Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador are rationing electricity because of a lack of rain needed to power hydroelectric plants, and each nation plans blacking out parts of its population on a rotating basis, officials said Sunday.

In drought-stricken Guatemala, the National Electricity Institute said its new rationing program will continue through September and, depending on the rains, may be extended.Different parts of the country will be without power for two to three hours a day under the program, the officials said.

Guatemala City was without power for three hours Sunday morning and a similar outage planned for Monday could cause widespread traffic problems and hurt industry in the capital, which is also the center of production for the poor Central American country.

Guatemala is in the midst of a 30-year civil war that has taken an estimated 120,000 lives.

Rebels often cause blackouts by destroying electricity infrastructure. An outage earlier this year hurt industry in the capital and caused traffic jams due to a lack of power for traffic signals.

El Salvador and Nicaragua are also rationing their electricity.

The Nicaraguan government said Sunday it will begin a new round of rationing due to the shutdown of several power plants and a lack of capacity at others.

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Beginning Monday, power was cut to different parts of the poor Central American country on a rotating basis. Blackouts were to be rotated in neighborhoods in the capital as well, officials said.

Power outages are nothing new to Nicaraguans, who lived through nearly a decade of civil war before Contra rebels laid down their arms last year.

There was hope, however, that with the end of the war and the transfer of power from the Sandinista Party to President Violeta Chamorro things would get better.

"Things were supposed to change, at least we thought we would have electricity to watch soap operas," said Carmen Alaniz, 65. "Things are going from bad to worse."

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