Mudslide buries Peruvian village, ruins crops

BARBABLANCA, Peru — Gathered along the edge of a mountain, the men, women and children of Barbablanca watched in stunned silence as a river of mud washed over their small village.

The mud slid into windows, covering carefully made beds and school desks. It buried fields filled with avocado trees and the village’s prized ripe green cherimoya fruit. It left Barbablanca’s hydroelectric plant an enclosure of metal rods planted in a blanket of sludge.

“We’ve lost everything,” said Ricardo Lazaro, 73, whose life’s savings were put into building a small hotel destroyed in the worst environmental calamity to strike Peru in nearly two decades. “I don’t know who will help me.”

The rains pummeling Peru, brought about by a warming of Pacific Ocean waters that climatologists are calling a “coastal El Nino,” have left 85 dead, crippled the nation’s infrastructure, ruined thousands of fields of crops and destroyed 800 villages, most much like Barbablanca.

Situated at the foot of the Andes 40 miles from the capital city of Lima, Barbablanca is a community of 160 people, many of whom are farmers dedicated to growing the sweet, heart-shaped cherimoya. Life in Barbablanca revolves around the crops, a red schoolhouse, a medical clinic and a hydroelectric plant at the base of a giant mountain.

In January, the residents of Barbablanca began noticing steady, unusual rains, and in early March, the downpours became worrying. For two weeks, it rained for more than six hours a day. The residents decided that if rainfall worsened and a mudslide seemed imminent, they would flee up the mountain to higher ground.

Mudslides have struck throughout Peru in March as the rains have continued. On cellphone cameras, Peruvians have captured video of sudden gushes of water, mud and debris that swept up trucks, buses, people and cows.