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El Salvador: The Social Chasm Left by Earthquakes |
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Por Néfer Muñoz*
Two major earthquakes in El Salvador caused death and destruction earlier this year. They also triggered environmental and social problems, including a rise in poverty.
SAN JOSE - The two earthquakes that changed El Salvador's geography at the beginning of this year presented enormous environmental, economic and especially social challenges for this country, just when it was beginning to escape the devastation caused by the bloody civil war of the 1970s and 1980s.
The temblors of Jan 13 and Feb 13 caused the loss of extensive green areas and the resulting sedimentation is fuelling fears of profound alterations in the country's ecosystems, Ana María Majano, the Minister of Environment, told Tierramérica.
The first quake registered 7.5 degrees on the Richter scale, and the second 6.6 degrees. They left 827 people dead and 4,520 injured, some 300,000 homes destroyed and more than a million people homeless.
Economic losses surpassed 1.6 billion dollars, a sum comparable to the revenues reaching El Salvador every year through remittances received by the population of six million from family members who have emigrated to the United States.
''But the social losses are much greater than the economic losses,'' economist William Pleitez, of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), commented in a conversation with Tierramérica.
Pleitez previewed some of the data from the national human development report, to be published soon, which show that poverty expanded from 47.5 to 51.1 percent of the Salvadoran population as a result of the earthquakes.
The natural phenomena interrupted a good period for El Salvador. Recently the country reached the nine-year mark since the signing of peace treaties that put an end to years of internal armed conflict. And it had achieved and maintained a stable economy amid the recessions of its Central American neighbors. But all that has changed.
According to environmental groups, the temblors proved that the development model promoted in El Salvador is not sustainable. ''The earthquakes have served as a lesson, and now we are paying the bill,'' affirmed Ricardo Navarro, chairman of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Friends of the Earth International.
Private companies have traditionally imposed their interests on the government of the moment, meaning they have deforested and urbanized areas of great ecological importance, which have now turned into zones that are highly susceptible to damage from earthquakes, explained Navarro.
''This tragedy has shown us that we cannot continue the indiscriminate exploitation of our natural resources,'' he stated.
Specialists consulted by Tierramérica also cautioned that the changes in local ecosystems caused by the two quakes pave the way for further natural catastrophes. ''The landslides resulting from the earthquakes hurt habitat and destabilized a great deal of land,'' indicated minister Majano.
The government of President Francisco Flores is working to prevent new disasters, preparing for June, when the six-month rainy season begins, she added.
''The coming months are going to be quite a challenge, because there are more and more illegally obtained landholdings and the risk of landslides has therefore increased,'' acknowledged Majano.
The government, ecologists and local communities are especially concerned about an embankment of 15 million cubic meters of sediment that is obstructing the Jiboa River, one of the country's most important waterways.
The Jiboa, which flows through the departments of Cuscatlán and La Paz, originates in Llopango Lake - the largest in El Salvador - and empties into the Pacific Ocean, but the river's course has been changed by the landslides.
''The two earthquakes changed the nation's geography,'' Mario Díaz, assistant director of the National Emergency Commission, stated in a conversation with Tierramérica. Some landslides, as in the case of the Jiboa River, created small dams that have held back water but could rupture at any time.
The feeling of danger and future tragedy is fed by the recurrence of seismic episodes. According to data from the Salvadoran Center for Geotechnic Information, more than 7,000 small temblors have been recorded since Jan 13.
* Néfer Muñoz is an IPS correspondent.
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