SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2003


Jennifer Dormer (left), Sarah Croasdaile (center), and Olivia McGill
were all mugged at knifepoint while working as volunteers in Honduras.
Miss McGill lost about US$30.00 in cash plus some clothes and tapes.

Crime crisis in Honduras shows no sign of abating

BY LARRY SCHWARZ

Tourists often flock to the beautiful beaches of Tela to relax and enjoy the sun. Olivia McGill, 26, an Irish woman who used to write for Honduras This Week, thought a trip to the popular northern community seemed like a great idea. After a relaxing day in the sun with two friends, she walked over the bridge back into town and was held up at knifepoint.

"My two friends were walking ahead," she said while recounting the story over a drink at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant in Tegucigalpa. "A creepy man cycled up beside me and grabbed my bag. I tried to pull it back, but he pulled a knife so I gave it to him."

The incident cost her 500 lempiras (US$28.90), some clothes, her Walkman, and all of her cassette tapes.

"I traveled for two years," Miss McGill said, "and this was the first time I'd been robbed."

Robbery has become so common in Latin America that people now accept it as just a part of everyday life. No place is considered safe - not even an ordinary taxicab.

It was supposed to be a fun evening out for Sarah Croasdaile, 21, and Jennifer Dormer, 18, both volunteers from England. A good friend was leaving the country, and they were headed to a restaurant on Boulevard Morazán to say goodbye.

At about 6:15pm on a rainy weeknight they hailed a taxi in Colonia El Hogar. Two passengers were already in the vehicle: a woman in the front seat and her male acquaintance in the back seat.

As the vehicle sat in heavy traffic in front of a Wendy's restaurant near the Clarion Hotel in Colonia Alameda, the female turned around, leaned diagonally over the back seat and asked Miss Croasdaile en Español where she was from. After she politely answered the woman suddenly pulled a knife.

"The driver panicked and told us not to get out of the taxi," she said. "We handed over our bags, and the woman told us to get out."

Several organizations have recently released crime studies in Latin America, and the outlook is extraordinarily grim. A United Nations Human Development Report stated that robbery is a bigger problem in Latin American cities than in their African counterparts. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Latin America as the region with the highest homicide rate in the world.

Although the statistics for Honduras are considered average by Latin American standards, the nation still suffers from a significant crime problem. According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), crime is now the number one concern among Hondurans, and the annual rate for robbery and assault is a shocking 36.3%. Guatemala had the highest rate at 54.9%.

"Everyone in Honduras has either had a crime committed against them or knows someone who has," said Alexandra Dieckmann, 34, who has lived in Tegucigalpa for 27 years. Two years ago, she was robbed in Colonia Luis Landa while getting into her car, and she remembers it as if it happened only yesterday.

"It was very surreal," she said. "I looked down and saw a silver-colored revolver in my ribs, so I screamed.

"I didn't see his face, because he was looking down and wearing a baseball cap. He said, 'hand me your purse, please.' The first thing I did was yank it off of my shoulder and give it to him. He ran off, got on a motorcycle driven by another man, and took off. The whole thing took one minute tops."

Crime victims have little recourse, and police in Honduras are rather limited in their ability to provide assistance. To make matters worse, tourists and locals don't have much faith in their crime-solving ability. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington believes that more than half of all crimes in Latin America go unreported. One of the main reasons is that many citizens think the police themselves are involved in criminal activity.

"Right before I was robbed," Miss McGill said, "I passed two tourist police. They talked into a walkie-talkie. I am almost sure that they said 'she's coming.'"

"After I was robbed," she continued, "I told two different tourist policemen in a car what had happened. They just waved their hands and said 'they're gone' even though I could still see him up the road."

Reporting the crime doesn't necessarily turn the tide in the victim's favor. After her incident, Miss Dieckmann went to the police department in Colonia Kennedy, but they didn't have the proper forms for her to fill out. Instead, they referred her to the Dirección General de Investigación Criminal (DGIC) downtown.

"They told me it was impossible for me to get my stuff back," she recalled, "but said that the information I gave them would be good for internal statistics to monitor where crimes are committed."

Despite being grossly understaffed and underpaid, the police do have occasional success stories. A taxi driver, who witnessed the robbery of Miss Croasdaile and Miss Dormer memorized the number of their taxi and took them to the DGIC.

The police found the driver, accused him of being involved in the crime, and arrested him. The driver insisted he was innocent and brought the officers to the offenders' house. He knew where the criminals lived since he had driven them home after the robbery. Most of Miss Croasdaile's and Miss Dormer's belongings were recovered and the police apprehended the perpetrators.

