New Delhi, May 18 -- When bombs fell from the sky and bullets ricocheted off her concrete floors, 74-year-old Maria Cabrera and her family fled into the night-cloaked mountains of central Mexico with only the clothes on their backs.

A week later, Cabrera picks through the charred scraps of her life, salvaging pots, woven cloths and a small wooden cross. She knows that it's the last time she'll return to her home of 60 years.

"Oh God, why have you abandoned me," she said through heartbroken sobs, wandering past burned ashes of what was once her mattress in a small room with a collapsed roof and a melted refrigerator just through the door. "How are we going to rebuild? We don't have money, we don't have anything."

She joined a growing nu...