One of the major political issues in Honduras since about 1990 has been how to deal with the high level of violent crime associated with the maras (gangs, predominantly of young people), and drug trafficking organizations involved in the transport of cocaine from South America to the United States. Although gangs existed in Tegucigalpa in the 1980s, the gang phenomenon exploded around 1990.

The range of criminal activities that street gangs carry out is broad, varying between kidnapping, human trafficking; drug,auto and weapons smuggling, as well as domestic extortion. A recent estimate composed by the U.S. FBI and their local counterparts in Central America placed the total number of gang members in Honduras at 36,000.

The increase in gang membership was partly attributable to population movements between Honduras and the United States. During the 1980s, many Central Americans, including some Hondurans, fled to the U.S to avoid the violence of the civil wars and general political strife, and emigration continued for economic reasons after that.

Other than civil wars, domestic issues endemic to Central America such as high rates of poverty and un-employment and lack of education make at-risk youth more vulnerable to join gangs. In Honduras, close to 30% of the population is youth ages 15–24.

The children of many of those immigrants found their children forming and joining urban gangs in cities such as Los Angeles. This phenomenon began to have a local impact in Honduras around 1990 because gang members who completed prison sentences were subject to deportation to their home countries for felonies and immigration infractions.

These deportees brought proliferation of the two main gangs in Honduras, the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration and Enforcement reported that Honduras received 2,345 total criminal deportations. However, it remains unclear whether the majority of these criminals were gang-affiliated or not.

According to the above reference USAID report from 2006 (page 8), almost a third of Hondurans feel a sense of insecurity related to crime. The report listed as causes and risk factors, “Lack of opportunities and alternatives for youth and adolescents, Family breakdown, Movement of Hondurans to and from the United States, and Abuse of drugs and alcohol, and Presence of weapons”.

Hondurans would note, however, that the “departamento” (political division) with more weapons per person than anywhere else in the nation, Olancho, is the one area without any gang presence at all.

The report adds however, that the “overwhelming attention given to gang violence by the media and the government” is partly responsible for this. The link between the local media and gang violence is important because gang members often compete in carrying out brutal acts to see which crime receives the most coverage. It has been recently contended though that the media tends to exaggerate the gang problem, thus making Hondurans believe their communities less secure than they really are.

Such attention is inevitable, just as in other countries such as the United States and Europe, because of the extreme violence that accompanies the crimes perpetrated by these gangs. Another reason for the inevitable attention is that they most affected the lower-income population disproportionately, and almost all areas of public activities were affected.

The murder rate in 1999 was 154 murders per 100,000 population; around 2005 this had fallen to 49 per 100,000. (To put this in context, the death rate from all causes is roughly 1000 per 100,000 population.) Most of the crime in Honduras takes place in the big cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. A survey by Mitch Seligson in 2004 found that 18% of the population thought public security andviolence — delinquency, crime, violence, drug trafficking, and gangs — were the most serious problem facing the country.

There is a great feeling of insecurity amongst the population about the chronically poor security situation in Honduras. The major problem is rooted in the gangs, who are called maras in Spanish. These include the Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18.

The gangs are rooted in the poverty of Honduras, and in the ready availability of crack cocaine. Honduras has been not only a transit point for cocaine running between Colombia and the United States, a pattern broken substantially after the arrest and exile of the ex-president Mel Zelaya, but also has an internal market, creating all sorts of inner city urban problems. The gangs sell the crack, commit other crimes, and hire themselves out to the seriously organised drug smugglers.

Those engaged in international trafficking are better resourced than the state authorities combating them. Although gang members have been arrested for selling drugs at the street level, it is still unclear how much interaction they have with the larger drug cartels and their operations within Honduras. Not fully understanding this dynamic makes it difficult to discern the type of relationship they have with one another.

An argument some would use to justify increasing US military aid to Honduras to help fight the organised drug gangs, while others actually claim that Honduras would be better off legalizing drugs, thus avoiding military solutions to Honduran security problems.

One of the most recent forms of U.S. aid that addresses the gang problem was the creation of the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). Originally seen as a part of the U.S.- Mexico Mérida Initiative, in 2010 the U.S. Congress separated funding for Central America totaling $83 million. Although some of the aid comes in the form of military hardware, there are components which focus on strengthening the receiving country’s judicial system.

President Ricardo Maduro, a former Central Bank of Honduras chairman, decided to stand for President on a security platform after his only son was murdered on 28 April 1999, an event that gained him considerable public support. During his tenure as President of the Central Bank of Honduras,a banking license was given to Banco de Producción.

After leaving the Central Bank he became Chairman and majority stockholder of Banco de Producción, and the General Manager of the Central Bank, Ana Cristina Mejia de Pereira, became the General Manager of Banco de la Producción.

He came into power in January 2002 with a wave of measures against gangs and delinquency, the most noticeable of which has been soldiers patrolling the streets with the police. Many gang members have been jailed for illicit association. This “Mano Duro” policy (name used to describe Central American leaders taking a hard stance against crime) led to the creation of a penal code in 2003 which made street gangs like MS-13 and M-18 illegal and established jail sentences up to 12 years for proven membership.

Violent crime dipped noticeably under Maduro, to the relief of many citizens. Signs of their desperate situation outside prisons included their declaration of war against the government, as if they were not already at war against society, and the aggressive recruitment of younger children, as seen in incidents of arrests of children as young as seven and eight years old.

These “mano duro” policies have significant downsides as well. For example, many of the youth are wrongly arrested for membership but are later become recruited to the gangs while in jail. Also, these gang round-ups have led to the overcrowding of the prison system. Regardless of these policy’s initial sign of success, gangs learn to adapt and continue to carry out their activities. Some reports in the press told of gang leaders from El Salvador coming into Honduras to help stop their decline.

Under President Zelaya’s term, the government stated that it would attempt to create dialog with the gang members in order to sway them to renounce their violence and re-integrate into society. However, this program has relied mainly on private groups implementing the actual re-entry programs.

Zelaya also created a specialized anti-gang unit within the police force which he used to coordinate patrols with the Honduran military. Although these patrols led to the arrests of 1,200 gang members, the rate of violence in Honduras has yet to subside.

Their desperation resulted in a “declaration of war” against the government, and three major events over the last few years brought this tiny country to the attention of the world media. A massacre of 68 prisoners in the farm prison just outside of La Ceiba on 5 March 2003, a fire in the prison at San Pedro Sula that killed 107 prisoners on 18 May 2004, and the massacre of 27 innocent men, women and children in San Pedro Sula, on 23 December 2004.

The massacre in the San Pedro Sula suburb of Chamelecón left 27 dead and 29 injured. The murderers left behind a message, claiming to come from the Cinchoneros, and railing against Maduro, Lobo, Álvarez and the death penalty. The Cinchoneros are believed to be defunct, however.

The attackers promised to commit another massacre before the new year. Fortunately, one suspected assassin was detained very shortly afterwards in another part of San Pedro Sula, and further arrests have since been made.It was later revealed by the local police that the gunmen were members of the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, and the supposed mastermind of the attack, Ebner Anibal Rivera-Paz, was later arrested in Falfurrias,Texas.

After Maduro left office their resurgence was felt and their presence continued, although less than before, but now using the cover of anti-government demonstrations for their activities.

Death Penalty

The death penalty was abolished in 1956, and the last person was executed in 1940, but several candidates for the 2005 presidential elections were in favour of restoring it. Pepe Lobo had promised that if elected President but unable to get a majority in Congress to pass the death penalty he would hold a referendum on the subject.