As dusk fell, a helicopter hovered menacingly over a dusty football field where several hundred police officers stood in formation, waiting for the clock to strike six – and the imposition of a state of exception partially suspending constitutional guarantees in Honduras.
When the time came, the police departed in caravans to gang-infested neighbourhoods throughout the capital city, as part of an effort to combat an apparent rise in extortion.
“I’m nervous,” repeated a young police officer driving a pickup truck crowded with heavily armed special forces officers. “It’s dangerous there.”
His unit was headed to the Hole – a labyrinthine neighbourhood of narrow streets, whose nickname was originally coined because of its location between sharp hillsides, but which has taken on a new meaning as a place where gang members disappear.
The mission in early December was ostensibly to raid a casa loca, an abandoned home used by gang members. But before arriving, the car stopped and the caravan split. A local TV correspondent needed to do a live shot for one of the country’s most-watched news programs.
As the camera rolled, the police began stopping vehicles passing by in the background, running ID cards and frisking occupants. When more cameras arrived, men were forced to take off their shirts so the police could inspect them for gang tattoos in front of the bright lights.
It was a show: a show of force following the example set by the hardline policies of neighbouring El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has led a controversial crackdown on gangs that has led to the detention of more than 2% of its adult population.
On 24 November, Honduras’s leftwing president, Xiomara Castro, declared war on extortion – a very real problem that causes economic stagnation, fuels violence and forces countless Hondurans to flee the country.
But like any war, it isn’t just a battle against an enemy, but also for control of the popular narrative – in this case, an attempt to counter allegations that the government has not done enough to combat rampant crime.
This perception has grown despite a slight reduction in homicides this year, according to preliminary data, and a significant drop over the past decade since Honduras held the ignominious title of the world’s most violent country.
There is only anecdotal evidence of the scale of the problem because so few extortion victims report the crime, making a statistical analysis impossible. Security experts are divided on how much the perception is the result of sensationalist media coverage, a real rise, a little of both – or simply the continued expansion of a problem that has metastasized for two decades.
“I wouldn’t dare to say that [extortion] has skyrocketed because it has been so high for many years,” said Leticia Salomón, a sociologist and researcher with the Documentation Center of Honduras. “This is an issue that has not been taken seriously by the Honduran state.”
But it’s clear that extortion is occurring in areas where it didn’t in the past, and there is no disagreement, among experts or others, on the gravity of the problem. How to tackle it is another issue.
In the streets where insecurity lurks around each corner, many ordinary Hondurans want to see extreme measures – human rights be damned – and believe that anything short of that is not enough.
“I agree with Bukele and I want the same here. Xiomara should hurry up and go after all those gang members,” said Isidora Varela, 70, at her market stand in downtown Tegucigalpa.
For Varela, who said she had never been a victim of extortion, but heard a lot about it as of late, human rights are just an obstacle. “Because of human rights, crime has gone on so long, because human rights defend the criminal, and it shouldn’t be like that,” she said.
Her words echo those of Bukele, who has railed against human rights groups, government watchdogs and journalists who have questioned his tactics, saying that they are on the side of the gangs. His security-at-all costs approach, and the reductions in violence and crime that have come with it, have found a captive audience in Honduras, but caused consternation among civil society, and closed down discussion of other options.
“Bukele’s example resonates in societies with a fragile institutional framework and with a tendency towards populism and authoritarianism,” said Ismael Moreno, a human rights defender. “If we didn’t have Bukele’s example, we could probably look for some control and security responses based on strengthening institutions.”
Despite some similarities, the security situation in El Salvador is different from Honduras, which has a much larger territory, higher population, greater poverty and a more diverse set of criminal groups.
Earlier this year, Honduras appeared set to follow an example set by another neighbor, Nicaragua, whose community-based policing approach was for years hailed for maintaining exceptionally low crime rates and minimal gang presence until the government turned the police into a repressive force against the people amid widespread protests in 2018.
In Honduras, steps were taken to demilitarize public security forces and a community policing model was announced, with the hope being that the measures would increase public trust in an institution that has historically been dogged by corruption and infiltrated by the very same organized crime groups it is supposed to combat.
But the removal of military officers from an anti-gang taskforce resulted in a messy divorce that temporarily reduced the unit’s already limited capacity – opening a window for criminals – and before the community policing model could have any effect, the political pressure to take decisive action against extortion boiled over.
Police presented a comprehensive plan to reform laws and ramp up institutional capacity – measures that experts believe could have a positive effect long-term – but which were pushed aside by the short-term political decision to declare a state of exception.
Police reforms are most successful when “they’re coupled with investments in social services and cross-cutting investments to address some of the root causes like poverty and exclusion that can cause crime in the first place”, said Mary Malone, a professor at the University of New Hampshire who has studied policing in Central America.
Hardline policies, meanwhile, are “popular because people think that they’re going to work – but inevitably the track record is that they haven’t”, said Malone.
So far, the state of exception in Honduras has produced some arrests and forced the gangs and other criminal groups to keep a lower profile. But it has not yet resulted in an increase in police reports – a key measure of public trust. Some victims of extortion said that the only thing that has changed is how the money is collected.
Nevertheless, the political gains to be had from emulating Bukele’s hardline policies may be too enticing to pass up. Honduras declared the state of exception for 30 days in 162 neighborhoods, some politicians have already called for it to be extended in duration and territory.
Meanwhile, as Guatemala’s electoral season heats up ahead of next year’s presidential election, some candidates have signaled that if elected, they would also implement hardline policies.
“I believe that [Bukele’s] leadership is increasing, because the tendency of the Bukele government is to become Central American, and to exercise leadership in all of Central America,” said Moreno.
