Pubdate: Wed, 07 Mar 2012
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/625HdBMl
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: David Agren

HONDURAS SUFFOCATING IN GRIP OF DRUG VIOLENCE AND POVERTY

TULTITLAN, Mexico - After giving up trying to find a job in his 
native Honduras, metalworker Maynor Gutierrez decided to try to get 
to the USA. He never made it past a shelter for illegal immigrants in Mexico.

Poverty, crime and corruption have overwhelmed Honduras, a fledgling 
democracy engulfed in political chaos and designated the murder 
capital of Latin America.

Little has improved under President Porfirio Lobo, who took over 
after his predecessor was removed on charges of subverting democracy. 
The turmoil has prompted many Hondurans to flee north.

"Lobo ruined everything," Gutierrez, 23, said, having survived an 
attempted kidnapping days earlier while on a northbound train. 
"There's no work, and there's no security."

Last year, things had been looking better for Honduras. The 
Organization of American States dropped a suspension of its 
membership that was imposed after President Manuel Zelaya was forced 
out of the country in June 2009. Lobo was welcomed at the White House 
in the fall, and Honduras passed Guatemala as the top coffee producer 
in Central America.

But gang and drug violence has risen sharply in Central America, and 
Honduras is one of the countries struggling to combat it. Drug 
cartels bribe security forces and judges to look the other way, 
according to the World Bank. Honduran security chief Oscar Alvarez 
resigned in September because he said he lacked the resources to stem 
police corruption.

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world at 82 homicides per 
100,000 people in 2010, according to the United Nations Office on 
Drugs and Crime.

Some, such as Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, suggest the 
only answer is to stop fighting drug trafficking and legalize it.

At the St. Juan Diego shelter near Mexico City, workers say "100%" of 
the guests some nights are Honduran.

Even the threat of being victimized by criminal groups such as Los 
Zetas, which kidnaps and sometimes kills migrants making their way to 
the USA, does not dissuade people from heading north.

"They come fleeing from violence," shelter worker Antonio Bustio said.

Vice President Biden arrived in Honduras on Tuesday to meet with Lobo 
and address security in the region.

Lobo's predecessor was ordered removed in 2009 by Honduras' Supreme 
Court after justices said Zelaya tried to illegally extend his term 
through an unconstitutional referendum. He was flown by the military 
to Costa Rica over the vociferous criticism of Venezuelan President 
Hugo Chavez, a socialist ally of Zelaya's who threatened to attack 
over what he called a coup.

The Obama administration also condemned the removal and suspended 
most U.S. aid as did international agencies. Some critics relented 
after a campaign by Honduras and its supporters in the U.S. Congress 
that blamed Zelaya and not the Honduran legal system.

"The judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and 
statutory law ... in accordance with the Honduran legal system," the 
U.S. Law Library of Congress concluded.

Five months after Zelaya's removal, Lobo was elected in a vote judged 
fair by independent monitors.

Any hopes that the election was a new beginning dimmed once the chaos 
weakened Honduran judicial and public security institutions and 
allowed drug runners and organized crime to move in and expand.

"Criminals involved in trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and 
extortion improved their networks and corrupted local officials to 
consolidate control of specific routes," said James Bosworth, an 
American security analyst based in Nicaragua.

Impunity from the law flourished as did violence, including the 
unsolved slayings of journalists. The U.N. International Narcotics 
Control Board said last month that Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua 
had become major transit countries for traffickers smuggling cocaine 
and marijuana to North America.

Mexican drug cartels, under pressure from police, shifted bases to 
Central America, resulting in increased levels of violence, 
kidnapping, bribery, torture and homicide, said the agency's annual 
report for 2011. Central America is home to about 900 "maras," or 
streets gangs, which have 70,000 members.

When he won the presidency, Lobo promoted reconciliation with Zelaya, 
who was allowed to return to Honduras last year, but the cutoff of 
aid and contact had a lasting effect.

"The lack of external credibility and isolation and the lack of money 
flowing in made poverty increase," said Father German Calix, Honduras 
director for Caritas, the Vatican's charitable arm. "It was a void 
for new money from narcotics trafficking to circulate in the country."

A lack of revenue prompted Lobo to seek help from Zelaya's old friend 
Chavez, who sells oil on easy terms to countries to gain influence.

"It's due to the need to access resources quickly, 'simply,' without 
reflecting on what ... this means," said Ileana Morales, researcher 
with the Tegucigalpa-based Honduras Social Forum on Foreign Debt and 
Development.

Maynor Gutierrez is taking no chances. He still plans to try to get 
across the border into the USA.

"It can't be worse than Honduras," he says.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom