Thousands of Mayans lose homes to Dean

UH-MAY, Mexico (AP) — Thousands of Mayan Indians lost homes as Hurricane Dean blew through the Yucatan peninsula, but their real wealth was the trees, now scattered and broken in the storm’s wake. Village after village is carpeted with fallen mangoes, oranges, guanabanas and mameys that will never be harvested.

Mexico’s Mayan communities have survived centuries of oppression, expulsion from valuable land along the Caribbean coast, and many damaging storms. But they say no other hurricane has hit the Maya so hard.

Dean ripped most of the roof off Israel Cruz Chan’s home in the village of Nohbec, not far from where storm’s center tore through the jungle on Tuesday. But Cruz Chan, 40, demonstrated the resilience of the Mayan villages of the Yucatan Peninsula.

He surveyed the destruction — all of his furniture, his few appliances, and bedding, soaked and tumbled into the front yard of his cinderblock home. Then he got to work, borrowing a ladder and busily nailing up new sheets of roofing.

“If I just sit and wait until they help me, I’ll die waiting,” he said. “If I wait, with my hand out, who’s going to give me food, and where am I going to cook it? I’d rather start working, first.”

Dean brought heavy rain to central Mexico on Thursday but lost strength and was downgraded to a tropical depression. The death toll stood at 25, mostly in the Caribbean.