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Council On Hemispheric Affairs
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Monitoring
Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western Hemisphere
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Memorandum to the Press 04.59
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Thursday, 9 September, 2004
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Word Count: 1400
Honduras’ Response to Violence Has Made a Bad Situation
Worse
- Alarming levels of gang and
government violence continues to plague Honduras as President Ricardo Maduro’s superficial and crow-pleasing anti-violence rhetoric and measures are becoming
increasingly counter-productive and controversial, putting youths at great
risk of police brutality.
- Already one of the most
corrupt countries in all of Latin America,
and with a court system notorious for its venality, the government has
failed to seek justice for the victims of vigilante authorities.
- NGO’s and grassroots
organizations are promoting rehabilitation as the solution to the gang
problem; the government favors imprisonment and the subsequent
overcrowding of prisons is creating a new killing field.
- Reform is
needed, as Maduro shows no indication of reversing these destructive
trends.
Elected to office in November 2001,
Honduran President Ricardo Maduro vowed to crackdown on the rampant gang
violence that plagued his small nation. At that time, many of his countrymen
believed he was the right man for the difficult job since he had personally
tasted the tragic results of wanton crime in 1997, when kidnappers murdered his
son. Soon after, he won the presidency, declaring, "I want to become the
first crime victim to get justice for us all."
Unfortunately, gang activity is nothing new to Honduras. In a country of
only 6.8 million, estimates project that there are over 100,000 active gang
members, including children as young as eight years old. Many of them have been
forcibly returned to Honduras by U.S. authorities after they had been apprehended on criminal
charges in this country. In recent years, Mara
18 and Mara Salvatrucha, two
gangs originally spawned in Los Angeles,
have emerged as the largest and deadliest.
Since taking office, Maduro has followed through with his
pledge of “zero tolerance,” sending scores of gang members to overcrowded
prisons. The decrease in violent crime that has resulted from Maduro’s heavy
hand was immediately hailed as a victory by his administration. Minister of
Security Oscar Alvarez recently stated, "the maras have ceased to
terrorize the people, and the neighborhoods previously closed off to the police
and the Red Cross have been liberated of the plague of the gangs.” Alvarez’s claims, however, are both deceptive
and misleading, as gang members and street children continue to be murdered at
a horrific rate.
TO READ THE ENTIRE TEXT OF THIS PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE
This analysis was prepared by David
R. Kolker, COHA Research Associate.
September
9 , 2004
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