Honduras Begins ‘Drastic Measures’ Against Gangs After Prison Massacre

Dozens of incarcerated men stripped to their underwear with their hands on their heads are pressed together in formation as heavily armed soldiers stand guard, in photos circulated by the Honduran government this week in an attempt to promote a renewed gang crackdown. 

Similar images from El Salvador in 2020 sparked outrage from human rights groups and allegations of abuse and torture. But Honduran authorities are now copying its neighbor’s example as the country’s president desperately tries to project an image of control following a gruesome massacre in a women’s prison that killed at least 46 women. prisoners. 

“We started these measures so that prisons stop being schools for crime and break the cycle of organized crime,” tweeted former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, husband of the current President Xiomara Castro, along with various photos and videos of authorities searching prisoners. “Our mission is to go after organized crime that operates inside prisons.” 

One video purports to show contraband discovered in prisoners’ possession, including hundreds of guns, bullets, knives, lighters, and cell phones. “They have an arsenal inside,” Zelaya tweeted.

President Castro didn’t comment on the gang crackdown and instead retweeted the words of her husband, who was ousted in a coup in 2009. Following the prison massacre on June 20, she wrote on Twitter that she was shocked by "monstrous murder” of the incarcerated women and would take “drastic measures” in response. On Sunday, after 20 people were killed in separate attacks around the country, Castro announced curfews in the cities of Choloma and San Pedro Sula. She said the murders, including 13 people in a billiards hall, were carried out by “hired thugs trained and directed by the drug lords who operate with impunity.”

That Honduras is promoting its renewed crackdown in its overcrowded prison system underscores the growing influence of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, in recent years. Mass incarceration has long been a government tactic in tackling gang violence in recent decades, but his administration has adopted an unprecedented hardline approach and locked up tens of thousands of alleged gang members, often with little evidence.

While human rights groups and U.S. authorities have condemned Bukele’s authoritarian policies, he is perceived as a positive example in many countries across Latin America for bringing down murder rates and dismantling the control of  MS-13 and Barrio 18, the country’s powerful street gangs, who control swathes of Northern Triangle nations via the use of extortion and violence.

In Honduras, “the reaction to gang violence is pretty much taking a page out of Bukele,” said Eric Olson, a Central America expert and director of policy at the Seattle International Foundation, which promotes good governance in Central America. “At this point they are focused on giving an impression of being tough on crime, but they haven’t had much success.”

He said he has visited jails in Honduras. “Authorities lock the doors and guard the outside but there is no control inside the prison. Whether it's police on the outside or the military, it really doesn't change much.”

The massacre at the women’s prison on June 20 in the city of Tamara shocked the country and international community and triggered the sharp crackdown by Honduran authorities. During the bloodshed, female prisoners belonging to Barrio 18 street gang busted into a cellblock housing members of a rival gang and sprayed them with bullets, hacked others to death with machetes, and then set them on fire before locking them in their cells, according to the Associated Press. Authorities said some of the women were so badly burned they needed genetic testing to be identified.

In response to the massacre, President Castro fired the country’s security minister, Ramón Sabillón, alleging that the violence happened with the “acquiescence of security authorities.” She also put the military in charge of the country’s prisons.

But Castro’s administration appears to be floundering after months of attempting to project a tough-on-crime image. In November, she declared a state of emergency in a desperate bid to stamp out widespread gang-run extortion and violence. The new measures back then boosted police presence and surveillance, especially in gang-controlled neighborhoods and in taxi and bus terminals. 

“Either they targeted their state of emergency incorrectly,” Olson said. “Or they don't really know what's going on.”