The summers been hot, like really scorchingly hot, not just in the U. S, but around the globe. In fact, in early july, the earth reached the highest temperature ever recorded, is another sign of a changing climate.
Sometimes that change is felt as extreme heat and drought, and sometimes that comes as unrelenting rainfall and flooding. The central american country of honduras is experiencing all of IT. This is the sunday story, and I, shara, go.
And today we're going on a journey to hang doors. Migration has been on the rise, and honduras people flee the extreme violence and poverty. But my colleagues correspond joel rose and produce a marsa peniel sa wondered if climate change is also affecting the decisions people make about whether to leave. To try to answer that question, that got on a plane and flew the same page o sua, the second largest .
city .
in the country, my memory of landing, and some page sula, is that everything is really Green because IT was january. You know, everything in in north amErica is winter and Brown and then you land in some page sua and suddenly it's like sunshine and plants everywhere and it's humid and it's, you know, the sun is hot on your skin and from the second you step off off the plane, you know you're in a different.
you're in a different climate. Some pathetic soa is the second largest city in honduras, and IT sits in the low lands on the corvan side. But our destination was actually a way up in the mountains in the copan region, uh, that's near the mayor ruins in western, uh, honduras.
Then we head IT to a small town called lawless to visit a family there. And we ve got a driver, a rental car in a photographer. And we started heading up .
early the morning and then the roads, oh my god, the roads. We can talk about the roads on time.
You see a lot of people walking along the roads or on motorcycles, or really .
junky cars. Yeah.
cars that are barely running, you know, heading off the road was narrow, muddy, slippy IT was raining, remember? Yeah.
there was a lot of conversation about whether we should even try to go to that village because IT was so far from any main road and our fixer and our and a photographer who are more familiar with the country. And we were like, I don't know if IT rains, we may not be able to get there, or if we get there, we may not really get back because the roads going to turn into mud.
So we had a to legal thly willa to meet the boss. Is a the sun? Is Francis an a availed? Robert, though, are the parents the owner? More thinker or a coffee farm that was badly damaged in twenty twenty when hurricanes hit back to back and the family has had a hard time recovering the losses. And that's why Frances is planning to migrate the united states to work and save money to help his family. IT took us two and a half hours to get there.
Like, I like, well, it's not a big place. There's the church and there's houses of spout, do you have with little yards all around.
the dad and Francis came out and they greeted us and they welcomed us and and then we they invited us to um .
to come .
in yeah we porch so it's an open porch and they pulled out a bench and Frances on his dad .
sit down there so Francis um his nineteen, his a kind of tall lane skinning it's got like a light mustache big guys. The father is Roberto press and he's been working that land his whole life.
He's sixty four .
and his kind of a small wire guy, a wearing a big cream color cowboy hat that he says he never takes off, feels naked without IT and it's got kind of a leader's face of a guy who worked outside his whole life. They have a pig. They have birds that are couple of parts, keats right up in the trees. They have a top ia pond where they are farming tolbiac. They've just got a lot of life happening right in their yard and their house is is modest but I you know it's um it's well kept, it's freshly painted, it's amend yeah it's made us cement which not every .
house and how do is they also have coffee plants scattered in the backyard? I mean, there are pretty a enterprising family.
you know, for all this enterprising activity in their yard. I mean, they're trying to diversify at root because their coffee farm was devastated by the big hurricanes in twenty twenty. They also used to have like a small business selling stationary, another you know sundry stuff in town that was destroyed in flooding from the hurricanes. So they're trying to recover from this terrible blow from the hurricanes. And at the same time, they're really dealing with the drought as well, with the erratic rainfall that cost them crops that Better.
says he doesn't recognize the weather patterns and the environment he's living in. Now it's completely different from what he remembers growing up.
He can't predict what's going to happen. And IT seems usually frustrated for him because he's a farmer and he wants, you know wants to be good at IT. And I think he can see that his coffee farmers is is not succeeding. You know, it's fAiling and it's not IT was the hurricanes and the damage from the hurricane. It's also this erratic rainfall that is that is really preventing him from getting the kind of yields that he used to get winter.
summer at seen.
On the other way, you're wrong. IT really affects the crops. So the families trying really hard to make a living off the land, but it's just not working as well as I used to. And all of this is waiting really heavily on their sun, Frances.
And one of things that Francis told us is that he really doesn't see a future in honduras in farming, which is what he loves doing. You know, just like his parents are farmers. His grandparents farmed, so that's what they do.
