"I don't even have a uniform, nor any texts or notebooks. They were all carried off by the river," continued Raquel, who along with her mother and four brothers and sisters, has been living in a local refugee shelter since Hurricane Stan-related flooding destroyed their home earlier this month.

Rachel's mother, Maribel Santos Barrios, said that a state official had come to the refuge and promised them that the children would not miss this school year, and that all would be provided with uniforms and supplies free of charge.

But that promise has done little to lift the spirits of the schoolchildren of Tapachula, who have seen many of their schools carried off or buried in mud by the flooded Coatán River.

The director of Chiapas' School Construction Committee (Coces), Carlos Cruz Coutiño, said that in the state's 32 municipalities affected by Hurricane Stan, a total of 17 schools have already been identified as "total losses." And that number is expected to rise, for of the 464 schools reported to have been damaged by the flooding, only half had been officially inspected as of this week.

In the Miguel de la Madrid neighborhood of this riverside city, the Vicente Guerrero primary school was one such victim of the swollen Coatán River. One half of the structure has already caved in, while the other half is completely covered with mud.

In what was once a classroom, a young boy named César rummaged through the wreckage. All he had found were half-destroyed workbooks, papers and drawings, all covered in mud.

A few dozen meters away sat another virtually ruined school, this one a preschool, surrounded by private homes left completely destroyed by the storm.

In the Obrera and Las Américas neighborhoods, the latter where Raquel Santos Barrios and her family had lived, the scene was the same.