He used his four-wheel drive vehicle to ford engorged streams and deliver food, medicine, clothing, and water to the village. He's also taken gas stoves and dry mattresses to Matos and four nearby villages, where another 800 people live. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Venezuela is one of five church organizations here that compose the newly formed ACT-Venezuela. Residents of Matos are descended from African slaves. They live off their harvest of cassava and fruit trees, as well as fish they pull from the rivers that flow through their jungle home.
Most families grow a bit of cacao that they sell for cash.
Some village men get occasional jobs on nearby plantations or as construction assistants in Miranda's cities. Hinz has talked with families here about constructing new homes on top of two-meter high stilts, a method commonly employed throughout the Caribbean which would allow them to withstand the minor floods that come every year. Hinz has also met several times with the governor of Miranda, Enrique Mendoza, trying to persuade the regional government not to push Matos residents into relocation in other parts of the country. The idea of relocating Venezuelans from the crowded capital and heavily populated coastal areas into the country's relatively underpopulated interior is a wish of social engineers that has been around for years. With large sections of Caracas and nearby coastal states devastated by last month's tragedy, the government of President Hugo Chavez has dusted off the relocation scheme and championed it as a way to solve the needs of affected families.