The Smoking Mountain Stirs
SANTIAGO XALITZINTLA, MEXICO--To the farmers who have made a living growing corn, flowers, and fruit trees on the fertile sand deposits here, Don Gregorio Popocatepetl is an old friend. And a respected presence. The village tiempero, or rainman, Don Antonio Analco, makes this clear by politely calling the snow-topped volcano "Don Gregorio." Since the tiempero was 8, Popocatepetl has appeared to him, sometimes in visions as an old man with white hair who speaks to him and other times in dreams.
Don Antonio makes ritual offerings to Don Gregorio, asking for rain and thanking the bountiful volcano for good harvests. There are other regular inducements to win the volcano's cooperation--beer, tortillas, and the traditional turkey stew in mole sauce--left on a knoll near the crater as villagers play their Aztec reed instruments, perform the ribbon dance, and pray.
These days, the accent is on prayer. Popocatepetl--which means "Smoking Mountain" in Nahuatl, the native Indian language--has entered what scientists consider a dangerous phase of explosive eruptions. Twice in late August the 17,887-foot "El Popo" spewed incandescent lava more than a mile high and rained ash on nearby villages. A no-go zone was declared within a 3-mile range of the crater. Santiago Xalitzintla is a precarious 5 miles from the volcano; its residents are among the 400,000 people living in the highest-risk area. Were the volcano to fully erupt, many thousands in this zone would be mortally threatened by the mudflows and searing clouds of gas and ash that would spew forth.
Urban disorder. Metropolitan Mexico City, with its 17 million residents, is only 50 miles away. Volcanologists say that if El Popo blew, it would create ash-laden air, snarls of traffic, and clogged drains--urban disorder much like what Mount St. Helens brought to Tacoma, Wash., and Seattle in May 1980.
If and when the order to evacuate Santiago Xalitzintla and adjacent towns is made, it will come from the National Disaster Prevention Center, known by its Spanish initials as CENAPRED. The team of volcanologists and officials charged with monitoring El Popo's activity would alert state authorities, who would, in turn, issue the order to evacuate. In the worst-case scenario, says Roberto Meli, director general of CENAPRED, gases would erupt and hot stones would melt the glacier on the northeast side of the volcano, sending mudflows rushing down the gorges to Santiago Xalitzintla and other villages. But many in the town are unwilling to prepare for this possibility. El Popo's last major eruption was in 1802--proof enough to some villagers that their attentive ministrations have paid off. Just last year, after fires broke out on the hillsides, residents carried ointments to soothe the burns on Don Gregorio's feet that had left him angry. And to beseech El Popo for rains to bring a good harvest, the tiempero has been hunting for the gifts Don Gregorio requested in a dream--a thick bracelet of silver or gold and a metal figurine of a frog.
This story appears in the September 14, 1998 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.