Travel warning - again

The US State Department has just issued another travel warning for Honduras.

This one is about one third shorter than the last warning, but still contains many passages (about one-third) that are merely cut and pasted from the previous warning, with little or no change.

Thankfully, the warning has omitted one of the most egregious statements of previous warnings which stated that “U.S. citizens are victims of crime at levels similar to those of the local population,” a statement that is blatantly untrue.

But the warning still takes a blanket approach to the violence in Honduras, not distinguishing carefully the relative security of many smaller cities and many rural regions of the country. It notes that the murder rate for 2015 was 60 per 100,000 inhabitants – for the whole country.

But looking at Neighborhood Scout, one might be reluctant to visit Saint Louis, Missouri, which had a murder rate of 50 per 100,000 in 2015 and one should definetly not visit East Saint Louis, Illinois or Chester, Pennsylvania which had murder rates respectively, of 101 and 88 per 100,000 inhabitants. Detroit had only 45 per 100,000 while New Orleans had 39/100,000 and Baltimore 24/100,000.

Official sources indicate that there were 5092 homicides in Honduras in 2015. Official sources also report 2100 homicides from January to May in 2016 – with 328 in Tegucigalpa and 307 in San Pedro Sula between January and April. Of these killings there were 45 multiple slayings, with 156 victims.

I have not been able to find out how many are due to organized crime, how many due to drug trafficking, how many are due to gang violence. In addition, I wonder how many of these deaths were targeted, not random violence nor violence perpetrated on random persons in the street. How many were the result of the use of weapons by persons who were inebriated or on drugs or who lost their tempers or were overly jealous. I know of three deaths this year – of persons killed during an arson – that are directly related to jealousy. I also know of cases of killings to avenge crimes, because of the lack of a justice system that prosecutes and jails criminals in a just and efficient manner.

But I also wonder whether considering murder rates is the best way to calculate security and safety. In the four municipalities that make up the parish of Dulce Nombre there were, according to the National University’sObservatory of Violence, 14 homicides in 2015. That would be about 53 per 100,000. But 6 of these were in one single municipality, San Agustín.

I do not deny that there are serious problems with violence in Honduras. Much of this is concentrated in three cities – Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and La Ceiba - and in areas of drug trafficking, especially on the northern coast.

But much of the violence is related to corruption, impunity, and courts and police that fail to execute justice. There is also the lack of a culture of peaceful conflict resolution.

I do not feel insecure. Of course, I don’t live in a big city and when I visit Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula I take precautions.

But here in the parish I feel very strongly that my security is in the people whom I serve – and in the God we love and who loves us.

Posts on previous travel warnings can be found here, here, here, and here.

Another travel warning on Honduras: more of the same

On October 30, the US State Department released another travel warning for Honduras, available here. I don’t know if it was part of a Halloween attempt to scare people from visiting Honduras, but it is a highly flawed document.

When the last warning was released in March 2015, I wrote a critique, which you can read here. This recent report is significantly shorter but it is still largely a “cut and paste” of previous reports.

One of the most egregious problems with the document is that it seems to treat all of Honduras as being a risky place to travel. Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula are very different from Santa Rosa de Copán and Gracias Lempira. Rural municipalities of Dulce Nombre de Copán and Concepción Copán are very different from Choloma and other suburbs of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa.

The first change is interesting. In the previous four warnings, the documents read:

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work without incident.

This is strangely missing.

They also excised the critique of Honduran military and police that appeared in last March’s report:

Members of the Honduran National Police have been arrested, tried, and convicted for criminal activities. Many more are under investigation. As a result, criminals operate with a high degree of impunity throughout Honduras. The Honduran government is still in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions.

There is thus no report on the so called “substantial reforms” of the Honduran government, which many consider to have been undercut by continuing corruption and efforts of the executive branch to control all the aspects of the government. 

Is the US State Department afraid of offending Honduran officials?

The report continues to mark Honduras as a country with a high murder rate, but note changes:

Since 2010, Honduras has had one of the highest murder rates in the world,...  However, official statistics from the Honduran Observatory on National Violence show Honduras’ homicide rate has decreased to 66 per 100,000 in 2014, down from its peak of 86.5 per 100,000 in 2011, and mid-year estimates in July 2015 predict a lower rate for 2015. 

Then, it continues to repeat that:

U.S. citizens are victims of crime at levels similar to those of the local population.

In a previous paragraph they have added that

the U.S. Embassy has recorded 42 murders of U.S. citizens during the same time period [since2010], with 10 recorded since January 2014

What is missing in this is any substantial indication of where and when these crimes happened or under what circumstances.

