After months of drought, food and water supplies are dwindling. Crops are dying. Families are selling livestock and eating seeds as meager savings run low.
Even with those drastic measures, millions in Latin America are at risk for malnutrition. And there's no end in sight.
“Poor people age quickly because of worry,” Pablo Hernandez from San Pablo in El Salvador said in a statement provided to Oxfam America, an arm of the international aid organization working in the region. “Hunger is a stress that you’re carrying all the time. You want to give everything to your children.”
The shortages are an effect of El Niño, the weather pattern that is wreaking havoc across the globe. The high temperatures and drought conditions exacerbated by El Niño in parts of the world are creating a dire forecast for families. Oxfam estimates that 3.5 million people in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador do not have enough to eat. In El Salvador, for example, an Oxfam study found that 60% of families living in impacted areas "face serious food insecurity."
"Many are now out of options and need urgent support with basic necessities like food and clean water," Mercedes Garcia, Oxfam’s humanitarian officer in El Salvador, said in a statement. "They also need long-term support so they can adapt to future unpredictable weather patterns and start producing again. We must invest more in these forward-looking approaches."
Oxfam is working to support those families by providing economic opportunities and support to continue farming throughout the drought, but funding is also running dry. Ahead, a powerful look at how families in Guatemala are coping with the conditions.
Rosa Elvira Martinez, a resident of Centro, a hamlet in La Marimba in the department of Chiquimula, Guatemala, with her children. From left to right, Reina (10), Randolfo (4), Rosa in the center, and David (7). The family is one of many struggling amid worsening conditions.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Julian Lopez Ramos, at 83, the oldest man in the hamlet of El Mojón, sits outside his house with his daughter-in-law, Maria Julia Perez, 33. Her youngest child has been suffering from malnutrition because of the drought.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Julia Perez shows off the gray-water filtering system she built with the help of Oxfam to tackle the food insecurity brought on by the drought. Her youngest child was diagnosed with malnutrition and she was encouraged to plant the garden to improve the family's diet. She waters it religiously.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Jose Ricardo Tista Tista, husband of Irma Victoria Olmino Gonzalez, in his family's yucca field with Sofia Tista Sis (his mother) in El Aguacate. The family waters these plants with the help of a filtering system Oxfam trained them to build. Gray-water leftover from dishes and laundry gets cleaned as it runs through the earthen filter. Family members carry the cleaned water to the plants.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Julia Perez in her garden. A lack of rainfall caused small bean and corn farmers in Guatemala to lose 80% to 100% of their crops in 2015, Oxfam says.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Rosa Elvira Martinez has been a recipient of Oxfam's emergency intervention on the drought. With her is her son Randolfo, pictured in front of their house.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Rosa Elvira Martinez shows off some of the vegetables in the small backyard garden she planted. An estimated 180,000 people in Guatemala are suffering from food insecurity.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Marcelina Tista Sis washes dishes at a tap stand outside her house in El Aguacate, Guatemala.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Marcelina Tista Sis and her husband, Rufino Sis Garcia, have four children (all girls). Her family is benefitting from Oxfam's drought response, which has provided people with cash for work opportunities, including digging ditches on steep slopes to help retain the water, and building stone walls to prevent erosion.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
To help the family meet its needs, Marcelina weaves traditional belts, which she sells locally for about 125 quetzales each (or about $16).
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
From left to right: Jose Ricardo Tista Tista, Sofia Tista Sis, Ingrid Marisol Tista Tista, and Maria Angelica Tista Tista, in El Aguacate. The family is a participant in Oxfam's emergency response to help people through the drought that has left many hungry and with few options for work.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Marcelina Tista Sis and her husband, Rufino Sis Garcia, sit outside the house she grew up in — and that is now theirs.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Maria Marcelina Tista Sis and her husband stride over a swinging suspension bridge toward their home. They are among the 10,890 people Oxfam has helped in Guatemala through early March. For more on the organization's efforts, visit this link.
Photo and caption: Coco McCabe / Oxfam America.
Rosa Elvira Martinez shows the gray-water filter system Oxfam helped her install, and how she waters some of her vegetable plants with the results of the filtering.
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