LOS CEREZOS, Cuba -- A strange wind came to Los Cerezos six months ago. A strong wind that tugged at the banana trees and manioc leaves. A dry wind that sucked all the moisture from the pasture and made the river disappear.

It hasn't rained all year in Los Cerezos, or in many other farming villages of eastern Cuba. The island is experiencing its worst drought since Fidel Castro took power nearly 40 years ago.

The drought has reduced Cuban food production by 42 percent in five eastern provinces, leaving more than half a million people in need of urgent food assistance, according to the United Nations' World Food Program.

Even before the drought, the average Cuban consumed only about 1,900 calories a day, below the minimum requirement of 2,100 to 2,300 set by the U.N. agency.

The drought, blamed on the weather phenomenon El Niño, has brought the danger of starvation.

The World Food Program is shipping $7 million worth of emergency food rations that it says will feed more than 500,000 people for six months.

Lack of drinking water is also becoming a problem. Government news media reported Tuesday that dams in Holguin province serving 628,000 people will run dry in little more than a month unless there is rain.

Ten thousand head of cattle have been evacuated from that province and moved farther south, according to the Communist Party newspaper Granma. On Tuesday, Holguin was placed on a state of alert.

Cuba says it is using pipes to divert water from dams farther away from the hardest hit areas. But that will take time, and for now nearly half of Holguin province is receiving water from tanker trucks, Granma said.

No such help has arrived farther east in Los Cerezos, a hamlet of several dozen people 525 miles southeast of Havana in Guantanamo province.

Carlos Lopez had to abandon his fields and take his ox cart into the hills that surround Los Cerezos, searching for firewood to provide enough income to survive.

``The wind dries the air. It dries the plants. It even makes people sick,'' said Lopez, 35. ``We are being punished.''

The village milk cooperative is closed. Some of the cows have died, and the cooperative sold most of the others. Only a few cows remain, feeding on sparse clumps of dried grass in a field crisscrossed by empty irrigation pipes.

The rusty pipe that carries water from the hills for villagers is nearly dry. Nilsa Guilarte, 26, squatted over a valve in a parched field to capture half a bucketful of water.

``I'm just taking a little bit,'' she said apologetically. ``Just enough to bathe my little girl.''

Down a dirt path, an 88-year-old woman hobbled bowlegged, pulling an emaciated donkey by a leash across the riverbed filled only with pebbles and dust. She said she had never seen a drought like this.

``We used to raise goats, plant pasture, grow bananas,'' Juana Ramirez Ribera said. ``But the drought is too strong and the winds are too dry. We're suffering a great, great deal.''