Felipa, 19, in her makeshift shelter. She gave birth during Tropical Storm Manuel before fleeing her home. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Natalia, 18, walks through the abandoned village where she used to live. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Having lost almost all their possessions, the locals were unable to honor their dead as they traditionally have on the Day of the Dead, so they offered flowers. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Indigenous women walk along a dirt road that is being rebuilt after being destroyed by the storm. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Local women look down at the damage the landslides caused in their now abandoned village. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

A young woman and her 1-year-old son in their temporary home, her grandmother’s house. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Very little aid has reached the community, which was very poor even before the storm. The villagers struggle to survive in temporary shelters. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Tropical Storm Manuel, which struck in September, buried this school and most of the rest of the village of San Miguel Amoltepec Viejo in Guerrero. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

SAN MIGUEL AMOLTEPEC VIEJO, Mexico — Once this was the poorest hamlet in the country. The people worked in the fields, harvesting the corn that they ate. Few adults could read or write. Houses had dirt floors and lacked indoor plumbing.

That was before Manuel, the mid-September tropical storm that unleashed the earth and smothered nearly all the houses, swallowed their possessions and pushed the inhabitants to the higher ground of a cemetery, where they pitched plastic sheeting on gravestones.

Now the nation’s poorest village doesn’t exist, and 336 survivors camp by the roadside under tarps and tin sheets. They rely on food from nearby villages. They don’t know where they will live come winter.

If only they had been tourists.

When Manuel punched the southern state of Guerrero, an area constantly pummeled by earthquakes and storms, the government had no contingency plan. It put the wealthy first. Authorities quickly mobilized airplanes to evacuate thousands of vacationers who were stranded in the resort of Acapulco for what was a long holiday weekend.

Two weeks later, the first shipments of clothing and food from the government finally reached La Montaña region, one of the nation’s poorest and home to isolated clusters of indigenous people. More than 30 people died during the storm, although miraculously none in San Miguel. The landslide occurred during the day, so many were able to get to the sanctuary of the graveyard.

But before those shipments, the earliest aid to the area was spearheaded by a human-rights group, Tlachinollan, not the military, whose troops have long been accused of raping and harassing locals. Soldiers and government agencies that normally deal with disasters came later.

Activists liken the tardy official response to Manuel to the poor government showing after Katrina in the U.S. They say it shows callousness toward ethnic native groups, which have suffered from discrimination since the Spanish conquest more than 500 years ago.

“Authorities are not very interested in helping indigenous people,” concluded Arquimedes Bolito Gonzalez, who is an organizer with Enlace, a workers’-rights organization that tries to promote better living conditions among such groups.