Wailing babies crawl about on heaps of mattresses and blankets in front of the altar.Exhausted grandmothers lie down on the pews and stare up at the stained-glass murals.
Thousands of hungry faces line up outside the arched door, waiting for packets of food and water.
The elegant cathedral in the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa has transformed into one of the principal centers for evacuees fleeing floods that devastated southeastern Mexico in late October, leaving at least 10 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless and turning sections of this city into a hazardous swamp.
More arrive daily to take shelter in every corner of the cathedral and throughout its patio and gardens.
Each one brings a story of personal tragedy: how filthy waters enveloped their homes; how they fled from rooftops onto boats and helicopters moving over the riverlike streets; how they lost sight of their loved ones in the chaos.
But amid the suffering, the evacuees are calm and orderly, taking turns to sweep and wash the church aisles and waiting patiently in long lines for the relief packages, even when they have not had food or drink for days."We are not going to fight over the food."
Everybody here has suffered the same," said Maria del Carmen Arias, 48, sitting in the doorway of the crowded church with a sleeping granddaughter in her lap.
Arias said her family of eight escaped through waist-deep water after the river suddenly gushed into their home, taking everything they owned.
Like many of the disaster victims, Arias is from a poor background, living in a neighborhood of tin and cinderblock houses on low ground. She comes from a family of peasants who moved to the city looking for a better life, and she said now she might head back to the countryside and stay with relatives.
Graciela Cruz, 25, slept in the church by night while desperately trying to find her mother during the day. She had not seen her since the floods overtook their house four days earlier.
"I have been to every center and there is no sign of her," Cruz said. "I am here praying she has not been hurt."
Father Manuel de la Cruz Ordonez Hernandez, cathedral rector, said he is unconcerned about the church being damaged while thousands of evacuees live and sleep in every corner of it.
"We are not worried at all. We can repaint the cathedral, rebuild it. Why would we want a beautiful church if the people are suffering?" Father Ordonez asked, talking amid a flurry of requests: an evacuee needs medical help; a new truck of relief supplies has arrived; the electricity lighting up the courtyard has gone out.
Most of the cathedral's Masses have been canceled, but one is celebrated every evening in front of the thousands of evacuees and others who come to join them.
"We are happy that people have a space. God is happy they can hear his word," Father Ordonez said. "The people are desperate and resigned, but they are also patient."
In other parts of the city, residents were more frantic.
An angry crowd blocked a road on the outskirts of Villahermosa, shouting they had not had food and water for days. Their neighborhood had not been flooded, but it had been cut off by water from three sides, and there were no supplies arriving. As in most of the city, all the shops were boarded up, their shelves stripped bare by panic buying and lack of new shipments.
Eventually, a truck of federal police drove up and handed out relief packages.
"You don't get anything unless you fight for it," said Reyes Bernal, who had blocked the road to demand the help.
In some parts of the city, people did not wait for the trucks, but broke into stores and warehouses to pull out food and drink.
A few also helped themselves to other goods, including clothes and TV sets.
Military and police officials said they arrested more than 40 people for looting.
"We will not tolerate looting. Help is arriving," said Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who visited the city three times in the last week.
Government agencies and church charities from across Mexico and the United States and Europe were sending relief after images of the tragedy were beamed across the world.
"We are seeing one of the worst natural catastrophes in the history of the country, not only because of the size of the area affected, but because of the number of people affected," Calderon said.
The swampy oil state of Tabasco has a history of flooding, but has never seen anything of this magnitude.
After a week of heavy rain, two large rivers that snake through Villahermosa burst over the city dams Oct. 31, inundating whole neighborhoods with filthy black water. The rain continued in the following days until most of the city was under water.
Since the first weekend in November, the water levels have started to recede, but only slowly.
The scale of the devastation is seen most clearly from the air. Large swaths of the city appear like a huge lagoon, from which peek the tops of houses. The vast inland sea continues over smaller towns and villages into the Gulf of Mexico. Small neighborhoods on higher ground form little islands, cut off on all sides.
Emergency helicopters and boats continued to rescue people Nov. 5, ferrying some needing urgent medical help.In a sports stadium being used as the headquarters for rescue and relief operations, helicopters were touching down and rushing people out on stretchers and into ambulances.
Medical help is made more difficult by the fact that many hospitals have been flooded and evacuated.
The filthy water full of dead animals and garbage also raises fears of disease, and crews have been vaccinating and testing, worried about outbreaks of cholera, hepatitis and dengue fever.
Thousands have abandoned the city completely, leaving in lines of cars or taking free bus rides to emergency shelters in other Mexican states.
Restaurant owner Catlixco Perez, 56, headed out with his family on the long road to Mexico City, their treasured items crammed into their car.
"The most important thing is that we are all OK," Perez said.
"There are people out there who don't know where their loved ones are."
Some preferred to stay in their houses, fearing they could be robbed or just not wanting to abandon their homes. Even in heavily flooded areas, families continued to take refuge on the second floor and refuse offers of evacuation. Relief crews on boats gave water, food and medicine to those choosing to stay.
Domingo Bautista, 52, and his wife stayed on their top floor in a flooded street for five days, but eventually decided to leave on a boat.
"We needed to get more food," he said, wading out of a boat into a street that had become a makeshift dock.
"Hopefully we will be back home soon."
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