Dry fields and emaciated cattle in Central America

The “dry corridor” in Central America is currently suffering from the effects of El Niño, experiencing what residents describe as the worst drought to date, marked primarily by food scarcity and the death of emaciated livestock.

Lydia Ochoa, from San Lorenzo in southern Honduras, says, “Sometimes I cry. Sometimes we eat, and sometimes we can’t.”

This region is part of the so-called “dry corridor,” which also includes parts of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. The population of this vast area exceeds ten million people, and the United Nations classifies 80 percent of its smallholder farmers as poor.

Although residents are accustomed to extreme weather phenomena, the severity of the drought currently affecting the region is astonishing.

At this time of year, the corn in the field of Francisco Molina, a 48-year-old farmer and livestock breeder, should be lush and abundant. Instead, his land appears barren and desolate, littered with the carcasses of dead livestock.

A similar scene is unfolding in El Salvador. Maria de la Paz Portillo, 31, who manages a reservoir that supplies water to the village of El Matathano in the northeast, where temperatures have reached a record high of 42 degrees Celsius, confirms, “It is the first year we have noticed such a severe water shortage.”

This reservoir, which is becoming increasingly empty day by day, previously provided a permanent water supply for about 50 households and filled a pond where residents raised fish for personal consumption and sale. However, they have been forced to cease this activity to conserve water.

The natural El Niño phenomenon, which recurs every two to seven years, raises the temperature of surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. This results in hotter and drier weather in some regions, and colder and wetter conditions in others, while triggering extreme weather events.

Experts warn that the current iteration of this phenomenon is very likely to be the strongest on record since observations began.