Trump Froze Aid To Guatemala. Now Programs Are Shutting Down

For Carlos Marroquín, the chickens are all that's left.

For the last several years, Marroquín has struggled to feed his wife and five children with the proceeds from their ten-acre corn farm. They live in a mud-brick house with a sloped terra-cotta roof, nestled among pines, acacias and prickly pear cactus in Guatemala's mountainous northern Quiché region, part of the country's Dry Corridor that has been gripped by a multiyear drought.

Last November, his family was one of the 6,000 poorest families here to be selected for a U.S. government-backed humanitarian relief program. They began to receive a monthly cash transfer of around $60, which they were encouraged to spend on fresh fruit, cereal, dairy products and other grocery staples to supplement their diet, which rarely varied beyond black beans and homemade corn tortillas.

"The first time we got the money, we thought it was a dream," he recalls. "How was it possible to get money we hadn't earned? It was only when we had it that we believed it was real."

But this summer, as Marroquín watched his corn wither once again, he