I have never seen more men with guns than in Honduras. And I am not just talking about security guards at obvious places like in front of banks and jewelry stores. It seems that if a business in a city here is to be considered respectable at all, there needs to be at least one half-bored, half-paranoid, shotgun or automatic-wielding rent-a-cop hanging out in front. Often, this guard will have a wand to search people going into the stores. I have seen security guards in front of shoe stores that proffer relatively low-quality imports, and appear to be empty of clients. I often wonder in these cases what a guard would be protecting- is anybody really desperate enough to want to steal a bunch of third-rate Pro-Keds? The answer is, yes, thousands of people are that desperate.
Violence is as pervasive in Honduras as evangelical Christianity, reggaeton, and the obsession with major league soccer teams. It is manifested both in literal and abstract forms-there is the actual physical violence of murders, rapes, and assaults, committed by individuals, and there is the abstract violence of oppressive poverty, committed by an unholy alliance of greedy capitalist elites in the West and their collaborators in the small Honduran upper class. Poverty is so hopeless for many people that they have no choice but to turn to armed robbery so that their daily needs can be met.
A weak and blatantly negligent central government that does not maintain an adequate police force also creates violence, by opening up a huge space for vigilante justice. In some of the poorer neighborhoods of San Pedro Sula, for example, there is only one policeman for every 2,000 people. This means that heavily armed gangs like Salvatrucha can rule the roost, taking advantage of no formal check on their activities, turning entire low or no-income neighborhoods into virtual fiefdoms of narco-trafficking, weapons running, and other assorted illegal pursuits.
Children are socialized in Honduras to be tough, to become immune to the pervasive violence of their surroundings. So many people I have met here have lost relatives and friends to violent acts, and most Hondurans die a slow death due to the violence of poverty. Four-year-old boys in our kindergarten class want to do nothing else but beat on each other, which is like boys everywhere I suppose (those ingrained Neanderthal aggression impulses), but in places like Honduras, there is something different to it. It is like hardening oneself slowly, learning how to defend oneself by violent means, which parents actually encourage (rendering our teacher’s mission to teach the kids kinder, gentler methods of conflict resolution rather moot). These boys know that their lives will have more hurdles, and more challenges, than the lives of most boys in the United States, so the law of the jungle becomes their code of conduct. Honduras has very little in the way of a well-formed social fabric to protect communities and groups from the worst deprivations of the New World Order. Therefore, in such an individualized context, every citizen is a competitor, and only the strongest will survive in the end. This all sounds very primitive, but the United States is very similar, there are just more economic opportunities for people to take advantage of. Capitalism makes people into warring automatons, modern-day slaves to the grind of vacuous consumerism and the narrow-minded pursuit of profit.
I have not felt truly threatened in Honduras at any time, and walk freely around downtown San Pedro during the day, seeing quite a few vagabonds high on glue, and shady-looking young men with scary eyes. But I know that I am lucky enough to not have to see what the real violence in Honduras means; all I have to connect with it are the horror stories of my friends and the gory pictures of murdered and mutilated people splashed across the front page of La Prensa. Sure, I always try to be aware of my surroundings here, but I do not feel like a target. You only need a government permit, which is not hard to procure, to walk the streets with a concealed weapon. In a land without cops, everyone has to be their own. I am content to not arm myself, and am lucky enough to not have to.
