Inside San Pedro Sula, the corrupt, cartel-infested birth place of the migrant caravan
In the Rivera Hernandez neighbourhood in southern San Pedro Sula, there are no official wars or borders.
But the sprawling urban slum of breeze block houses is clearly divided up between seven opposing gangs, and the streets that divide the territories are considered lines not to be crossed.
It is one of the most violent areas of one of the most dangerous cities in the world’s most murderous region.
And it was from here, and other zones like it, that hundreds of Hondurans packed their bags earlier this month and left to join the migrant caravan to cross real borders in an attempt to get to the United States.
Among them were Carlos Hernandez’s 19-year-old cousin and aunt. Mr Hernandez, 28, stayed behind. “If my cousin didn’t join the gang, they were going to kill him, so he had to run", he told The Telegraph.
"They were looking for him – they came looking for him at the house, they beat him up. Even if you don’t want to they make you, so he left,” said Mr Hernandez, who lives at home with his parents and two other siblings in a one-bedroomed house.
Marasalvatrucha (more commonly known as MS13), Los Olanchanos, Barrio 18, Batos Locos (Crazy Guys) and Locos de la Casa Blanca (Crazies in the White House) are the names of some of the gangs that have carved out their territories here from which they run the drug and extortion rackets that sustain them.
They are the only law that exists. The police enter neighbourhoods like Rivera Hernandez, but according to local residents they often work with the gangs for a cut of their criminal earnings.
Corruption is endemic within the Honduras government, from the top down. The President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has been accused of helping drug traffickers – accusations he denies. His brother is a “person of interest” in a drug investigation being carried out by United States authorities.
On the ground, meanwhile, the country’s police force is currently being purged of corrupt elements guilty of misdemeanors such as extrajudicial killings, working with the gangs and failing to investigate crimes.
Some 5,000 officers have left the police force as part of the purge which began in 2016.
Jesus Perez, 27, says his sister and cousin left the Chamelecon neighbourhood, a few kilometers to the east of Rivera Hernandez, to join the caravan heading north to the United States.
Perez lives a reality identical to Mr Hernandez: “It’s hard to go out and move between blocks because even though you’re not a gang member they can still kill you … because they think you might give information about them to the rival gang.”
The two main street gangs in Honduras – the Marasalvatrucha and the Barrio 18 - are now major criminal and social organisations.
They have spread like a cancer into Honduras from neighbouring El Salvador in recent decades, largely as a result of United States deportation policy during the 1990s that allowed for the mass deportation of ex-convicts back to Central America.
Yet many of the young men who join the street gangs feel like it is their only option, faced with the reality of broken families, poverty and abandonment by the state. Jaxon, a former gang member, said he originally joined the gang because his mother worked long hours and he was left unsupervised.
“My mum worked a lot – I didn’t feel love from my family so looked for it elsewhere,” he says, speaking from a drug rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa.
Now 18, he recently got out of a detention center for minors, where he did time for illicit association (mixing with the gangs)and drug trafficking and weapons possession, among other crimes.
Jaxon said he joined the Barrio 18 gang in the Choloma neighbourhood of San Pedro Sula when he was ten years old, and after doing his time as a lookout he worked up the ranks drug trafficking, running extortion rackets and killing when he was 13 years old.
“The thing is that the Barrio 18 don’t have hearts – they aren’t afraid to go and kill. That’s why the police are so against them – because their souls aren’t bothered by killing.”
There was a police guard at the gate of the rehab center in which Jaxon now lives, because gang members like him who want to leave are often hunted down and killed. For Jaxon, there are few options now – the most appealing is to leave Honduras altogether.
The center that puts a roof over Jaxon’s head is a private institution. Very little of the international aid United States President Donald Trump has threatened to pull should the migrant caravan arrive at the US border with Mexico is used to help those who really need it. As a result, inefficient institutions and corrupt authorities exacerbate violence and generate criminal impunity.
Mr Hernandez, in Rivera Hernandez, says he is unlikely to wait around to see the improvements, if any, that may result from such efforts. If there’s another caravan, he’ll be walking with it he says.
“United States policy is bad – they have to let us improve our lives. They said they were going to help up but they haven’t helped us – they have only helped the politicians,” he says.
“Vamos – I don’t care what Donald Trump says. We’re going north.”
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