They work the land. He dreams also to have cattle but it's it's expensive and and you have to understand that um farmers in hondas are largely small scale farmers just like the process is right. They they grow things for self consumption and then they sell whatever.
It's not consumed by the family but they don't have irrigation. So they a hundred percent historically have relied on rain patterns, right on their very, very sad rain season drought, and then rain season again. But now that's all turned upside down. And france told .
us he feel stuck. He feels like he can't build the future that he wants in hunters.
and that's .
what's driving him to think about migrating. And certainly he has seen lots of other people around him do that. I mean, he at one point pointed all the other houses in in, in the little town around us, and all the fancy ones were built with money that came back from the U.
S. The nice homes near the church, all the children are working in the us. Our next door or neighbor sun is also in the us. The one across the street did the same thing. Practically every household around here has someone working in the U.
S so it's it's clear that, that is how you get a leg up if you're from this part of under is he doesn't want to leave forever, like I think he told us his plan where I want to go for a couple of years. I want to save money and then I want to come back and and live my life here with my family, on my land, with my parents. And that's the plan he's been working on for a while.
He's a very a thoughtful method, uh, Young man. And so he's been talking to a family friend and houston who is sort of guiding him about how to make the journey, how to find a smuggler, if you will, a good smuggler yeah right.
That when you can trust, no, for real. I mean, it's IT sounds like an oxymoron, but I mean, it's you got it's a huge investment is it's i've heard of to ten thousand dollars now for the trip.
So as we said, we SAT down with Frances on his dad, and then at some point the mom showed up. And the minute he joined in, and we ask, you know, do you have anything to add to what women talking about? Of a sudden, all of this emotion builds up on her, and its its visible, because her eyes were, you know, whiled up and her voice was shaking.
有 一种 大帽子 的 帽。 You laugh really. SHE started talking about how the farm has been heavily destroyed by floodings and how SHE lost her little business and how hard it's been to recover.
And he really has mixed feelings about about Francis's plan. I mean, on the one hand, SHE SHE wants him to succeed. He wants him to be happy. And he can tell that he's ambitious and that he wants more then what they can give him right now in their village. But like she's hugely apprehensive about him making this trip.
I mean, this struck me about their family really about almost everyone we talk to in hundred is they're very aware of the of the danger of the journey to the united states and of trying to migrate like they are not naive about the risks of about internet. They know that people, that people die, that coyotes rip you off, that you know, that there's no guarantee at all that you will succeed in going, you know, this is their Youngest son, and part of them doesn't want him to leave. And IT really just makes you realize how emotional this decision is.
That was very hard. And I opening to watch, you know, we see the images, migrants at the border, they're here. You they wanted take our jobs, but we don't see what happens on the ground before they begin the journey.
And we also think it's easy and and quick, like one day there's like some act of violence or there's some there some dramatic Spark that one day like your farm is destroyed and you leave. But I don't think that's really how that works for a lot of people. IT seems like it's just like the slow accumulation of watching your farm gradually fail.
You know IT doesn't happen all at once, even if IT doesn't fail, even if you just see the trajectory of where going. You know that's the other thing is that like like the paris, they're OK for now. But Francis can see where this is trending.
He can see that it's not going back the way agriculture used to be. And he has to make decisions about his future, not just about right now. When we first met Frances up at leguas liguori, we felt like he was serious about migrating to the U. S. But the month kept going by and he didn't make great and then his father, Roberto got very .
ill and when I spoke with Frances several weeks ago, that's when he told me that um he was very conflicted because he was making this plan so he could help his family. And yet the idea of migrating was organizing for the parents. And so france has started feeling like i'm doing this for my family and for me, but i'm also inflicting pain to my parents.
I've been migrating, looking for a Better future, but I fear you'll be lonely and even depressed. I'm evaluating the economic gain. First is my parents feelings in health. I think in ponder about IT constantly.
He's really trying to get IT right and it's it's really hard and you can just see his he's tired and not about IT.
I agree you're .
listening to the sundays story will be right back.
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We are back with the sunday story.
We also met his Susan tiago and her mother, Victorin, another, his sus. They live in a small village called lotus in the gabon region in western honduras, close to the border with watermelon, actually. And a little more than three hours west from the process is home.
We've learned about her through our colleague, kerry kon, because kerry had had met haus in southern mexico a few years ago when SHE tried to migrate to the U. S. Another time.
And that first trip did not succeed. His suso is deported back to hunter us. And IT was a really terrible experience, clearly, for her and for her brother that he was with. But so he went back to hunt us to this little village called those run chose.
