Hondurans are waiting for rain. Steady, predictable rain. Not like what’s been happening in recent years. That is, long droughts drying up crops, followed by devastating downpours that carry away topsoil. There is now scientific consensus that these climate extremes are the result of climate change, and that the catastrophe is being exacerbated by human activity. As a result, rural Honduras is facing more poverty than before. And new generations cannot afford to stick around.
On his first attempt at the American dream, 26-year-old David Cuello got arrested in Mexico. "Seeing how bad farming had become, I decided to go to the US. It's a possibility that's always there. It doesn't require a ton of money if your family support you. The plan was to live in the US four or five years and make money to keep my family afloat and get ahead. Also help my brother finish university." He swiftly deported home. "It was a huge psychological and physical blow. When you think how far you walked, how much you suffered, the rivers we had to traverse. It hurt that I couldn't go further."
Cuello works in a truck transporting sand to construction sites in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He is saving to make a second attempt.
Don Pedro lost his son, Darwin. He died of cardiac arrest in the middle of a heat wave. He was already in Texas, the United States. “Some of the roof planks are rotten and the tiles have moved,” he explains looking at the ceiling. “That’s why my son left for the US. He wanted to change the whole roof.”
Pacing in his farm Don Pedro looks at the overgrown fields. “The government doesn’t help with fertilizers or herbicides. We don’t receive help. We are in God’s hands. The only help I had was my son’s. He used to help me with a little money. That’s gone now.”
“With the sporadic rains we’ve been harvesting less corn every year,” Manuel Abidam says. He is a farmer in Central Honduras. One day working together in the fields his son told him. “Dad, I’m leaving, too.” And north he headed. He ran out of money in Mexico, where he lives now while saving to make it to the final destination: the United States.