Guatemala Drought Threatens Hunger in Rural Areas
Date: 30-Aug-04
Country: GUATEMALA
Author: Frank Jack Daniel
Low rainfall in July and August has destroyed corn in at least four departments of the poor Central American country, putting at least 4,000 families at risk of severe food shortages, aid agencies say.
Guatemala has enough food supplies to help the affected areas for the moment but will struggle if the drought continues.
"If it doesn't rain in the next two months we will have a more serious problem," Guillermina Segura, head of the World Food Program in Guatemala, told Reuters last week.
A 15-month-old girl died of malnutrition last week on the country's southern coastal plains, the Guatemalan media said.
Elsewhere, the El Progreso department in central Guatemala is traditionally the driest in the country but normally receives heavy rains at this time of year. The rains have been scarce this season, although some weather forecasters predict the drought will end soon.
NO RAIN, NO HARVEST
Several communities like El Mitch, a village of 300 landless families relocated from a nearby valley after Hurricane Mitch hit the area in 1999, are facing food shortages because of the drought.
The people there are laborers on neighboring farms. The drought has ruined crops, leaving them without work or money to buy food.
"We eat only tortillas and beans, and since there has been no rain, there is no harvest, there is no work and the corn is expensive," said Mabel Odeth Caitan, 20, clutching her hollow-cheeked 3-year-old daughter to her hip.
In nearby village El Paso, papaya farmer Julian Hernandez sat in the dusty yard of his wooden hut.
His grandson Alvaro was slumped in a nearby hammock, wailing. At 18 months old he weighs just 7 lbs (3.2 kg) and his discolored skin hung loosely from his bones.
Alvaro's brothers and sisters play barefoot in the dirt beside him, most with clumps missing from their brittle hair - another sign of malnutrition.
"The situation in this region is very delicate, we all need rain to eat," Hernandez said.
He says he now has food and medicine for the children because of government and business donations after the family was featured on television news.
Nearly half of all Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition, the highest percentage in mainland Latin America, the United Nations says.
Poverty in many regions worsened when job cuts followed a collapse in world prices for coffee - Guatemala's main export crop.
Segura, of the World Food Program, said the Quiche department in the north of Guatemala is suffering a "serious malnutrition problem." Peasants have been hit by the collapse of world prices for cardamom, a spice popular in Asia.
In 2002, scenes of babies with swollen bellies brought international attention to the east of the country, and alerted many urban Guatemalans to the desperate poverty of their rural neighbors.
Since then the government of President Oscar Berger has put together a program praised by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO.
However, on a recent visit to the country, FAO chief Jacques Diouf warned that serious rural investment was needed to prevent worsening food shortages.