Front Line Stories From A 5 Star Country

Paying the Ultimate Price for Employment

2011-06-26T23:01:00.001-06:00

Francisco lived a peaceful life. He liked the rural area, tucked into the hills of the Valle de Sula, where his family lived. Francisco , his wife and his four kids shared a house with his parents. It was a safe place to raise his children, much safer than the city where he worked everyday. To support his family, Francisco would leave at 5 AM each day so his long commute would not make him late. He rode his bike each morning down the 2km dirt road until he would reach the paved highway into town. From there it was nearly 15kms into town. Six days a week Fransisco would make the trek into town, labor all day as a construction assistant and then at 5:30 PM he would bike the 17km home. After working 60 to 70 hours each week, he would be able to brink home nearly $55. If he could maintain steady work, that would mean that Francisco would earn nearly $1,000 more than the Gross National Income per capita of nearly $1, 700.

Francisco's wife had pleaded with her husband to take the bus. It would only cost him 60 cents each way, but for Francisco he knew that meant that almost 15 percent of his pay would be spent just getting to work each day. He finally convinced his wife that he preferred to ride his bike than having to walk the 2km road uphill to his family's home. For years Francisco had been able to keep steady work, unfortunately the Honduran rainy season meant that fewer construction jobs were planned during the winter months. Little by little he was saving money, even hoping to find some land to build a house and move his family out of his parent's house.

Then one Friday night Francisco did not make it home. His wife always worried about him, but he would sometimes stop and visit with friends or even stop in at a local bar on his way home. It was not until the frantic screams from her mother-in-law that she knew something had happened. A neighbor of Francisco's who was coming home from work as well was the first one to reach Francisco's family to tell him that he was dead, shot in the head not more than 20 feet from the entrance to the dirt road that would have taken him home. By the time his family got to the road, a group of people had already gathered around Francisco's body.

Francisco's family stayed at the side of the road for nearly three hours. Members of their extended family began to arrive and join the ever growing crowd of mourners and those with a morbid curiosity. The Police finally arrived to "secure the body." They cordoned off a small space around Francisco's body and began their "investigation." All the while the crowd grew and passing cars slowed to gander at the night's latest victim. No white sheet laid over the corpse, no body bag and in the end no coroner.

At first the police thought that the motive might have been robbery, since Francisco's shoes seemed to have dissapeared from his feet. One policeman though rejected that notion, suggesting that the dead man was most likely too poor to even own shoes. The family informed them though that he had left with a threadbare pair of tennis shoes in the morning, which someone must have taken off of him. Though, since Francisco's bike was still present they moved on to other theories. The official police "report" deemed that Francisco was a victim of a random drive by shooting. What they deemed as a common weekend activity in the area. According to the police, some people deem it sporting to get liquored up and to try and shoot people off of their bikes as the ride home from work. Whether that is the truth or not, Francisco's family will never know.

Unlike the United States, gun crimes in Honduras have a remarkably low conviction rate. The low rate must surely have something to do with the many cases of poor Hondurans that the police deem not worthy of a real investigation. Francisco's family was given the option of having the corpse transported to the morgue two hours away, where they would have to pay nearly $150 to get the body returned to them. Or the family could choose to pay the police $25 to immediately release the body to the family. No one had the $150, so the family paid the $25. The police finally drove off, leaving Francisco's body still resting beside the road with a bullet in his brain. His family then had to find someone with a pickup truck to take his body back to their house.

The next day Francisco was buried, less than 24 hours after having been shot. No autopsy was performed. Whether his death was even officially registered was not clear. Either way, no one was ever punished for the crime. Francisco's family believe that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the police suggested, a victim of a drive by "hunting incident" targeting the poor people who cannot afford to travel by car or bus home everyday.

Francisco's wife and children spent a large portion of the money he had saved up for the funeral and burial. What was left, was gone within a month. Francisco's parents kicked their daughter-in-law out of the house. Without Francisco around there were just too many mouths too feed and one too many daughter-in-laws in the house. Francisco and his family paid the ultimate price for his employment in the city. A 60 cent bus fare could have saved his life that day, but like many poor families public transportation on a daily basis is out of the realm of affordability.

What Do You Do In a Country With No Tow Trucks?

2011-06-26T22:57:00.001-06:00

Let me start off by saying that there is at least one tow truck in Honduras. In two years of living here, I have seen it once. It was being towed.

Imagine yourselves 10 miles outside of the nearest town. Your cell phone is dead and you have just blown a head gasket. In Honduras there is no AAA service or 1-800 number to get someone to come help you. So what do you do when you break down, since Murphy's law states that it will happen in the most inopportune time and place? Trust the Hondurans to take care of you.

