The COVID-19 Crisis in Guatemala and Honduras: as the pandemic takes root, hunger is already growing. At first, they said it is going to bring development and it’s a good process. It is also used in the making milpa, an ancient polycultural system of beans, maize and a variety of native greens. In the 1961-1990 period, maize imports had accounted for less than 4% of total consumption. After this spate of violence, REPSA continued with its palm oil business. The security guards inspect what I carry in my bag when I go to my field in the morning; they write down my name and my identification number and they repeat this in the afternoon, too.” Many a times, palm oil companies don’t have the consent of the community and operate without any governmental licenses. In Guatemala, the problem is particularly severe. A report released by Oxfam in July 2020 states, “COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. They have security personnel who take videos and photos of journalists. The government declared a food emergency in September. Amidst beautiful landscapes, active volcanoes and a diverse indigenous population, Guatemala suffers from malnutrition and hunger. In the Polochic Valley, for example, negotiations between campesino communities, state agencies, and the Chabil Utzaj sugar cane company fell apart in March 2011 “as at least 14 violent evictions were carried out between January and March 2011 on land claimed by the company. Guatemala is facing serious challenges in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 on Zero Hunger, which includes the elimination of all forms of malnutrition by 2030. 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Instead of using bland, benumbed and bureaucratic jargon, it had used unequivocal terms to condemn the cruelty of structural adjustment programs: “It is essential to strip away the niceties of economic parlance and say that what has happened is simply an outrage against a large segment of humanity. The cases of Israel, Domitila, and the other children here are the extreme edge of the hunger crisis in Guatemala, which has some of the worst rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. The systematic dismantling of domestic maize production has paved the way for the installation of an export-oriented agricultural model comprising predominantly of palm oil and sugarcane. But this issue has broader … We see that the color and the smell of the river has changed; our water sources have diminished; and when we wash our clothes and bathe our children in the river, we get skin lesions, diarrhea, nausea.”. Extreme poverty spiked by 10 percentage points between 2006 and 2014”. In addition to ecological-economic loss, the malathion overflow has heavily impacted the communities living in the department of Peten since exposure to the chemical “interferes with the normal functioning of the nerves and the brain; and exposure to very high levels in air, water, or food for a short time can cause shortness of breath, chest tightness, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, blurred vision, excessive sweating, dizziness, unconsciousness, and death.” Melding and synchronizing the all-pervasive effects of the malathion spillover, Saúl Paau, a community Leader, characterizes it as a crime against humanity: “We can categorize the case as a crime against humanity, because not only are various species of our rivers being killed, but the river is also part of our historical culture, it is part of our territory, we feed on it, and with pollution and fish mortality today the food security of each and all the 116 thousand inhabitants that live in the municipalities of Sayaxché is violated…The issue of the breakdown of the ecosystem and the environment is not only water and fish, it is air, is human health, environmental health ”. When income decreases, people are unable to afford food items and presently, half of the population is not able to afford the basic food basket. Silveria Pérez, a mother of four living in a rural Guatemalan community, says, “You’re told your child is malnourished. On 25 April, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, reported that lockdown measures were exacerbating seasonal hunger in eastern Guatemala, already badly hit by a 2019 drought. Or that now the government doesn’t know what to do to mitigate the harm done? How is it possible that this type of situation was not foreseen? It provided food assistance to over 18,100 people, including more than 4,900 children under five who were at risk of malnutrition. Maize in Guatemala is grown on one-third of the agricultural land and accounts for 91 per cent of the total cereal area in the country. Like sugarcane, palm oil monocultures, too, are associated with environmental disasters, violence and food insecurity. Demonstrators set an office of the Congress building on fire during a protest demanding the resignation of Alejandro Giammattei, the president of Guatemala. Delivering food, shelter and hope to the poorest of the poor. Due to disruptions in supply chains, there has been a spike in food prices in Guatemala, further pushing the country into a 2008-like food price crisis where a 34% increase in the price of yellow maize plunged 450,000 Guatemalans into poverty. Between 2000 and 2016, palm oil production in Guatemala climbed six-fold, making it the second-largest oil palm producer in Latin America. In Guatemala, two-thirds of the agricultural land is dominated by 2.5% of the country’s farms, less than 1% of landowners hold 75% of the best agricultural land, 90% of rural inhabitants live in poverty, 27% of rural dwellers do not own land and more than 500,000 campesino families live below the level of subsistence. The average minimum landholding necessary for family subsistence in the country is between 4.5 and 7 hectares. They are currently harassing journalists