At least 17 people have died in landslides in a week in Naucalpan and Jilotzingo. Ecatepec and Coacalco flooded just like Chalco did before, and many of their neighborhoods lack running water. The stories repeat over time and have something in common: lack of urban planning and an absent government.
José Luis Santos lives on the street and sleeps in a cave. He speaks hurriedly and moves with nervous, almost spasmodic gestures, consequences of years spent outdoors. On Monday night, a storm broke over his hill in Naucalpan. “In the cave, a piece fell from above in front of the bonfire I have, and it burned my left hand, but the doctors treated me, removed part of the skin from my hand, and put gloves on to prevent infection. It felt like an earthquake, like in ’85.” He still wears the white plastic gloves and the gauze covering the wound. He carefully lights a dozen candles placed on a wooden board. They are the humble tribute from the La Raquelito neighborhood to the six people buried by the earth and the same water that collapsed the cave’s roof.
Santos, 48, did not witness the landslide that killed the family in the State of Mexico. “When it happened, I went to the Zócalo because I didn’t want the cave to collapse on me during the storm. And when I came back in the morning, the ladies told me that four children and two adults had died. It hurts a lot because they were like my family, but everything is fine because the community is united. The children always played soccer with me here. I’m taking care of the candles; if they go out, I light them again because it’s very windy, and I’ll put a board over them, so they don’t get wet at night. And well, all I do is to keep the community well.”
The cause of death, more than the small landslide, was the house they lived in a cabin made of sheets, wood, plastic, and tarps on the slope of a steep hill of weeds and dirt that did not invite any construction. In Brazil, it would be called a favela. The next day, a 51-year-old firefighter named Jorge Arce Dionisio was checking the risk of another possible avalanche in the San Francisco Chamapa neighborhood when the mountain fell on him. On Friday the 13th, another landslide killed 10 people in Jilotzingo, a few kilometers from La Raquelito. The last body was found five days later. Rescue teams are still searching for one more person under the rubble. One week, 17 dead from landslides in the State of Mexico.
“These deaths could have been avoided with better urban planning, but so many years of institutional neglect have caused the urban sprawl to continue at a rapid pace,” explains Óscar Adán Castillo, a researcher at the Intercultural University of the State of Hidalgo. “The victims are hardworking people living in popular neighborhoods, who, due to the high cost of land in the city, had no other option but to buy a piece of land near a ravine, river, sewage canal, or on the slope of a hill,” adds the expert, who has particularly studied floods as a social phenomenon in urban peripheries.
The same rains also caused flooding in the Tejocote neighborhood in Ecatepec and in Coacalco. Chalco spent weeks moving around in canoes through sewage water. This was just in the last month. In the collective memory remains Cerro Chiquihuite in Tlalnepantla, a massive rock avalanche in 2021 that killed four people, including two children aged three and five. “These are places lacking urban planning that were initially populated through invasion-occupation processes, poorly regulated by the State, even lacking basic services such as drainage or drinking water. They are the product of socio-spatial segregation processes and unequal urban development,” continues Castillo.
The State of Mexico is a recurrent victim of avalanches, floods, and earthquakes. The so-called natural disasters are phenomena that affect communities lacking urban planning or risk prevention policies the most: irregular settlements like those populating the hills around the capital, where rural migrants arrive. In the field of disasters, Mexico is the most vulnerable country in Latin America, according to the latest World Risk Report 2023 from the German Ruhr University of Bochum.
Delfina Gómez, elected governor by Morena of the State of Mexico in 2023 after nearly a century of PRI hegemony, toured Naucalpan on Tuesday and blamed the problem on informality. “The problem in these places lies in the fact that people settled in areas that unfortunately were not suitable,” she said afterward. The Morena member assured that they are monitoring the territory for the risk of new landslides.
Rivers of Excrement
A river of sewage water runs down the street on Wednesday in Tejocote, a neighborhood in Ecatepec built on the slopes of the Sierra de Guadalupe. The heavy rains caused a torrent that, as it made its way, dragged rocks and cars along. One of the rocks broke a pipe that now spews excrement. “It’s been a rough week. The drains broke down, the streets were unpaved, and here the rocks were huge, and we had to move them among the people. Yesterday, after six days, the government finally did something and sent transports to move the debris,” summarizes Yael Martínez, a 19-year-old resident.
