Jason* walks into the small, dimly lit room and sits down on one of the sofas across from his friends. His phone blares with a sporadic chatter from within his pocket: “Chikis turning from Paris into Germany. […] Here, all calm! All calm! […] Shots! Shots on the other side!”
Jason’s* phone is a constant feed of radio chatter through which his punteras (lookouts) inform him of all movements within ‘La Planeta’, one of the most marginalised and poverty-stricken neighbourhoods in Honduras which is entirely controlled by the Barrio 18 gang, one of the two largest gangs operating across Central America. “Believe me, the moment you turned into our neighbourhood, we knew which car you were in, where you were headed, and who you were meeting. You didn’t see any of our punteras, but they always see you!” assures Mario*, a sicario in Jason’s* crew.
Since the 1990s, international and national policies and operations across the Central American Northern Triangle (composed of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) have tried to erode street gangs’ control over large chunks of urban marginalised neighbourhoods. Two gangs operating in the region are the American-born MS-13 and Barrio 18; they are some of the largest and most well-known gangs there, establishing their presence there after being deported from the US back to Central America. Both groups finance their operations primarily through extortion and micro-trafficking.
The recent success of El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele in his war on gangs, which severely weakened Barrio 18’s presence in the country after declaring a state of emergency in 2022, has put pressure on the Honduran government to deploy similar tactics. This led to the creation of the ‘Plan Solution Against Crime’ plan, which is composed of three operational phases: the first two phases are designed to gain the upper hand through intelligence gathering and territorial control by deploying military presence justified through a state of emergency in selected neighbourhoods. This action has already led to several cases of abuse, human rights violations and disappearances. The third and final phase is intended to be a full military offensive in these same neighbourhoods.
In June 2024, the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, continued her tough stance against gangs and criminal groups, announced via national broadcast the deployment of security forces and ordering them to “urgently carry out interventions in parts of the country with the highest incidence of gang-related crimes, such as contract killings, drug and firearms trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and money laundering.”
As most governments do, Honduras prioritised disrupting cartels’ drug trafficking. According to a report released by the National Police in mid-2023, six months of state of emergency successfully seized 4,895 pounds of marijuana, 475 kilos of cocaine, 17,633 doses of crack cocaine, 1373 vehicles, and 6441 motorcycles allegedly used for drug dealing. Despite law enforcement’s celebration, these seizures are barely denting the profit margins of national cartels: the Honduran drug economy is estimated to make close to $700 million per year, representing 4% of the nation’s GDP (as of 2016).
The classic narrative pushed by drug policies is that the power of organised criminal groups stems from the profitability of drugs and drug trafficking; violence is a by-product of drug market controls. However, our insights into groups like Barrio 18 suggest that drugs are not a priority as a trigger for violence or as a source of income. They are failing to understand the adaptability and rapidly changing dynamics in how groups like Barrio 18 and MS-13 accrue power over their territories and re-direct violence away from drug markets to territorial control.
When asked about the sale of drugs in the sector, Frederick*, an associate of the Barrio 18 gang, smiles and shrugs, “Don’t believe that we make much money from selling drugs. (…) Look, this gram of cocaine goes for 100 Lempiras, which is pretty low. Consider that we are selling to people living in pretty poor conditions. (…) Most of our money comes through extortion, which is a far greater pillar of income for us!” According to him, businesses pay a certain tax to the gang for operating in the area, which is sometimes referred to as ‘rent’ or ‘war tax’. However, for tax payment, total control over sectors is key to ensure payments. “We control this sector completely!” says Mario*.
“Here, if you rob, rape or snitch, we kill you. That is why you can leave your phone anywhere, and nobody will steal it. Motorcycles have the keys in the ignition, and people don’t lock their houses. We don’t kill anyone just because we can. There is always a reason, and it has to go through the proper channels. I can’t just put a bullet in someone here in the sector,” Mario added.
Invisible borders
People in the sector have learned to rely on the gang to resolve issues internally. “These guys are the government [here],” says Giovani*, a civilian living in the sector. “The land my house is on is not officially recognised by the state as my property, but I have been living here for over 24 years now.” A long-lasting land dispute between Giovani and the dead land-owner means his land titles were never recognised.