and have an ongoing REPSA radio campaign to convince people of their good image. Log in. Guatemala's legislature on Monday backed away from approving a business-friendly 2021 budget after demonstrators in the Central American nation torched the … As a result of this serious disparity, U.S. imports to Guatemala grew by 90 percent in less than a decade after DR-CAFTA, the sales of American produce in maize, wheat, and soy reaching $1.1 billion in 2014. “More than half of Guatemalan households are having difficulty accessing markets and four out of ten families are using coping strategies that leave them worse off, such as depleting their savings or selling some of their assets,”. Many factors including climate threats, poverty, lack of education and low sanitation have contributed to this crisis overtime. Currently, 4 of the top 5 exports of Guatemala are agricultural products, an indication of the economic extensiveness of DR-CAFTA. More than 60% of the population of Guatemala lives in poverty, and the country has one of the highest rates of childhood malnutrition in the world. But, over the last month, it’s become clear that another crisis is unfolding just next door in Guatemala. They took down too many trees, and now they are using too much water.” The disruption of hydrological dynamics by palm oil companies is not an isolated event and the destruction of water balances is a part and parcel of palm oil production which has an extremely high water requirement of 5500 m3 /ton of crop yield – about five times that of maize. In addition, Guatemala has the sixth highest level of chronic malnutrition in the world, and … Hunger has been the main reason for Guatemalans to flee their homes. But the truth is, there’s no development – rather, it’s a disaster.”. Challenges for Children in Guatemala. In its 1989 annual report, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had blamed the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s for the death of hundreds of thousands of children in the Global South. The stunting rate rises to 70% in some departments and 90% in the hardest hit municipalities. Canadian Prime minister’s statement on farmer protest is not an interference in our internal matters, Body, Nation and Resistance in the times of COVID-19, A People’s Manifesto for Ecological Democracy. The watering holes in our pasturelands have dried up and that has never happened before. In this country, the prevalence of stunting in children under 5 is one of the highest in the world at 46.5% nationally. SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER, Share:WhatsAppFacebookTwitterTelegramRedditEmail The ongoing siege of the national capital New Delhi by hundreds of thousands of farmers represents, perhaps, the biggest revolt against ‘Company Raj’ since India’s First War of Independence way back in 1857. They divert the river water to their greenhouses or for watering the palm trees, and the rivers are drying up. By almost every measure, Guatemala is one of the world’s toughest places to be a child. Action Against Hunger is a global humanitarian organization that takes decisive action against the causes and effects of hunger. Our primary approach to the migration crisis in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is to address the root causes of violence, poverty and drought that are pushing people to … While Guatemala farmers stopped receiving any support from the state, American corn farmers continued to “receive both direct subsidies (an average of $28,000 per farmer, which is more than five times Guatemala’s per capita GDP)…and indirect supports (like cheap water for irrigations and cheap oil made into fertilizers)”. The present-day hunger crisis in Guatemala is a result of long-term, neoliberal policies, oriented towards the economic subordination of the country as a stable periphery for the global imperialist empire. Through the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane, food insecurity has heightened. Public safety, migration, drug trafficking, education and poor access to clean water and basic sanitation are some of the challenges facing … Along with securitized regulation and the violation of free, prior and informed consent, palm oil production is also linked to environmental disasters and the contamination of the Río la Pasió River in the Sayaxché municipality is a paradigmatic example of such catastrophes. The area reports high rates of violence against women , and there are few resources for victims or … Video credit: Sonny Figueroa The assertion that the highly capitalized agribusiness is a source of additional incomes and employment is not true in the case of Guatemala.”, Guatemala’s Annual Agricultural Survey of 2013 has found that a continuous growth of agro-export land surface in ten years, from 2003 to 2013, has coincided with a 26% decrease in the total agricultural employment. The people of the area were not consulted about the project in spite of the fact that it was a project with a huge environmental impact. Action Against Hunger has been present in Guatemala since 1998, during which we’ve helped communities recover from the effects of several natural disasters and storms, while working with at-risk communities to address endemic economic instability and poverty. In Guatemala’s western highlands, a range of factors are driving migration. From 649 Metric Tons (MT) in 2004, Guatemala’s maize imports have grown to 1600 MT in 2019. Chronic food shortage Lack of rain in Guatemala has reduced harvests this year, pushing up food prices in stores and creating a crisis in poor communities. April 8, 2020. I have to give accounts of what I take. April 7, 2020 Consecutive years of irregular rainfall in Central America’s Dry Corridor have exacerbated acute food insecurity among poor households in Guatemala. 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