World

'Don Goyo' Takes A Nap

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 17, 2000 / 10:06 PM EST / CBS

The Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico City settled into a quiet slumber Wednesday after its biggest eruption in more than a millennium, and volcano experts said the worst appeared to be over.

But a spokeswoman for Mexico's president wouldn't confirm the scientific report, and officials said they would likely keep residents of towns on the volcano's slopes in shelters at least through Christmas.

Shelter directors were making arrangements Wednesday for Christmas celebrations, asking for donations for gifts and piñatas for the children. Evacuees did their best to turn school classrooms into temporary homes.

"It would be nice to go home to celebrate the birth of Jesus with our families, but at least we are calm and safe here with our children," said 38-year-old Dominga Luna, one of more than 1,000 evacuees from San Nicolas de los Ranchos, a village in the shadow of the volcano.

At the Miguel Aleman School in Cholula, 65 miles southeast of Mexico City, children played on seesaws and monkey bars in a thick, sun-illuminated haze caused by falling ash. Women draped in shawls scrubbed clothes in aluminum wash tubs, hanging their laundry on makeshift clotheslines and available bushes. Others mopped the floors of their small rooms.

Soldiers manned roadblocks around the villages nearest to the volcano to ward off looters and to keep evacuated residents from returning home too early.

The 17,886-foot Popocatepetl (pronounced poh-poh-kah-TEH-peh-til) sprayed a fountain of hot rock and ash on Monday and Tuesday in the biggest eruption in 1,200 years — a burst that convinced even the most skeptical residents that it was time to flee.

On Wednesday, it once again looked like a harmless mountain, its crater a dusty ridge surrounded by clouds.

"It's absolutely quiet. So much so, that it's as if were talking about another volcano," said Guillermo Melgarejo, director of civil protection for Puebla state. "Its seismic activity, the tremors, have diminished considerably."

Top volcano experts told government officials that the eruption had relieved pressure inside the volcano, and that there was no longer a risk of a catastrophic eruption, a spokesman for the interior secretariat said Wednesday.

"There will no longer be a big eruption," spokesman Fernando Lopez said. "It's releasing pressure."

But Martha Sahagun, spokeswoman for President Vicente Fox, said officials had made no such determination. "There is no declaration to that effect," she said.

Officials in the area around the volcano said they would keep the shelters open for at least another week or two to guarantee the area is safe.

For days, many of the 41,000 people who live at the base of Popocatepetl had ignored warnings to leave the area — until the volcano showered incandescent rocks and ash late Monday and early Tuesday from its glowing crater.

By Tuesday afternoon, the only signs of life in most tons within six miles of the volcano were stray dogs staggering through empty streets, donkeys braying in untended yards and groups of journalists and soldiers keeping watch in the town's main plazas.

To the Nahua Indians who have long lived on its flanks, the volcano is more than a smoking, grumbling mountain monitored by scientists.

It is "Don Goyo," protecting his sleeping wife.

Indian residents have long worshipped the volcano, a powerful symbol in Mexican culture. Artists personify Popocatepetl and the nearby dormant Iztaccihuatl volcano as sleeping Aztec lovers because from a distance their shapes look like a man kneeling over a reclining woman. The image is sold on calendars, posters and T-shirts.

So when Popocatepetl hurled hot rocks and ash down its slopes, many felt betrayed by their sacred mountain, long worshipped as a god.

"There are a lot of people who are sad because he really scared us when he shot up fire and lava and almost killed us," said Iliaria Solano Jimenez, 75, a Nahua woman from San Nicolas de los Ranchos. "He kicked us out of our villages, and he no longer wants us there. Who knows why. What does he want from us?"

The peak is visible from Mexico City, a metropolis of 18 million people 40 miles to the northwest. But the activity for now, at least, had little impact on the city itself.

Huge columns of ash have been blowing south, sparing the city from a rain of soot that some had feared would clog the already-polluted air and shut down the busy international airport. Thus far, the airport has reported no interruption in service.