Four months ago, Morales´ home, along with 50 others, was washed away by flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Stan. High on the slopes behind, brown patches are all that remain of other communities that sloughed into the valley when the heavy rains hit.

"It left us nothing," he said. "No clothes, no house. Nothing."

In Chiapas, where Stan left 44,000 people without homes last October, frustration is mounting as victims like Morales still wait for government aid tied up in red tape and administrative procedure.

Stan swept across Mexico and Central America at the beginning of October last year, killing some 1,500 people in the region, 82 of them in Chiapas. One of the worst hit regions was the Soconusco, a series of steep-sided mountains where mudslides and flooding damaged houses, crops and roads.

Vega de Guerrero, where Julio Morales lives, lies In the heart of those mountains,

Morales recounts how the rising river trapped him on one side and his wife and family on the other.

"She thought I was dead, at first," he said softly. "We sent messages back and forth with a slingshot."

Stringing a wire across the river, villagers were able to get medicine and other necessities to family on the far side. Meanwhile, they waited for help from the government.

"The helicopters finally arrived with fresh drinking water. Eight days later," he said.

Morales is bitter, not at the memory of the long wait for water, but at the even longer one his family now faces today. The Morales´ are paying US$10 a month - money they say they can barely afford - to rent a one-room mud-brick house from a neighbor.

Other victims in Vega de Guerrero huddle under ragged tarpaulins or cram 20 at a time into one family member´s house. They have all been promised new housing by the government, but a protracted bureaucratic process and wrangling between federal, state and local authorities have Morales´ wondering if it will ever really happen.

"Eleven times the same brigades have come here. From the state government, from Sedesol - that´s the federal government, from the Housing Institute, and they still haven´t said when we´ll get a new house," he said.

FILING THE RIGHT PAPERS

The federal and state governments have earmarked US$200 million dollars for house reconstruction in Chiapas. But victims, sometimes barely literate and with limited understanding of government bureaucracy, are dismayed by the amount of paperwork required to qualify for this and other aid.

Ernestina Rodríguez has been offered US$11,000 to repair her partially damaged home in the city of Motozintla.

"They´re asking for a ton of papers to get it," she exclaimed within the muddy shell that remains of her house. "Showing we paid taxes, a letter from the municipal president proving the house is ours, a paper from a notary public, but that costs 5,000 pesos (US$500). Why are they asking people for all this?"

An official from the Secretary of Social Development (Sedesol), a key federal agency in the reconstruction project, said there were hurdles to clear before funding can be released.

"We´ve got to go from A to B to C," said Jesús Ortega, of Sedesol´s Chiapas division. "(We have to) find places for the new houses, make sure they have access to services, make sure they have road access .. and evaluate the new locations to make sure we optimize our resources."

But it´s not only replacement housing for the victims that is slow in coming. Materials for emergency shelters are only now beginning to arrive and, in at least one location, 20 tons of food aid sit in a warehouse undistributed, according to local aid workers.

Roads are in disarray; on one 25 km stretch of mountain highway - still so treacherous following the rains that a truck recently slid off it into a ravine, killing one - only a single piece of machinery was seen working to repair it.

A few hours north of Vega de Guerrero, the communities of Nueva Argentina and Tesoro - each home to several hundred residents - remain cut off from the outside world. A single bulldozer from the state government was sent out to fix the road, but by mid-January the driver hadn´t been seen for weeks.

"Who knows when he´ll be back," said local Reynaldo Ramírez. "We have no phone number to call and find out."

THE PROCESS OF RECONSTRUCTION

Sedesol´s Ortega acknowledged that no replacement houses have yet been built.

"This is a process of reconstruction," he said. "Of course, there´s a certain urgency, but the emergency is now over."

At a small refugee camp in the village of Honduras, deep in the mountains, internees are still in dire straits, however.

Dirty-faced children cry and hacking coughs resonate from every room. One hundred and eighty people live in this tarpaper and tin camp, having escaped Nueva Argentina when Stan destroyed their houses and their farmland. They are waiting to find out if the government will offer them homes elsewhere, and the uncertainty is taking its toll, said Manuel Ramírez.

´SLEEPING ON THE GROUND´

"We´ve been sleeping for four months on the ground. It´s wet. A lot of the kids are sick," he said.

Four weeks ago, the villagers of Honduras cut off the camp´s access to water and firewood. Norma Medina is a member of Cáritas, the international charity that built the camp. She says it wasn´t easy to get the villagers to agree to the camp in the first place.

"It´s not that they (Honduras villagers) are bad, it´s they don´t trust the government to do anything about the refugees. They are afraid they will be left there," Medina said.

So far, no government official has stepped in to mediate between the villagers and the refugees. Ortega, of Sedesol, says it´s out of the federal government´s hands.

"You´ll have to ask the municipality, or the people running the camp. If they don´t have the answer ... then only God does," he said.

The local municipal president wasn´t available for an interview. But the head of the local Family Welfare office - the municipal president´s wife - Flor de María Morales claimed the camp had been built by the municipality. She was surprised to learn it was actually built by the charity. She added she was unaware the refugees had no access to water or firewood.

"I haven´t been out there because of Christmas vacations and now we´re just getting back from vacations," she said.

DANGEROUS CONDITIONS

For many victims, the greatest loss is of their tiny coffee plantations dotting the slopes of the Soconusco. These fields are the only source of hard cash for most farmers and those that didn´t wash away perch perilously on unstable slopes. One farmer fell to his death last year while picking coffee in his field. Ramírez says he and his neighbors go to work "with fear and sadness" now.

Despite the lingering unsafe conditions in the area, Ramírez said that visiting SEDESOL agents recommended against relocating to a safer spot.

"They said it could take up to two years to get relocation, because the president is finishing his term this year and who knows what the next guy will do," he said. "Better to take the money, they said, and build houses here."

"We couldn´t talk much," he said, referring to the officials´ visit early last month. "They came in the evening and said they were in a hurry."

The story was echoed by several other hurricane victims, though Sedesol´s Ortega denied officials have made such suggestions.

On Thursday, the Chiapas state chamber of deputies passed a motion demanding the governor provide a "detailed report" on the use of reconstruction funding to date. Opposition politician Roberto Aquiles, who forwarded the motion, accused the governor of mishandling the funds, and said President Vicente Fox had "lied to the people of Chiapas."

"Go to the coast and mountains and look at the roads still blocked," he was quoted as saying. "Where is the reconstruction process?"

While the wrangling goes on, frustration is turning into despair for victims. Back in Vega de Guerrero, Julio Morales looked at a rock that was once in his front yard.

"About a month after the disaster I had this dream. A man comes along and he says open your eyes. Go where you used to live and look for the answer," he said. "Here, where the rock is. I´ve come here many times. And no. I don´t see anything. There´s no answer."