According to the official statistics reported on January 24, more than 54,000 people have been evacuated from areas damaged by the earthquake and 1.1 million people, or 18 percent of the country's population of 6.2 million people, are homeless. Emergency shelters that have been set up only have the capacity to house 75,000 people.

The earthquake has aggravated the already precarious social and economic conditions working people face, such as lack of adequate housing, access to medical services, medicine, drinking water, and sanitation facilities. Rapid deforestation has made the effects of the earthquake worse, and inadequate roads and highways have hampered rescue efforts. These social conditions are consequences of the distortion and underdevelopment of El Salvador's economy as a semicolonial nation dominated by U.S. and other foreign capital.

In addition, the policies of successive capitalist governments have accelerated the plunder of El Salvador by finance capital, placing the burden of the country's economic crisis on the backs of workers and peasants.

The current regime, led by the right-wing ARENA party, approved a law that pegs the national currency, the colon, to the U.S. dollar and allows the free circulation of the dollar. This will have devastating consequences for the living standards of working people. The government has also carried out the privatization of banks, and a sell-off of crucial services such as electric and telecommunications companies, leading to layoffs and rising prices.

The regime approved a 13 percent tax on basic grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and medicines last April, in a country where the income of 48 percent of all households falls below the poverty line.

Since the earthquake, officials from the Ministry of Health have reported a 70 percent increase in cases of acute diarrhea, which affects mostly children. There is also concern that cholera, dengue, and other gastrointestinal diseases could reach epidemic proportions as a result of the social crisis.

Government officials' initial estimate of the damages stands at $1 billion--almost half the country's annual budget. Since the quake disrupted communication and travel throughout the country this figure is likely to increase, as more reports of damages trickle in from rural areas.

The earthquake devastated the homes of many workers and farmers. The National Emergency Committee has reported that 118,326 homes were damaged, 74,955 destroyed, and 688 buried. Of the $206 million allocated for earthquake damages, however, only $9.5 million has been targeted to help working people directly.

Half of the deaths were registered in a middle-class neighborhood called Las Colinas in Santa Tecla, a city located 12.5 miles from the capital city of San Salvador. A mudslide there, triggered by the earthquake, buried 500 homes and an estimated 1,000 people.

Environmentalists from the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology (CESTA) and the Salvadoran Ecological Unity (UNES) blamed ARENA members of congress, building companies, and the Flores government for the tragedy because they allowed construction and indiscriminate deforestation on land classified as "high risk" for landslides. The groups had organized marches of residents of the area--on the same streets that are now buried--to protest the construction. The previous mayor of Santa Tecla had asked the Supreme Court to block about 20 construction projects due to the risk, a request turned down by the court last year.

Numerous newspaper reports indicate that the aid effort by the government is disorganized and slow, especially in the devastated rural communities, and that some officials have not sent aid to municipalities where opposition parties are in control.

Most of the aid from the United States has come from private businesses, organizations, and working people. The U.S. Department of Defense sent five helicopters from the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras, with 400 tents and 30 tons of food. One plane of medical and emergency supplies was sent as well. This is in sharp contrast to the $6 billion Washington poured into El Salvador to back the military regime in its 12-year civil war against the revolutionary struggle that unfolded in the 1980s.

The government of Cuba has sent three teams of volunteer medical specialists, nurses, and technicians as well as medicine, specialized equipment, and half a ton of insecticides.

Dr. Arturo Linares, a Cuban doctor, commented that the sharp political exchange that erupted at the November Iberoamerican summit in Panama between Salvadoran president Flores and Cuban president Fidel Castro has not affected Cuba's offer of solidarity because "we are working people of the Americas, and as working people of the Americas, we are one."

The Cuban health-care volunteers have gone to remote and difficult areas of the country where other doctors have been unwilling to go.  
 
 
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