Behind him, a group of people carries long white pipes to fix the sewer system, which they bought with 3,000 pesos (about 150 dollars) collected among everyone. It’s a representative image: when something public breaks, authorities rarely arrive; it’s the community that organizes to repair it or leaves it as it is. One of the cars dragged by the water broke the fence of Luis Guerrero’s house, 45. The torrent also flooded his patio. “The whole street was covered in dirt, and among the neighbors, we cooperated and hired an excavator and trucks service for 6,000 pesos, but it only covered two trips. The municipality should come to remove the excess dirt. It’s almost always resolved among neighbors; there is municipal support, but it takes a long time. We can’t wait that long,” says Guerrero.
Floods in the street, no water at home. A family collects fecal water from the broken pipe in buckets. They need it, at least, to flush the toilet. They recycle the water with excrement for lack of something better. “We’ve been like this for about three months; the water comes but very rarely, once a week. Here, as you can see, it’s more or less like a small town; we’re a bit used to it,” says Martínez. Once, they went a year and a half without supply. “We were the ones who closed López,” says the teenager: they blocked López Portillo Avenue, a road that connects Cuautitlán Izcalli, Tultitlán, Coacalco, and Ecatepec, in protest.
When the streets stop being vertical and level out, water and mud stagnate. The La Loma market and Monte Chimborazo street are covered with mountains of dry mud. The torrent swept away pieces of asphalt and the fences of some houses. The Army and municipal teams are cleaning the mud with excavators and shovels. They still have a few days of work left. Alicia Reyes watches them from her fruit shop. She is 60 years old and has been here for two decades. “Never, ever” had she seen a storm like this, she promises. All the neighbors say the same. “It rained too much, a dam up there broke, and it swallowed all the land. I’m very sad because I depend on what I sell, and nothing has been sold. I come with the hope of making something because fruits and vegetables spoil.” She also doesn’t have running water at home. In her store, there is a leak: she collects what falls into a bucket and uses it to go to the bathroom, wash dishes, and wash her hands.
Guardians of the Hills
Wendy Morales, an academic at the Institute of Geology of UNAM, went to Jilotzingo two days after the landslide that killed 10 people. Her mission was to analyze the terrain to prevent rescue teams from taking risks. After studying the landslide site, she walked seven kilometers uphill following a stream to find the origin of the avalanche. “We determined that the detachment came from there, which flowed along the entire course, many tons of material,” she explains.
For Morales, there were “vulnerability conditions” in addition to the precariousness of the settlement: “Due to climate change, there are droughts that bring forest fires. In the part where the landslide occurred, there was one, which destabilizes the support, the vegetation, breaks the rock, and degrades it. Combined with rain, it is easier for a landslide to occur. We have to get used to it because these rains will be more frequent; the impact of climate change leads us to these extremes.”
The solutions involve working from the local level, she argues. “It’s a job for the three levels of government. Many times, municipalities don’t have the technical capacities or resources. The State can reach further. If you educate and sensitize neighbors to identify risk areas, as we call them, guardians of the hills, you have a potential of eyes that will help identify unstable areas: springs emerging, small trees starting to lean, fences cracking. Very visible things for people that can be a focus of attention for authorities.”
Despite the informality of the settlements, for Morales, relocation is “the last resort”: “People have a dynamic in the space they inhabit, their supports, their workplaces. There is a rootedness that, when you move them and don’t consider all these aspects, you put them in a more vulnerable situation. There are nature-based works to reduce risk: a bit of engineering, channeling waters, draining rivers. We still have time to regulate land occupation, especially in areas susceptible to these phenomena.”
Óscar Zúñiga is 49 years old, has a broken nose, a Death Metal band t-shirt, and a large necklace around his neck. He is a construction worker. He lives in a cabin made of pallets, sheet metal, and a tarp on the dirt floor of the hill in Naucalpan where six people died on Monday. His shack is just a few meters away, but it was spared from the landslide. “Nothing like this had ever happened. In other places, yes, but not here on my block. It feels bad that people in my community went through this. Honestly, it scares me. We live here, and just look at the area, it’s an irregular area to live in,” he says, looking around: the broken hill, fallen trees, crushed vegetation, houses built with trash.
Source: El Pais
