuba, told EL PAÍS that his team is working in the affected areas, delivering supplies such as tarpaulins, metal sheets for roofs, tool kits, chainsaws and generators “so that people can repair the basic conditions of their homes after the storm, as well as mobilizing funds for subsequent recovery efforts.”
One of the initiatives that recently delivered resources – food, clothing, appliances and rechargeable lamps – to flood-affected areas was the “Río Cauto in our hands” caravan, made possible thanks to the collaboration of civil society members, international donors and private Cuban companies, with the approval of local authorities. The convoy departed from Havana to Granma, an 18-hour journey coordinated by Leniuska Barrero, a resident of the capital for several years but originally from this eastern region. Throughout the trip, he reiterated that this aid will not solve all the problems faced by Melissa’s flood victims, but it will at least bring some relief and address the specific needs of some people.
As evening falls, the volunteers arrive at one of the houses where social workers have identified one of the most vulnerable families in the area, among the many elderly people living alone, people with physical or intellectual disabilities or single mothers with more than three children. They bring these families extra supplies. Yaimilín is 21 years old and pregnant with her fourth child. She and her children welcome visitors barefoot, covered in mud up to their knees. There is little room on the mother’s face for joy when she receives the donations, even though she is grateful. When someone asks her how she sees her future, whether she plans to leave Cauto el Paso one day and start a new life, she shrugs and says, “I’ve always lived here.”
“A hole we have to get out of”
About five miles north of Cauto el Paso lies the community of Grito de Yara, named after a now-defunct sugar mill that once fueled the economy of residents living in condominiums. It’s barely 7pm, and darkness and mosquitoes reign supreme. For more than two weeks, electricity after dark has been a thing of the past. In the darkness, a single light stands out and attracts dozens of people. This is the polyclinic, where a generator has been set up to power electrical devices. People come every afternoon to plug in their cell phone, lamp or portable fan. While the generator is running, residents can connect to the Internet until around midnight, when the city goes silent again.
With the first rays of sun, people return to the streets of this village to try to secure what they need to survive another day: from a jug of cow’s milk for breakfast to the green plants that a farmer sells from his cart. There are those who go out with the ax to cut down the first tree they find to make firewood for cooking, because a bag of coal costs 1,000 CUP (almost half the minimum wage), when it is available, and many people cannot afford it. In a Cuba plagued by blackouts, this has become a common way of cooking for many.
As evening falls, the procession of buckets and jugs begins in search of water, a resource that arrives cloudy when it reaches the cisterns. There are some cooperatives that have managed to get a water truck on demand in other areas. Some people had to buy a bucket of water for 500 CUP to avoid running out of drinking water. That’s what Yunior, a 46-year-old agricultural engineer and second-in-command of one of the area’s agricultural cooperatives, did. He lives in an apartment with his mother, wife and sister and considers himself lucky in the face of disaster. Before Melissa struck, she had time to sell her pigs and harvest the rice that is now piled in bags inside her house. But the hurricane destroyed his sweet potato crops and 30 hectares of sugar cane.
“What happened here was criminal,” says Yunior, referring to the flood that inundated the streets of Grito de Yara around dawn on October 31, traces of which can still be seen. “It’s not just the river in flood. It’s sewage,” warns the farmer’s mother. Before the hurricane, they explain, the necessary work to clean the waste and wastewater tanks had not been carried out, at least in their building, despite having asked the authorities for months. With the flood, the waters mixed and now cover the entire street where two condominiums stand, like a giant mosquito breeding pool, mixing with the sewage-filled ditches that run through the city.
Very nearby is the Grito de Yara elementary school, now transformed into an evacuation center, where residents of other villages still affected by the floods are staying, such as El Aguacate, Las Ova, Saladillo and El Palmar. Their houses, made of wood with zinc roofs, some of brick, remain submerged, so residents continue to spend the night in the classrooms of this school, sleeping on mats or directly on the floor.
There awaits Nubia, 43, eager to return to see what remains of her home in El Aguacate, where her husband has already been and seeing that there is not much to save. “No one expected these floods,” said Enrique Castillo, a 57-year-old baker who owns a house with arable land just across the street from the school. Melissa wiped out his tomato crops and 23 of his 25 beehives, but left him with his rice fields. Enrique shows the sign of the height reached by the water during the floods – about one meter – while offering a clear reflection on his future plans: “This area is a hole from which I have to get out. I’m struggling to leave, because things are complicated.”
The dismay is palpable in these areas after the effects of Melissa, and residents do not see a very promising future, so many are considering the idea of emigrating. Yunior, the agricultural engineer, thinks that within a year he will go to live elsewhere. “Everyone is migrating here,” he says. “In the cooperative all the staff come from elsewhere; also, where the food comes from (the fields), people don’t want to work anymore. I don’t think things will recover in a year.”
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