There is a statement about carjackings and assaults in isolated areas:

Honduran law enforcement reports frequent highway assaults and carjackings, including remote areas of Choluteca, Olancho, Colon and Copan Departments. 

Reporting indicates that these assaults are frequently executed by criminals posing as Honduran law enforcement.  This criminal activity occurs frequently enough to present security challenges for anyone traveling in remote areas. 

But here again the information is vague. What is a remote area in the department of Copán where I live? There was a bus that was attacked a few months ago on the road between La Entrada and Santa Rosa de Copán, but it was after dark. I have not heard of any other specific cases.

The report also repeats what was noted in the May 2015 report:

Most of Honduras’ major cities (Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, and others), as well as several Honduran “departments” … have homicide rates higher than the national average for 2014…

The report continues to report that

Since January 2012, four cases of kidnapped U.S. citizens were reported to the U.S. Embassy and the kidnapping victims were all subsequently released after paying ransoms.

These kidnappings were first noted in the June 2013 report; there have thus been no kidnappings for about two and half years. Why this information is given in such an inaccurate manner is beyond my comprehension.

There is, for the first time, note about sexual assault, which is important:

Sexual assault is a concern in Honduras.  Most Honduran local police and medical staff do not have the capacity to properly handle evidence collection and medical care of sexual assault cases.

Those of us who live here know of this and of the violence against women – Honduran women. There may have been sexual assaults against non-Hondurans but the most serious problems are the assaults against Honduran women and the large number of violent deaths of women, what some here call femicide.

But I am again incensed at the outright lie that “U.S. citizens are victims of crime at levels similar to those of the local population.” As I noted in my previous analysis this is completely false for any number of reasons.

I expect more of the US State Department than cutting and pasting and vague generalizations.

Bogus Honduras travel warning

This past Monday the US State Department released another Honduras travel warning, the fourth since June 2013.

I’ve written about two of these in the past here and here, but this one deserves the cake.

It’s largely cut and paste from previous warnings. It appears that nobody took the time to rewrite the document.

Yet there are some very interesting statistics. Some of which look alarming.

For instance, the 2015 warning notes:

Since January 1, 2012, four cases of kidnapped U.S. citizens were reported to the U.S. Embassy; the kidnapping victims were all subsequently released. 

However, this exact same statement appears in the June 17, 2013 warning. So there were no reported kidnapping since June 2013!

But what is more interesting is the reporting on murders and follow-up on the crimes.

In the June 2013 warning:

A majority of serious crimes are never solved; of the 18 murders committed against U.S. citizens since January 2011, police have closed none.

As I calculate this there were 18 in that two and a half year period.

In the December 2013 warning:

The vast majority of serious crimes in Honduras, including those against U.S. citizens, are never solved; of the 50 murders committed against U.S. citizens since 2008, police have only solved two.

So there were 50 murders in six years.

The June 2014 warning gives no number of US citizens murdered.

The March 2015 warning reads:

The U.S. Embassy has recorded more than 100 murders of U.S. citizens since 2002.

Okay. Fifty of these were between 2008 and the end of 2013. When did the others occur?

The 2015 warning does note that

In 2014, there were ten murders of U.S. citizens reported to the U.S. Embassy with seven of the ten resulting in arrests or prosecutions.

So it seems that 35 of the reported murders were between 2002 and the end of 2007. 

Why the inconsistency in time periods considered?

But what really irks me – as I mentioned in a previous post is a statement that I consider an outright UNTRUTH, a statement that has appeared in various forms in all four reports:

U.S. citizens are victims of crime at levels similar to those of the local population….

This is what some of us might call a LIE - or it could be the the US State Department doesn't know what is happening in Honduras.

And so I ask the US government:

• US State Department, do you really know what is happening in Honduras?
• Do you really know what is happening to the Honduran people?
• Do you really understand that there are various types and causes of violence here? Do you not understand that US citizens have privileges (largely because of our money) and don’t have to ride in public transportation or live in dangerous neighborhoods and can avoid dangerous areas?
• Do you not understand that most Hondurans do not have the resources to live in good neighborhoods or take secure taxis or busses?
• Do you not understand that Hondurans face violence and crime not just from common criminals but from government forces?
• I think you are really ignorant of what is happening. Even your own warning shows this.

But what really strikes me as strange is that the most recent warning notes that seven out of the ten reported murders of US citizens have resulted in arrests and prosecutions. That's a 70% response rate; of course, there may not be convictions, the "justice" system being as poor as it is. But a 70% response rate is something that Hondurans would applaud.

