Diggers are working at what campaigners call a place where ‘human life, biodiversity and the environment will be sacrificed’

On the morning of 16 February, dozens of police officers arrived at San Francisco Ángulo, a small rural community an hour south of El Salvador’s capital. They had come, residents were told, to escort heavy machinery belonging to Cyeemsal, a Mexican-owned company hired to begin construction of a landfill on a site the community considers sacred.

Félix Laínez, 58, president of the San Francisco Ángulo community association, had been warned that this would happen. The community has lost a series of legal appeals against the court rulings authorising the work, and construction is continuing. “It is clear that we will find no support in any state institution,” says Laínez, who has little hope of success in their final constitutional appeal, which is now before the supreme court.

Family-run farms in El Salvador and Honduras face mounting losses, rising costs – and the need to adapt or be left behind

• Read more of our Coffee crisis series here

On a steep hillside in western El Salvador, Oscar Leiva watches rainfall in December, a month that once marked the start of the dry season. During this harvest cycle, flowering came early and then stalled. A heatwave followed. What remains of the crop is uneven, lower in quality and more expensive to produce than the last.

For Leiva and his family, coffee has never been just a crop. His mother, Esperanza Marinero, remembers when the rains arrived on schedule and the harvest could be planned months in advance. Today, the calendar no longer holds. Decisions about pruning, fertilising and hiring labour feel like educated guesses. Each mistake carries a cost the family cannot afford.