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.

Her fears are well-founded. Around 2.5 million Guatemalans face potential food insecurity due to the drought and the high probability of a powerful El Niño weather cycle.

The Guatemalan government says it has 1.1 million rations ready to distribute in the face of an emergency.

According to experts, the chance that El Niño could spiral into a more dangerous event depends on numerous atmospheric factors.

Governments across the dry countries of Central America have raised alert levels over the El Niño phenomenon.

But El Niño isn’t the only reason the situation is worsening.

In Guatemala alone, the Dry Corridor has expanded from 40 to 160 municipalities since 2004, meaning almost half of the country has been subjected to drought fueled by climate change, according to the government.

Cecilia Pasa walked through a puny corn farm, a clear testimony of the drought.

“The plants can’t take it anymore. The ground is drier. It’s not humid anymore like it used to be,” she said.

It means that only half of her neighbors planted corn this year.

Everyone else, including Catarina Sica, didn’t even bother.

“There isn’t rain, and the time has passed for us to plant,” Sica said, showing the black, white and yellow seeds still on the cob of corn.

Migratory impact

For years, the brutal challenges of working the fields in Cunen were eased with remittances migrants sent home from the United States.

Yet US President Donald Trump’s mass deportations have taken away that support.

Around 24,000 Guatemalans have been deported this year, many from Quiche.

The deportations have paralysed the construction of homes — the great dream of many migrants — as well as the jobs that go with it.

Families now deal with the crisis by raising pigs, sheep, chickens and turkeys for sale.

Sica’s husband returned two years ago after saving enough money to build a concrete house.

Now he works occasionally in agriculture, though the $10 daily wage he earns means the family diet is limited to beans, herbs and potatoes, like most locals.

“We’re seeing what to do, but it all depends on God,” Sica said with resignation.