But many can remember worse. They came from places with rarely enough to eat, where more babies died than lived, where an education meant learning to spell a name and count to 10. In Chalco Valley, people are not so much desperate as determined. Down the street from the junior high, a horde of teachers, students and parents have set to work cleaning the refuse-addled grounds of an elementary school. Women yank old sheets of tar paper from the mud and carry them to the street for the trash trucks.
Children roll away old tires.
Men set to work on large piles of rubble with shovels and picks. Students sand old school desks, returning to them a sheen lost years before. Mexicans are very united. Everything's a struggle. Students from the sixth grade have to take an exam to get to the seventh.