Why crime is such a huge problem in Latin America is the subject of an ongoing debate. On the surface, the most obvious reasons are abject poverty, high unemployment, and lack of education. But a June, 2003 report by CSIS called Crime, Democracy, and Development in Latin America declared "income inequality" as the primary reason.

The Honduran government appears to be having a great deal of trouble dealing with this crisis despite being fully aware of the problem and having a solid commitment to handling it. President Ricardo Maduro is certainly no stranger to violence; after all, his only son was kidnapped and murdered in 1997. That event was the catalyst for his presidential candidacy, and he essentially won the 2001 election with a tough anti-crime platform.

From the moment Maduro got into office he began to seriously work on the crime problem. He promised to bring Hondurans the zero-tolerance policy that had been enacted by former New York City mayor, Rudolph Guiliani. To enforce that plan, Maduro substantially increased the military and police presence and authorized them to enter private homes without a search warrant.

Needless to say, human-rights activists were upset by this strategy. They viewed it as an erosion of civil rights and were worried that the nation would ultimately become a police state. Regardless of the President's actions, the crackdown hasn't appeared to make a dent in the crime rate.

"Since Maduro has been elected," Miss Dieckmann said, "I think street crime has stayed the same or even risen. He's cracking down more on gangs, but I've heard of more and more people getting held up at gunpoint and knifepoint, and I don't think the general public feels a difference is being made."

On the other hand, President Maduro may be on the right track by focusing on gangs as the serpent's head. After all, they are responsible for more than 25% of the homicides in Honduras. According to The Pan American Health Organization, gangs are the fastest growing source of violence in Latin America and have approximately 30,000 members in El Salvador and Honduras. More than 50% are under 15-years old, and many are as young as eight. In order to pay for their drug habits, they rob and assault people on a regular basis.

The reputation of Latin America as being a haven for crime is beginning to have serious effects on the region's economy. The CSIS believes that foreigners are now less inclined to invest here, democracy is being weakened, tourism is suffering, and the already low standard of living is being further reduced.

"Economists with the World Bank estimate that Latin America's average per capita income would be 25% higher if it had a crime rate similar to the rest of the world," said the CSIS in their report.

Many people think that the most obvious solution to this problem is to pour massive amounts of foreign aid into the region, but it doesn't appear that help is on the way anytime soon. When the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, visited with President Maduro last week, there were promises of assistance to fight terrorism and drug trafficking, but no cash was offered to deal with the nation's chronic crime problem.

Without any help, the situation in Honduras and the rest of Latin America isn't likely to improve anytime soon. Historically, crime doesn't tend to go away by itself, and according to the CSIS, "Latin America's crime epidemic will worsen considerably in the years ahead."

Victims of robbery often find the experience to be a wake-up call, and usually adjust their behavior as a result of the event.

"I'm more suspicious now," said Miss Dormer. "We had been a bit naïve and started to feel like we were at home. I thought being in a taxi, we would be safe."

Of course, crime victims always look back upon the incident and think of things they could have done differently.

"If I was even a bit strong," Miss McGill said, "I could have knocked his bike over. He wasn't carrying a very good knife. I told him to get off me, but there was no way out of it. He was on a bike, and it's not like you're going to be faster than that."

"If we had struggled for our bags," Miss Dormer said, "and someone got hurt, we never would have forgiven ourselves. It just wasn't worth it for a few hundred lempiras."

In order to minimize the risk, there are certain precautions one can take. Miss Dieckmann now does whatever she can to protect herself but acknowledges that nobody is ever 100% safe. After her robbery, she tinted the windows of her car - something that is extremely common and completely legal in Honduras.

"Now when I step out of someone's home," she said, "I look around and I'm more aware of my surroundings."

Still, nobody can plan for everything. Two months ago, while driving her mother to the hospital, Miss Dieckmann got caught in the middle of a shootout during a failed robbery of an armored vehicle. Fortunately, neither one of them were hurt.

At the end of the day, the best advice is simply to exercise simple common sense.

"Be careful with your money and spread it around," Miss Croasdaile suggested, "and don't ever get in a taxi when there is someone else in it."

"The trick is to always have stuff with you that if it's lost it won't matter," Miss McGill said, "and cross the street if someone looks dodgy. (My assailant) was so obvious. Be aware!"

In the event of a robbery, probably the best advice of all is just to hand over your belongings, report the crime, and move on with your life.

"I have a policy," Miss McGill said. "I just forget it or I'll just get pissed off."