https://news.yahoo.com/lost-everything-central-americans-flee-110315760.html
Reuters
Laura Gottesdiener and Lizbeth Diaz
Fri, December 4, 2020, 6:03 AM EST
It took Luis Salgado years of manual labor to save enough money to open a small fresh produce store, so when torrential floods swept away $1,500 worth of apples, bananas and other fruits, he decided there was no longer a future for him in Honduras.
Salgado had already been struggling to eke out a profit after measures to curb the novel coronavirus such as additional cleaning cut into his meager revenues. But the destruction of Hurricane Eta in early November left him in debt and unable to feed his three children.
So he set out with three neighbors to try to cross Guatemala, then Mexico and eventually find work in the United States.
"First the pandemic, and then the hurricane ... we have no money for our children," he said on the journey north.
Back-to-back hurricanes Eta and Iota internally displaced more than half a million people in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, according to International Organization for Migration data. The U.N. agency said at least a third could be displaced for more than three months, hampering their ability to earn a living and rebuild their lives.
"Every day, about 20 new people arrive because they lost their land, their homes, and their crops in Honduras and Guatemala," said Gabriel Romero, the director of a migrant shelter in the southern Mexican city of Tenosique.
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Honduran farmer David Tronches said he had no choice but to migrate after Eta's deluge flooded the corn and bean fields he'd sown to feed his family, including an infant daughter.
"We plant and harvest to sell and to have enough to eat," said Tronches, 20, speaking from a makeshift migrant shelter in the northern Mexican city of Saltillo. "Without the harvest, what are we going to sell? How are we going to eat?"
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tags: extreme weather, severe weather,
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