So I was a very rural road, roads going up to their house. And we really did not have an address because there is none. And I kept asking his shoes before we we got to the neurons.
So how will I find you? Can you give me the address? And he would just to describe the area.
And then finally he gave up and said, i'm gonna come down and meet you at the church. You can't miss the church. We get to the church and there is a south.
And then um so we parked there and then we walked the last stretch after their house. So it's a small village and their house is built really on on the mountain, on the side of the mountain, IT kind of slope down. And IT is is two rooms.
He is his mother. He comes out to greet us right when we walk up to the house. She's wearing her apron.
She's clearly been preparing this meal .
that she's going to feed but SHE comes out and hugs us. She's already out like in the road greeting us and and and you know bring us .
into the house um so join I sort of went through that little room and then we went to the yard right which was .
yeah the yard mudi yeah the yard is basically just like rad dirt kind of sloping away down behind the house and it's Chris crossed with with close lines. There's a bunch of dogs wandering around two there's one rooster .
cats in his suz works in agriculture, where he left school when he was seven. SHE is twenty three now, but he talked about how the erratic rains make IT very hard for consistent employment in agriculture, right? Because, yes, coffee harvest time sets in, but then IT poors one day, so people cannot pick the fruit. And so the days when SHE doesn't work .
and SHE gets paid by weight, SHE gets paid by what he picks. And he was showing us the big.
you know, plastic bucket. 你 家里。
我 睡觉 on a good day, you can fill ten of these buckets. But you know, on a bad day, you might fill only a couple and it's just a hard wait on support herself and so SHE also cleaned houses. SHE does other kinds of work if you can find IT. But you know, he said something very simple to SHE said.
I don't want to live .
like this forever. I want to grow. I want get a full time job and I want the future. That's not this. You know, I want a Better future.
And so she's planning to make the journey again. What SHE doesn't have is someone in the united states who can help her, unlike Francis. So that's a big detriment because we were told by people we spoke with that you really need someone in the united states who's going to be your lifeline in the journey, right? If you need money along the way, that person can send you money. You'll need a place to stay in the united states, so you you need to have someone and pencil santiago does not have that person.
Beetle lina has has also worked in in agriculture for most of her life. Um SHE was her husband died, uh, Young and he had to work to support the family. And I mean they don't SHE doesn't own a farm.
He does own that house on the sides of the help but they don't have their own farm. They have far less, even less of a cushion. I would say that Frances and the parish family, I mean vital a his is his mother is again like deeply conflicted about her plan.
especially because he has seen the impact that this very harsh journey has had on her daughter. They both talked about how broken SHE felt last time he tried to migrate when SHE was arrested and deported in mexico. So I think her mom has seen the effects of migration and the effects of of not succeeding.
But he also also understands why her daughter wants to try again. And SHE was proud of the fact that his shoes wanted a Better future for herself, but was also sad that as her mother, SHE couldn't provide that for her. And SHE said that he was hopeful her daughter would leave because there was no hope for her there. And SHE talked, a tears were rolling down her cheeks. And I don't think .
we knew this at the time, but we later found out about what's called the feminization of migration, which is basically a word scholars used to describe, the fact that more women and girls are migrating in greater numbers in the use to, you know, globally, of the numbers are roughly even now. I mean, when you talk about the number of of people coming to the U. S.
Border from central america, is there are more women than there used to be. It's gravely a third now, whereas used to be almost all men, used to be only fourteen percent women over the last decade. That's changed.
Now you're seeing many more women and girls like like hay suits making this journey. And hay suits really illustrates, I think, what's happening, the change, the change. So we were trying to understand what we were seeing. And so we talk to a woman of the organization of american states's named patient, a monitor's bogosian.
I would argue that mostly women and girls affected by climate change, extreme climate events.
you think of agriculture and and farming, especially in central america, being, you know, I had thought of IT is being A A male dominated way of life, the crews that we saw where men and women, very much like, all out there doing the picking. And that's the kind of work that he used and her mother have been doing to.
Another thing to keep in mind is the high levels of violence against women in honda. IT has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world, and it's the highest rate in latin america. And one of the reasons women in honduras might great climate change kind of adds up to the series of other factors that are present there, that have to do with poverty, with quilts. I think climate change is up to the cocktail of. So why people?
My great. I think the point that menu s begotten in the other experts would make is that climate change is sort of exacerbating the existing problems they were already there. And violence against women is is an example. There's also obviously poverty and and lack of economic opportunity. Anyway, I think climate change is the way we're seeing IT.