According to a report in Telesur:

In the three year period from 2010 to 2013, 27,272 homicides were reported in Honduras, while there were only1,009 court convictions.

An April 2014 report of In Sight Crime notes:

 In Honduras, according to figures from the Supreme Court of Justice, for every 100 homicides, the perpetrators are sentenced in just three cases. That is to say: the impunity rate in the most violent country in the Northern Triangle is 97.44 percent. 

That’s between a 3.7% and a 2.56% conviction rate for murders against Hondurans. If that were the case with the US citizens murdered, there would probably have been less than one conviction. Instead, 70% have resulted in either arrests or convictions.

In a nearby municipality there have been 14 murders of Hondurans. I need to ask how many have resulted in arrests or prosecutions, or were even investigated.

UPDATE: March 16, 2015: While visiting the municipality yesterday I asked about last year's killings. One person is jailed. Another person was arrested for another killing but was released when it was discovered that he was not responsible for the crime; another person was arrested for that crime but is out of jail, thanks to his lawyers. My source mentioned that the police are now watching the accused because he seems to have been responsible for other crimes. That's impunity and an inadequate judicial and police system.

We US citizens are privileged.

The travel warning is bogus.

I do not deny that there is violence – especially in the big cities and along the north coast. I do not deny the presence of crime – both petty crime and large scale crime related to drug trafficking and gangs (and corrupt police, military, and economic elites). I do not deny the violence in our area – often due to long-held resentments, family feuds, and alcohol abuse.

But much of the violence continues because the system does not respond to the people. Impunity runs rampant.

The US warning does not address this – and I think throwing a billion dollars into the region won’t help. That's another post.

Another travel warning

This week the US State Department issued another warning about travel to Honduras. It’s as bad or worse than previous ones. I wrote about a previous one here. Much of the report is a mere reciting of the last warning.

It starts out with the bland statement:

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work without incident. However, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country,…

It states, as it did in the last two warnings, what I believe is a blatant lie.

U.S. citizens are victims of crime at levels similar to those of the local population, and do not appear to be targeted based on their nationality.

If that were true there would have been at least 50 US citizens killed in Honduras last year. I think the number is closer to three.

There is no way that US citizens are experiencing the crime and violence that Hondurans are. We have ways of assuring our safety that are beyond the means – personal and financial – of the majority of Hondurans. We can pay for more expensive busses, stay in hotels with guards, live in communities that are gated. (I don't live in a gated community and surely won't when I move to the countryside.)

If there are crimes that are perpetrated against US citizens, some of them may be due to the lack of taking serious precautions that one would take in certain areas in the US where crime is more common.

The warning states:

Several U.S. citizens have reported being robbed while walking on isolated beaches.

These crimes may partly be due in part to a lack of due care.

They talk about kidnappings and note that there have been four kidnappings of US citizens since January 1, 2012. That was the exact same thing they wrote in December 2013. That means that they have no reports of new kidnappings in the last six months.

They also cite the murder rate provided by the National Violence Observatory, located in the National Autonomous University of Honduras, as 79 per 100,000 people which is less than was projected in the US State Department December warning (81) – and is less than the previous year. This is not noted in the warning. There is, however, a repetition from the December 2013 warning of the innocuous statement that “The Honduran government is still in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions.”

What would I advise people?

• Come to Honduras to meet the real people in the countryside. Come as friends to accompany their efforts and to get to know them as real people. They will be your best security.

• Avoid the big cities. Not only is the crime high, but the air is polluted. Hondurans have to live in these cities to find a job, or because their family moved there years ago to seek employment.
   
• If you have to be in the cities, take care as you would in a big US city. Ask people where to avoid. If you don’t speak Spanish well, avoid public transportation.
   
• In general be cautious.
   
• But know that it is less dangerous in places where I work – in the parish of Dulce Nombre. Even the city of Santa Rosa de Copán has a lower murder rate than Camden, New Jersey.

• Take the US State Department warning with a grain of salt. And realize that US policy and US drug use may be contributing.

• Come and show solidarity with the poor here. 

Honduras is not the murder capital of the world, despite what the newspapers and the statistics say. Yes the murder rate is the highest - but why? Poverty, lack of a real judicial and justice system, policies of international businesses and government. 

Part of the cause may lie in the US.

I say this even while thinking of a community in the parish where I work which experienced the killing of four of its members in the last year. When Padre German mentioned this at a Mass the people countered that the perpetrators were NOT members of the community.

Let the US State Department examine its own complicity in the level of violence in Honduras.