Vanessa Bauza

CAJIO, Cuba · For generations, the fortunes of fishermen in the village of Cajio have been intertwined with the ocean's bounty. Last month it took back everything it gave, razing the village and leaving most residents to rebuild from rubble.

Hurricane Charley's 105-mph winds damaged 70,000 homes across Cuba. But no village was as devastated as Cajio, 45 miles south of Havana, where huge waves crashed over rooftops, ripping wooden homes straight from ground and leaving behind a surreal checkerboard of concrete floors across several blocks.

As the fiercest storm to strike Cajio in 60 years, Charley spared only 10 of the village's 300 homes. More than 1,200 residents evacuated with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Three weeks later, about 300 homeless residents are still living in a nearby high school turned government shelter. Other families, who refuse to leave their seaside village despite the destruction, have begun to build shacks back on the beach out of scrap lumber.

"The only thing I can compare this to is the bombing of Iraq," said Tania Murgado, a Cajio native. All that remained of the beachfront home where she was born and raised was a colorful tile floor. Most of her belongings were swept away except for a few chairs, a television set and a refrigerator, which she found three blocks inland. Still she has no plans to leave.

"I was born here and I will die here," Murgado said.

For about three weeks she and her family have slept on borrowed foam mattresses in a small shed they rebuilt from pieces of lumber they found.

Next door, fisherman Mario Diaz Perez and his family of nine were cramped into what used to be a vegetable stand. His home, like Murgado's, was completely washed away. His fishing boat, which he chained down with two locks, was swept into a field almost a mile away.

But Diaz Perez says his livelihood and future are in Cajio. He will not move inland.

"My father was a fisherman, my grandfather and my great grandfather," said Diaz Perez, 42. "My whole life is this. I won't feel happy if they take me from my little piece of land."

Unlike hurricane clean up in Florida, where residents generally rush to Home Depot or other building supply stores for help, people in Cuba, most of whom live on average $10 a month salaries, depend on the government for help.

Charley caused more than $1 billion in damage when it hit western Cuba on Aug. 13. Municipal Communist Party leader, Roberto Perez said the government will build 200 new prefabricated homes for those who want to return to Cajio and will restore electricity and phone lines starting this month.

But supply shortages and power outages often plague Cuban cities even in the best of circumstances. In Cajio, hurricane recovery has barely begun and residents say it may take many months to regain any sense of normality.

Fisherman Luis Hidalgo Perez has been living in a beachside elementary school with his wife Barbara and half a dozen other families. The air is thick with flies and mosquitoes and an afternoon rain shower quickly drenches their meager belongings. Hidalgo Perez spends his days picking through Cajio's rubble looking for anything he might used to rebuild his home, which was blown away entirely leaving only the toilet.

"From the morning until I go to bed I go around picking up cement blocks, anything that works to rebuild because I don't know what will happen," Hidalgo Perez, 34, said. "Some say they [the government] will give you a house, other say they will give you a mattress. They told us not to worry, everything will be made new. But we haven't seen anything more."

For about a mile leading into the seaside village, electric poles are still standing askew at almost identical 45-degree angles. Grasslands are combed down as though flattened by a giant hand. The mangroves look scorched from the fierce winds.

Retired fisherman Alberto Vicente San Roman, 64, says he loves his hometown, but, unlike most residents, he will move inland. His wooden house, nestled next to the Cajio river, is partly demolished and he is no longer up to the task for facing the annual hurricane season.

"What time I have left I want to be peaceful. I'm not so young anymore to confront danger," San Roman said. "When the sea says `I'm coming,' there's nothing that can stop her. Nature gives and nature takes away."

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