‘So many have gone’: storms and drought drive Guatemalans to the US border

The climate crisis has made life in many villages more precarious, leading some to risk joining an exodus

For the Indigenous Maya Ch'orti' people of La Union in eastern Guatemala, the daily struggle for water involves catching every drop of rain that drips from sloping metal roofs and walking long distances to fill plastic containers from overused streams.

In this parched region, communities rely on rainfall to feed their families, and in 2019 worked together to build water reservoirs high in the mountains in order to better cope with increasingly frequent droughts and unpredictable rains which caused their maize and bean crops to fail.