HONDURAS
Stigmates of the Gang
SCRIPT FOR NARRATOR’S VOICEOVER
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NARRATOR
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Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras and its barrios, these poor districts where two rival gangs, the 18 and the MS 13 spread chaos. Those men with tattoos all over their body took control of major towns where drug and weapon trafficking is prosperous. Everyday settlings of scores are a hot topic for TV news. Honduras has recently been classified by the United Nations as the most violent country in the world. Around 20 homicides a day... representing almost 7000 deaths a year. A high death toll which puts the country before Irak, Afghanistan or even Somalia.
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The police doesn’t venture into the barrios until dawn and is heavily armed.
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To flush out gangs’ members, policemen look for tattoos first. Suspects are obliged to show their chest and back. They respect a law that was voted especially to curb the maras phenomenon. During these “commando” operations, a man caught wearing a gang tattoo can spend 5 to 12 years in jail.
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But this anti-gang law implies excesses. These youngsters are certainly tattooed but apparently they don’t belong to any gang. However, they will be spending the day in a police station because of the name of a girlfriend drawn on their back.
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Others bear on their body the sign of the Banished, the vestiges of a past made of violence is carved on their very skin.
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It’s inside Doctor Padilla’s office, that the penitents come. Thanks to laser technology, unique in the country, traces of each committed crime can be removed. The tattoos have a very particular meaning. Here, a tear for a man that got killed, there a grave for a lost friend. To remove them, bit by bit, this green light burns the ink and the coloured pigments. A long and painful remission but after several sessions, Jorge’s tattoos will disappear at last.
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Sherry’s story is similar to the one of these tens of thousands of youngsters, swallowed by the gang spiral. When she was a teenager, she joined the 18 and her back still wears the scars. A youth spent under the sign of harsh violence: kidnapping, arms dealing, murders. Sherry progressively became a “Bandida”, one of the most respected bosses of the 18 in Tegucigalpa. She knows what it involves to get tattooed.
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After those decadent years, this « vida loca » as Hondurans call it, Sherry gave it all up. But to quit the gang, the exits are seldom... and even definitive. In the MS 13 or the 18, accurate laws rule the entry and exit for members. Quitting a gang often means death, unless you embrace religion. The only law that the Banished respect, is the one of God.
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Every evening, in his old van, minister Frances Murillo go through Tegucigalpa’s barrios. This evangelist is part of the “Love Spreaders”, recognized as the church of gangs in Honduras.
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Here in Villa Nueva, poverty and unemployment constitute a fertile soil on which criminal bands thrive. But in these dark streets, minister Frances still believes souls can be saved. After having warned the bosses of the different gangs, he settles on a wasteland, far from prying eyes.
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Within the group, Oscar prays fervently. Some time ago, this former MS 13 member requested to meet minister Frances. From now on, he counts on religion to relieve his conscious and not to fall in violence again.
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Like every month, Doctor Padilla and his laser travel to the other side of the country. In Honduras, he’s the only one who knows how to use this machine that he carries discreetly from town to town. Because the doctor is more and more known by gangs. The thousands of tattoos he’s removed have been a risky enterprise.
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That’s why Doctor Padilla is essential. Without him, many youngsters would have been marked for life by erasing their tattoos with acid, infrared laser or soldering iron. Indeed, to quit a gang, there’s no easy way out: you need to get a brand new skin, by all means.
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San Pedro Sulla and towns of Honduras have 30 to 40 thousand gang members in them. To tackle this criminal inflation, authorities still rely on “la mano dura”. “The firm hand”, a super repressive policy that was launched in the early year 2000. Jovel got locked up in jail before eventually quitting his gang.
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Once you get out of it, figures are not automatically better. In 2011, 19 of Doctor Padilla’s patients were caught by their past, and they got killed.
Many have also gone back to their gang... Jovel, so far, has stayed on the right path. But it’s a narrow one and memories of his other life occur quickly.
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Despite his still visible tattoos, Jovel’s reintegration is moving on. He found a job in this sports hall, located in Chamelecon, a very sensitive district of San Pedro. His employer trusted him and today Jovel helps youngsters give up street life, through sports. Here, football brings many youngsters to the pitch but it’s hard to tell if they’ve really quit their gang.
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Back to Tegucigalpa. For some years, despite all the obstacles, Sherry’s life has changed. She currently works within a public organization. Today, everybody respects her here but her arrival in this archives department didn’t go unnoticed.
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Little by little Sherry has become an employee just like the rest of them in this administration. She carved out a place for herself among these archives and her colleagues have forgotten her past. To do that, the former gang boss had had to give up her street life for good, a much more affluent life.
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Heading off to the south outskirt of the capital, far from the zones controlled by gangs. It’s here where Sherry moved in. At more than 10 kilometres away from the district where she was still called Bandida.
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She now lives in a two-roomed house with her husband and her two kids. The family context, is indeed a determining factor before joining a gang. In Honduras like elsewhere in Central America, broken childhoods increase the number of criminal gangs.
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In Honduras, you can join a gang and handle weapons at the early age of 8 or 9. Then, when you’re a teenager, you can end up in prison. Behind these walls, the jailhouse of Comayagua. Almost a break for those who spent too much time on the streets. Here starts the reintegration process of the pesetas, these youngsters who turned their back to the gang.
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Yesterday’s rivals try to live together in Comayagua. Outside this place, they would have killed each other at the first sight of a tattoo. Living, together, in this narrow prison proves that gang wars can stop one day.
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Sharing this overcrowded and unhealthy prison would be enough to prove that these youngsters want to turn the page and forget the bloody rivalries from the past. But having been part of a gang makes them outcasts. The mark of the banished follows the convicts, until the courts of justice.
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Stigmatized by the justice and the entire society, Wolf and Marcio found themselves in a dead end. Because paradoxically, it’s on the other side of this fence, outside, that the biggest dangers await them.
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More than 900 prisoners are stacked in this rundown jail.
A prison hell where security is relative and where solitude and isolation are overwhelming for those who want to leave the gang.
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Wolf and Marcio will never leave jail.
Last February the fifteenth, huge flames devastated the prison. 355 prisoners died either asphyxiated or burnt alive.
A substantial toll, in the world, the worst fire ever recorded in a jail in the last ten years.
The cause remains unknown, authorities suggested the possibility of a short-circuit.
Even here, death caught the ones who were trying to escape these walls.
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On the streets of Tegucigalpa, more and more people say no to corruption and settling of scores which devastate the nation. Insecurity and the problem of gangs in particular have driven crazy a society poisoned with strong violence.
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The government can no longer ignore the message from the streets. These demonstrations struggle to convince. The umpteenth deployment of the army in the neighbourhoods, anti-corruption operation from the police. The security policy and its curtain of smoke have a perverse effect. The one that is to make reintegration even harder for gang members. As a result, they are often stuck between a too heavy past and a life with no tomorrow. So instead of being shot in a narrow street, rather than living on the fringes of society, many choose the only path left: exile.
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