Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke blamed the drought in Guatemala on the lifestyle of Americans during a rally in South Carolina.
The drought was just one of the events inside Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras for which the former Democratic congressman blamed the United States.
“With the people of Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, reduce violence in their home communities, violence which we are somewhat to blame for,” O’Rourke said, pointing to the War on Drugs and the civil wars in which the U.S. was involved.
“And Guatemala, suffering one of the greatest droughts in their recorded history, caused not by God nor by Mother Nature, but by you and me and all of us in our emissions and our excess and our inaction in the face of the facts and the science and the truth,” he said.
Drought-related crop failures affected 1 in 10 Guatemalans in 2018, and caused extreme food shortages for almost 840,000 people. The drought resulted in a large spike in Guatemalans leaving the country to immigrate to the U.S., according to the Guardian.
