Fears of Hunger Overwhelm Guatemalan Village as El Niño Approaches

While drought expands through Cunen as the spectre of El Niño climate instability approaches, one fear has seized this indigenous Guatemalan village — death from hunger.

The rains still haven’t come here, where local farmers fear the lack of water could ruin the subsistence crops on which they depend to survive.

“If there isn’t rain, (the crops) won’t come … If there isn’t anything, we’re going to die of hunger,” 38-year-old Cecilia Pasa Sarat, who has planted a small amount of corn, told AFP in Xetzac, a village in Cunen.

Cunen is a hard-to-reach mountainous region where the majority of the approximately 47,000 residents are poor and rely on water from wells that are now going dry.

This village in the Indigenous Maya department of Quiche lays in the heart of the Dry Corridor, an arid mountainous stretch running through Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua that’s become vulnerable to extreme climatic events.

Quiche was one of Guatemala’s most hard-hit regions during the El Niño related food crisis in 2023.

Some worry the crisis could return due to a lack of government support.

The phenomenon now fueling local residents’ hunger fears occurs every two to six years as part of a natural climatic cycle that affects the surface temperatures on the Pacific Ocean.

It’s expected to start between June and August, creating planetary ripple effects lasting months.

Prolonged Damage

Weeks of drought have dessicated the dusty streets of Xetzac, where the creeks that usually irrigate the town’s patchwork of corn, potato, broccoli and bean fields are evaporating under the brutal sun.

Taking refuge in the tree shade where the resin scent of pines drifts down the hillside, Elvira Pasa said the eventual loss of the village harvests would only end in “hunger”.

“We farm. We don’t sell it. We just eat it,” the 27-year-old community leader and mother of two boys aged two and seven, told AFP.

“Whatever we plant is what we eat. What will happen if it doesn’t rain?” 43-year-old Lucia Rojop queried.

- AFP