Maracaibo.“Only those of us who live in our own flesh are left with nothing overnight, we know what it feels like,” said one of the affected mothers, a refugee in the El Gallinazo sector, kilometer 40 of the Catatumbo municipality, south of the state lake. Zulia.Three months have passed since the Zulia River burst its banks and caused the break in the retaining wall at kilometer 43 of the El Guayabo-Encontrados national highway.Since then, more than 200 families have been transferred to temporary shelters where they received care from the regional government, foundations and mayors of other municipalities for only 15 days. Today the reality is different.The crying of the children resounds in the halls of the Alberto Roncajolo state basic school in Encontrados, a shelter in which 23 families spend up to two days without eating because social assistance from the national government and the Zulia government has two months that does not arrive.Eliani Mercado is one of the mothers who lost everything in the tragedy, since then she has been there with her children.“Yesterday we didn't eat all day and today we're going the same way.The children cry from hunger, sometimes there is rice and flour but we don't have to throw it away.We are desperate, please help us that we adults endure, but the children do not, do not forget about us, ”she said with a broken voice.The families of the Encontrados shelter say they are worried because the school year will soon begin and they will have to vacate the institution."What are we going to do if we have nowhere to go, everything here is full of water," said one of those affected.Fernando Loaiza, mayor of the Catatumbo municipality, confirmed the lack of food, medicine and medical care in the shelters.He recalled and thanked the help he received during the first days of the tragedy, but assures that his office does not have the resources to attend to the affected families.It has been more than a month since the government of Zulia has not sent resources to take care of the shelters, in which there are currently 33 families.But I also have victims in Limones, Guasimales, Caña Dulce and El Caimán.People ask me to visit them, but I don't have to take them, I don't have enough for 200 bags of food," the local president said by telephone.Loaiza denounced the budget cuts that his office has suffered in the midst of the crisis.“All the mayors of Zulia were cut by 50%.We need the real support of the governorate and the national government.If Manuel Rosales has no resources, he has to go out and say so, but at least he should listen to us and tell us if it is so.Manuel is my friend, my brother, but the reality is that he has abandoned us, ”Loaiza criticized.Until now, the Catatumbo mayor's office has been able to bring food such as cheese, eggs and mortadella to the shelters to cover some breakfasts and dinners, but Loaiza confessed that the biggest problem is with lunches due to lack of animal protein.“In a month we were able to take a cow, the ranchers of El Guayabo were helping us but not anymore.We are fighting alone with this problem.Sometimes they call me that they don't have breakfast and I run out to buy cakes to pay for it, and at once we start looking for lunch and dinner, but sometimes there is no chance, "he said.Loaiza said that his intention is not to ask, but to demand from the national and regional government what corresponds to attend to an emergency situation like the one facing his municipality."I have a jumbo that was laid up more than five years ago and with the last one we could hardly buy the spare parts and that's how we go, little by little, because we need to repair the machinery, it is necessary".He stressed that the roads that give access to the El Rull village continue to deteriorate and warned of new landslides in the area.In addition, he mentioned that the walls that they managed to build in the town of Encontrados must be relieved every time it rains to avoid flooding.“If the backhoe that a friend lent us is damaged, we do it at the point of a shovel«.According to figures from the Catatumbo mayor's office, more than 200 micro-producers were completely ruined.“They are small producers who used to have the cheese they sold daily and now they are subsisting on the fish that the river brings them because they lost everything.Poverty in the municipality is much greater now,” said Loaiza.Neris Castellares is a teacher in the El Rull sector and is currently in the El Gallinazo shelter with her two children.“Those who are in charge of the shelter sometimes have to go out to ask or trust the stores so that we can eat.The lack of food made many refugees return to their homes, but we still have water in the ranches.A lot of people have lost weight,” she said.In El Gallinazo you eat three times a day but the portions are getting smaller and smaller.In addition, they must cook with firewood because the mayor's office hasn't had domestic gas cylinders for three weeks.“My husband is a farm worker, but since the plots are flooded, they fired a lot of staff from the farms, right now he is away from here looking for work.Everything is over here,” said the educator.This weekend, the Minister of Internal Relations, Justice and Peace, Remigio Ceballos, announced through social networks that after 60 days of intervention in the South of the Lake, there were positive results.“We have expanded the relief channel at Kilometer 43, we continue with the dredging of the Zulia River, and the placement of hedgehog-type metal barriers.At the same time, we have guaranteed social care for the affected families.# 68AnosEnElCorazonDelPueblo ”, reads his Instagram account accompanied by a video where he assures that the national government has invested more than 15 million dollars in the work.The mayor of the municipality denied the information.“The ranchers held an auction, a diversion and are looking to put up a barrier to channel the river.The mayor's office has helped with what we could, but that work is paralyzed.I don't know what the minister says they spent that money on because the government has always told us that there are no resources.I saw some videos out there that are lies, what the false minister says, ”said the mayor.Regarding social care, he replied: "I don't understand where those figures that the minister says come from because the truth is that whoever is taking care of the shelters is the mayor's office of the Catatumbo municipality and the foundations, which for a month and a half have not given anything else, so I don't know where they get that information."Maite Cánova, agricultural producer and member of the Committee of Women affected by the flooding of the Zulia River, was blunt:The gap at kilometer 43 remains the same, there is not a single machine there.We do not know with what intention or who is lying, but we are concerned that 15 million dollars have allegedly been invested, when closing the gap costs approximately one million dollars and the government has repeatedly told us that it has no money.We are upset and outraged and we ask ourselves: Where are the resources of the South of the lake?For Cánova the situation gets worse every day.“This week there was another flood of the Zulia river and the few production units that had half managed to dry up with a little bit of summer that there was these weeks, were filled with water again.The access roads to the farms have the river above the ridges, the water reaches the horses by the neck, so we do not understand how Jacqueline Faría and Minister Ceballos say that everything is solved here when we have that level of water ”.The representative of the Women's Committee reported that producers are organizing to hold a second livestock auction on August 18."From the first auction there were 78 animals left to auction, with their sale we hope to raise at least 40,000 dollars more, which would be added to the 80,000 raised in the first auction."The agro-producers of the South of the Lake hope to invest that economic fund in the purchase of 24 containers that will be used to make the breakwater and 24 more containers are missing for the closure of the hole by self-management.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.