Excerpt from “No Country for Young Men”

Radio Ambulante NPR Episode No. 48

[Daniel]Like thousands of Central Americans, Rosa left Honduras in search of a better life for her children. She worked at a chemical plant and she made$7 dollars a week. Her husband spent most of their money on alcohol. The situation was very precarious.

[Rosa]:What I wanted with all my heart was for my children to go to school. That they not end up like me. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t get an education. And I thought once we got to the United States, everything would be different for them.

[Daniel]Before leaving Honduras, she asked some of her husband’s relatives if she could stay with them in Brooklyn. On top of that, she asked her brother to loan her 500 lempiras—about $250 US dollars at the time—. Later, she met up with a family of 11 that was going to make the journey on foot with a coyote.

She went without her children. She left them with her mother. The plan: when she got a job in the US, she would send her money to take care of them.

[Rosa]:Because I knew that there were 4 children who needed food, clothes and shoes.

[Daniel]:And it has been like that for 30 years.

Her children grew. One moved to the US and lives with her. The other three are in Honduras. Rosa tells me she still sends them money. But now she only pays all of the expenses for one of her daughters and her 4 children, because her daughter is in an impossible situation.

Impossible and quite common, unfortunately.

A gang has moved into her neighborhood.

[Rosa]:The gang members are in charge. They check people’s cars. If they don’t like someone, they pull that person out of their car. My daughter, for taking care of her girls, has even received threats.

[Crying] They told me that the gang members are outside of the house selling drugs. And I’m afraid they’ll take my girls or do something to the boy.

[Daniel]:Rosa describes it literally like a hostage situation.

And if you listen to the news, in a way, you can imagine it.

(SOUNDBITE FROM NEWS REPORTS)
[Journalist]:The battle for territory between gangs and confrontations with the police have turned many sections of San Pedro Sula into a no man’s land.

[Journalist]:The structures they’re fighting against are so powerful that part of the population remains overcome.
[Journalist]:Pandilla 18 gave the residents of two densely populated neighborhoods a 24-48 hour period to vacate their homes.

[Journalist]:At least 4,500 minors dropped out of school in 2013, almost all have done so due to harassment from the gangs.

[Daniel]:Honduras’ situation is not isolated, of course. The three countries that together are known as the “Northern Triangle”—Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras—are all competing for the title of most violent country in the world.

In 2013, it was Honduras. They had a murder rate higher than 77.6 people killed per 100 thousand. Some years are lower, but the figures are horrific. Always.

Studies from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and other organizations point to poverty, the drug trade and gangs as the source of the problem.

And when you hear Rosa’s family’s situation, you wonder, what must daily life be like in a place that is practically consumed by violence. In a place like her daughter’s neighborhood. To what extent is it possible to have a normal life? With the things we take for granted: going out to buy groceries, kids going to school, parents going to work…