Posted on 11/27/2005 9:14:48 PM PST by Graybeard58
PAHOKEE, Fla. -- Ernesto and Carmen Vasquez are staying home for the holidays this year despite the SUV-sized hole in their living-room ceiling -- a calling card left by Hurricane Wilma -- and the red "X" on their door marking the mobile home as condemned.
It's been one month since Wilma struck their Everglades mobile home park in western Palm Beach County, flattening many of their neighbors' homes, but the couple have yet to be visited by aid workers or local officials. Shelters here are scarce, so they plan to remain in their two-bedroom trailer with their two children -- if the rest of the roof doesn't cave in.
"We still have a house, so I suppose we are among the lucky ones," Carmen Vasquez said.
They are among thousands of Florida's uninsured farmworkers still awaiting help since Wilma thrashed South Florida on Oct. 24, in the nation's worst hurricane season on record. Wilma killed 35 people in the state, destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes, and caused widespread power outages across South Florida.
Farmworker advocates say Wilma has underscored a larger problem: the state's failure to respond to the needs of the mostly Mexican and Central American workers who have reshaped Florida's agricultural communities, replacing many of the native black and Jamaican workers who once dominated the sector.
Vasquez, who emigrated more than 20 years ago from Sinaloa, Mexico, is better off than many neighbors. She and her husband Ernesto, who transports cut sugar cane, are permanent residents. They registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency days after the storm. But in front of their home, a trailer housing nine illegal immigrants was mostly destroyed by Wilma and those men were afraid to tell authorities for fear of being deported, she said.
Local and state officials are unprepared to deal with people who speak Spanish.
In Miami, just 70 miles to the southeast, it is often assumed that residents speak Spanish. But in this Palm Beach County region on Lake Okeechobee, and in many parts of central and northern Florida, few public officials or staff speak Spanish.
Vasquez, who speaks little English, and half a dozen other farmworker wives recently attended a regional meeting to discuss hurricane recovery issues for the area's most vulnerable.
Public officials expressed surprise that many of the women didn't know how to register with FEMA or about plans to build a low-income housing complex.
However, the officials had made little effort to spread the information in Spanish and didn't even hire a translator for the meeting. The official running the session complained that informal translations were slowing the meeting down.
"We need to improve communication with Hispanics," Pahokee City Manager Lillie Latimore said after the meeting. "I could tell we're missing them."
Palm Beach County, thought of as the winter playground for retired New Yorkers, is home to an estimated 190,000 Hispanics, up from about 140,000 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census. That is about 15 percent of the county's population.
"The language can cause big problems for those most in need even if they are here legally," said Francisco Garza, an organizer with the Farmworker Association of Florida, an advocacy group that claims more than 6,000 members.
On one recent evening, staff at a FEMA relief center pleaded with a reporter to help translate for Spanish-speaking storm victims because the volunteer they relied on -- a high school student -- had gone home. The center had two translators, but only for Creole-speaking Haitians.
"FEMA is so strapped," said Tom Kerr, who headed the center. "We really don't know what these people are going to do."
Gov. Jeb Bush has pushed for farmworker housing that can withstand Florida's repeated storms.
"We can't keep replacing substandard housing with substandard housing," he said Monday during a news conference in Coral Gables.
A new Joint Legislative Commission on Migrant and Seasonal Labor will look at housing solutions among other issues.
Carmen Vasquez said she hopes help comes before the next storm. She hopes to build a more permanent home.
"We just finished rebuilding from last year, and now it's destroyed again," she said. "I want to get a loan to buy something a little better. Otherwise, it will be the same thing," she said. "I don't expect them to do everything. I just want a little help."
What is it with the MSM's penchant for involking SUV's on everything that happens ?
Put a hanging chad over it.
Welcome to the 21st Century version of servitude - I call it 'Neo-Slavery'. The employers get docile, on the cheap labor, do not pay taxes or SS and reap the benefits. When something happens these people are on their own and rely on the Taxpayer to make up the shortfall. Nothing new or, for that matter, racist here - Just plain old employer profits and a fraud upon the Taxpayer.
Most of the Hispanics in Palm Beach County are Guatamalan (mainly Mayan, ie don't even speak Spanish) or Mexicans from the far south of that country. There are also plenty of Haitians, legal and illegal.
Most Palm Beach County "residents"/voters don't care as long as their yard work is done and their bed pans are cleaned. As my transplanted from New York/Open Borders father told me over Thanksgiving, "who else is going to push my wheelchair?"
MEDIAN price of a house in Palm Beach County is over $400,000. Many rentals have been converted to condos. As a result, the illegals often commute 40 miles from Pahokee and Belle Glade to work in Boca Raton and Delray Beach.
I'm more worried about the U.S. citizens in Mississippi, who to this day, are apparently still living in tents! It's been three months; how much longer can they live like that? It seems like most of the aid and attention went to those in New Orleans; other communities affected by Katrina seem to have been forgotten.
Not a whole lotta news up here in NY about the plight of Mississipi, but I understand that Biloxi was pretty much wiped off the face of the earth ... and yet not a peep from the MSM about it, anywhere!
So they put the big red X on their own door to condemn their own home?
It's very sad, but just how much can the government do? Now that we are moving into the more frequent hurricane period, watch out.
These are god loving people,just like you and I.You should be ashamed of your self.However you sound like a scumbag.
To any illegals waiting for hurricane relief from me. Be patiant, my check will be in the mail....honest....no foolin'....keep waiting
Only care about yourself? scumbag
I've heard the phrase before, but no-one has parsed out the literal meaning. Please, just what is a "SCUMBAG"?
Thanks for your God Loving words, but I'm a little confused. Exactly what did I say to set you off so? My position is that these people are being exploited just as certainly as slaves were in many respects. Does this make me a scumbag?
[See her profile if you don't get my drift.]
If I was Senor Fox, I'd be teaching English to everybody in Mexico. All the better to leech off of the USA.
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