“The guys [Barrio 18] at least recognise that this piece of land is mine, and I can rely on them to protect me from the opposing gangs coming in here. The police don’t even dare to come into this region, and if they do, they come to mess things up and harass the people living here and leave again.”
Giovani is one of the few people who has remained in an area that is known to be an invisible border. This space divides the sector of La Planeta, which is controlled by Barrio 18, from ‘La Rivera’, which is predominantly controlled by the MS-13 and other smaller gangs. While not visible to the naked eye, invisible borders exist between sectors: these are usually hot zones of mostly abandoned buildings. While not visibly marked, they are patrolled and guarded much like other borders, as they are often crossed by opposing members looking to spy, scout, and gather intelligence on other groups.
“Where there is a border, there is lead!” says Mario. “We have a bunch of firefights in that area, and just recently, we snatched two MS-13 snooping around.”
“When we grab them, we torture them for information, and if we have what we need, they disappear. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
“It’s not smart to just be violent”
According to Jason*, a member of Barrio 18, all the gangs in Honduras have undergone a significant transformation. “It’s no longer smart to just be violent and to kill people in the streets. We are more than that now. We now focus on gathering intelligence and preserving ourselves to control the sector more thoroughly. (…) If the police come into the neighbourhood and confiscate guns and drugs, we let them have them, and if they take some of our guys, we usually can just buy their freedom.”
According to Jason, it’s common for the police to send a message with the price for a member’s freedom to their family members. “It’s their [the police’s] business model. That’s how they make extra cash.”
This level of negotiation and corruption is not a unique feature of Barrio 18’s sectors. Maria* from MS-13 confirmed the same dynamics. “Sometimes the police come and grab some of our guys, and we have to buy them free. We ourselves have people in the police, so if anyone calls them, the police call us and let us know who, which family, which house called the police about what.”
Equally, Maria explained that the MS-13 has undergone a similar evolution, focusing more on consolidating power within neighbourhoods through superior intelligence methods and a close relationship with the police.
Drugs also only play a secondary role in the MS-13 territories, where violence is a means of consolidating their governance, not to battle for drug-selling opportunities. “We sell different types of coke costing between 200lps and 400lps, and apart from that, our very special brand of weed called ‘Tiburon’ [Transl: Shark], which is more potent.” But despite the higher prices for the drugs, they only move in small quantities, she adds.
Both sides are not very concerned about the state’s third phase of military offensive in the neighbourhoods, which is expected to happen soon. “They [the government] have done this before, but in the end, they never stay. We are most likely just going to wait it out. (…) In the end, there is always one of our top guys who is going to pay off one of their top guys, and that’s that,” says Maria.
From Barrio 18’s perspective, Jason shares an almost identical view. “If the police come here, we won’t confront them. They have a licence to kill us without repercussions. If one of us kills a cop, they will come back with everything and kill everyone, including that person’s family, all up to his grandparents to make a point”.
But Jason adds that there is no need to confront the police in their operations; locals don’t trust them enough to cooperate. “They [police] never stay to deal with this sector and its problems. We are the only ones who do.”
Both Barrio 18 and MS-13 underscored how the Government’s hyper-fixation on seizing weapons and drugs is missing the point on how gangs maintain power over areas of Honduras. These groups have adapted their activities from micro drug trafficking to focusing on control and sovereignty over their sectors, deploying targeted violence to define and consolidate their borders. This has been made possible due to the abandonment of these marginalised communities by the police and other state forces, whose presence is only felt in the area through deadly military interventions and violent drug busts. While the government fights a drug war of drug seizures and military interventions in communities, criminal gangs fill their gaps of governance. They effectively consolidate the invisible borders of the sectors under their control through their own form of violent law and order; however, they are simultaneously shielding the people living within their territories from other predatory neighbouring groups. This allows groups like MS-13 and Barrio 18 to outlast the police, the military and the state in their own lands.
*Names have been changed.
Note: This article is part of the FRONTERAS [IN]VISIBLES project which is funded by the GABO Foundation.
