The new communities:
"Unión of May 31st", El Tesoro, Quiche province.

The only way in or out of the community baptised by its residents "Union of May 31st" is an eight-hour trek through the mountains, or a hair raising and costly twenty-minute journey on a small and fragile plane from the town of Coban. Either way, the 450 families that have resettled on the former cardamom estate, set in the valleys between the looming mountain ranges of Quiché, find the isolation one of their biggest obstacles to overcome.

"After almost two years here we have progressed," says community leader Antolin Maldonado, "but what makes everything harder has been the absence of roads. All the materials we need to bring in, or the produce we need to take out, has to go by plane. And that means a huge expense."

When ECHO-Oxfam GB, through the local NGO Alianza, began its ambitious project to improve 450 emergency houses, all the construction materials had to be moved in by air, says Douglas Ortiz, a Guatemalan architect hired by Oxfam for the project. But what immediately impressed Douglas was the determination of the people to get their share of the materials down from the primitive airstrip and across the valleys to their individual plots. They also had to carry the wood used for the walls, as well as the sand and gravel needed for mixing the cement from the surrounding hills and riverbanks. "Collecting these materials took people a huge amount of time and effort, and they often did it without mules or horses," Douglas says.

Overcoming these obstacles, the dirt flooring inside each house has been replaced by cement - which is easier to clean and more hygienic. And the rickety stick and plastic structures in which people first lived after they arrived from the mountains have been replaced by houses with concrete pillars, zinc roofing and wooden planks for walls. Better still, there is now running water outside each house, pumped down from the surrounding hills through shiny plastic tubes - also flown in by plane.

"This is so much better than in the mountains, or when we first arrived here - we lived under plastic sheeting," says one resident, Sabina Hernandez. The home improvements have also meant improvements in the state of each family's health. Many people in the community still show the signs of prolonged periods of living rough during the years they spent on the run from the army. But their children now have a better chance for the future. "The children no longer play in the mud and dust, and that helps keep them healthier," says Sabina. "Soon after we got here they gave us roofing and installed the water. That helped a lot, the children don't get as sick as before," agrees Jacinto Raimundo Maton, sitting looking out across the valley from his new home, a fresh breeze blowing in his face. The youngsters also now have the chance to attend school regularly, although the school building erected by the government on one of the slopes of the hillsides cannot meet the demand from the 700 children under 12 in the community.

Perched atop what will eventually be the roof of his new house, 36-year-old Sebastian Chavez says that the construction work has also been a learning process. The local NGO Alianza provided skilled workmen, but most of the toil has been done by the inhabitants themselves. "We had to learn on the job. In the mountains we lived in stick houses, we didn't know how to put up these things," he says proudly pointing to the concrete pillars that will support the roof. 

For poor peasants, like Sebastian, dispossessed of the land on which they originally lived before the war, having a plot of land to call his own is a major step forward. "We're really pleased because we own this land. We never thought we'd be able to say that this is mine. Little by little we'll be able to make it produce, but for now, it's enough just to have a plot for one's own."

Vitrual Tour of the new communities.

 ECHO-OXFAM GB's contribution to rebuilding and resettling in El Tesoro:

• Installation of drinking water for 450 households
• Temporary shelter and building materials to improve housing.
• Medicines medical staff for community clinic and training for health promoters and midwives.
• Farming implements, seeds, herbicides, grains for each household.
• Firewood, soap, sugar fortified with vitamins and cooking equipment for each household
• Communal corn mills

Jacinto Raimundo Matón

"There's a change now, in how we live, but we need development, production. Before it was all suffering, although we cried out for help no one listened. But since we came out into the open all that changed. I hope that the support continues from our brothers and sisters. Not like the government, which has done nothing....
"Now there're aren't any weapons, we don't hear any more gunfire, but what we do hear are the sounds of poverty, the high cost of living, the misery...
 "We never thought things would change, we have been struggling to achieve peace. What we've got is not total tranquillity, it's like a half measure, but it's a change. At least we don't have to be worrying about the army all the time, or about the bombs. That's all we thought about before, now it's different, it's quieter...we have a light at the end of the tunnel, it's not like the times before."