Is its climate change to sort of inaccurate erant, something that takes all of those existing problems, makes them a little worse? You know, one thing about issue story that I think is also typical is that often people don't go straight to the united states like they. They do try to migrate inside of hundreds looking for work.
And and he sustained that he went to a progressive, which is a city in the north kind of new sun. Pedro la and SHE worked in a banana packing plant there um and the idea is that he was going to try to save money and send them back to her mother um and also um maybe save a little bit for her trip next attempt to move north. But I really didn't work out because the job didn't pay well and the rent was .
more than he expected. IT was a struggle because I had a lot of expenses, meals, housing, transportation and pay wasn't great. I was breaking even.
So he ended up back in the mountains and last chose with her mother.
He told us he wants .
to try again to .
to the us. I wanted try again. I'd miss home and missed terribly, but I also want to get ahead from there.
We went a few miles down the road where we met the last person that we want to introduce you to. And IT was just could not. IT was just a few miles in IT, in IT. But I felt like a different planet.
It's a happy story.
That's a much happier story. So we went to meet this farmer named Edwin yan, who, I guess the only way I can describe IT as an agricultural .
success story. And hus, yeah. Ewing's is forty years old. And as others in hunger, as his parents and grandparents were farmers, they grew coffee, tobacco and cattle. And he IT win told us that he remembers working the land as a kid.
I mean, he has built these very large, very north american looking Greenhouses. They'd look nothing like any of the other farms or any of the other branches we saw.
Protected from rains, winds, hurricanes and bugs. We also have a drip .
irrigation system, and we use these chemicals here. Inside, there are just rose and rose and rose of tomato plants in various stages of development. And he's harvesting them all year around in his Greenhouses and selling them to local grocery stores.
And it's working. But so Edwin does not farm at all the way his parents did. He has basically a lot of advantages that most of the farmers and hondas don't have.
He has the steady source of water from a spring up the hill from a screenhouse ses. So that's one, that's a big one. And then he was able to get alone to pay for the Greenhouses and the rest of the irrigation system.
And then lastly, his last advantages, that he has some money of his own, that he made in the U. S. When he came here to work when he was Younger that .
was in two thousand two.
So um and his family actually has a pretty complicated migration story as well. His father left to come work in the us. When Edwin kyan was only five, and so he grew up really without his father here, his fathers in the U.
S. And I think supporting the family, but absent. And when Edwin came of age, he decided he wanted to go to the U. S.
yeah. He he told us that he wanted to come to the U. S. To look for his father. He told us that the dad basically stayed in touch for a few years after he left under us, and then he disappeared. And so that when told us that his family was broken by migration and that he he felt abandoned and he felt sort like not whole without a dad and so that's why in two thousand two ah he came to baltimore in maryland to look for his dad and he found .
him .
yeah he did.
But he was not exactly what he expected.
I see you. I found him, but he didn't want to come back.
I'm the oldest of three brothers and knew I had to come back to help my brothers and to work our land.
The other advantage that at when has is that his family owns the land. Many farmers and hundreds have to rent land yeah which .
would limit what you can do. But so Edwin came back and he, you know, now he's this successful farmer and he's got a big house, the biggest house we saw while we are in in a shiny truck that he uses to to drive his produced to market. And he's an employer, right? I mean, he has, I think he doesn't workers working in his Greenhouse.
I think Edwin's story shows us that agriculture is viable in honduras, but it's expensive. IT requires investment and infrastructure and know how. And Edwin clearly has put all that together, but that's not available to the vast majority of farmers in hurras. And um you know I don't think I don't think that's going to be an option for certainly for people like he sues and her mother maybe i'd even for Francis in the paris family. My sense is that there they're like there will be people like ewing yan who will continue to find ways to do agriculture even on a small scale or on a medium scale.
But I I have the feeling .
that that like the the direction this is heading is, is that more people are going to be leaving these rural areas because they will be able to support themselves doing the agriculture the way they have. That just doesn't to be an option.
And I think that we were able to see that climate change is real and is having an impact on farming.
Yeah and I I guess those people are gonna somewhere, you know, whether it's internally and hondas, whether it's to the us. Or somewhere in between, you know, if they can't make a living doing agriculture, I don't think they are gonna stay in these little town's. So I mean, I think the pressures on people to migrate are only going to get more intense.
I think I agree.
Ami character, and you've been listening to the sunday story. This episode was produced by Andrew mambo and Emily silver and edited by genius mt. IT was engineered by marvel t.
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