Many Hondurans who come back from working in the United States with a car in tow or the money to buy one. Most of the time the cars they buy have salvage titles or were made in 1986. This means that their own cars have a high probability of getting stuck on the side of the road soon or they have recently been in the same situation themselves. Honduras often seems like the place that old cars go to die, mainly because the average Honduran knows how to keep it running with spit and baling twine. So when your vehicle breaks down in Honduras, do not be afraid to ask for a hand. Someone might even be able to repair your car on the side of the road.

Hondurans will do whatever they can to get their car up and running until they can fix it. Their true love is a manual transmission. The first thing a Honduran will ask you is if they can try pushing your car while you start it. If they think it is the battery, they might even take the battery out of their car to try and restart your car. If they get it started, they quickly unplug the battery and send you on your way telling you not to stop the car. I have seen that trick work a number of times. When all else fails it is time to get towed.

Hondurans will tow anything and everything, using whatever cable or rope they can find. Trucks will tow cars, car will tow trucks. Cars will tow motorcycles. Even motorcycles will tow motorcycles (a feat that still astounds me no matter how many times I have seen it done). All using a thin piece of rope or in one case using a set of jumper cables, which they tie onto whatever they think will hold. Though sometimes they choose poorly, as I have seen more than one bumper pulled off during a tow. It always amazes me how ready a Honduran is to pull your car 15 miles at 10 miles per hour until you can find an open repair shop.

I have personally been towed by a 20 year old big yellow school bus (more on those in a future post). Trying to steer the car in neutral for 10 miles, especially when you are 3 feet from the bumper of something as big as a bus, will really make you nervous. The Hondurans see nothing strange about it. Once I called a taxi to come pick me up so that I could go track down a mechanic to take a look at the pick up that had suddenly refused to start on me. The taxi driver showed up, analyzed the situation and told me for double the fare he would tow me to the mechanic's so that I would no have to return. Where can you get towed for $10?

Poor Hondurans, who have struggle to keep running or to even own a vehicle, will spend hours trying to help you out. As much as you will try to pay them for helping you they will most likely act insulted and will only accept the payment that no Honduran has ever refused to accept from me, a Pepsi. So next time you find yourself driving around Honduras (or even the good ole US of A), forget the AAA card and just make sure you have a good strong rope in your trunk.

Previous Employment Experiance? Hitman

2011-06-26T20:52:00.001-06:00

Carlos by most standards was a friendly man. Carlos is slightly overweight. He is of medium height and has a moppy head of hair. He has a wife and children, which by most appearances he seems to take good care of them. The only way you would know of his sinister past would be if he walked up to you and told you what had done. When a man leans in close to you and tells you he has killed 17 people you know its the start of an unforgettable conversation. For starters you are not sure you even want to have the conversation. I stayed though and this is the tale I was told.

The story starts with Carlos's brother, a man currently living out his days in a Honduran jail. Carlos and his brother were living in one of the most dangerous and notorious areas of Northern Honduras. Such an area does not reinforce the need for schooling. Instead, it reinforced the need for street smarts and nerves of steel. Carlos's brother had that and soon ended up with a reputation in his neighborhood. That reputation helped launch him into one of the city's growing narcotics gangs as a mid-level boss. After some time he wanted to help Carlos out, and got him a job as the personal security guard for one of the gangs top bosses.

Carlos spent months traveling around with his boss as he made drug pick ups and drop offs around town. Though they never ran into any problems, his boss always drove with a 45 caliber pistol duck taped under the seat of his pick up truck. He gained a reputation as a steady reliable security guard for the boss and he most likely would have remained in that job for quite some time had his brother not gotten thrown in jail.

Gangs and the mafia seem to operate similarly. If someone has witnessed a crime you just take out them out. Carlos's brother had too many witnesses and enemies of his crimes. He would most likely stay in jail regardless of any outcome, but he wanted revenge. He got in touch with Carlos and asked him to do him a favor. He was to kill a man who his brother said had set him up. He did as his brother had asked. The favors did not stop there, and the hit list just kept growing with enemies of his brother. Carlos claims that they were all bad men, but he also claims that he had gotten to far into the narco gang and had to do whatever was asked of him to survive.

Carlos blames poor schooling and a lack of decent opportunities for the set of events that brought he and his brother to lead such a criminal lifestyle. He says it is no excuse for his actions, but when they were kids it was the gang members who were the only once prospering. One wanted to have money, freedom and respect like they had. It was not until they entered into the lifestyle that they learned what it would really mean for them to be a part of the gang. There was no questioning authority. You did as you were told to do or you would die.

He tried to get out of the gang by asking to be able to take on a security guard job at a discobar that the the gang boss owned. It was a job that Carlos took great pride in. He claims that very few people ever caused any real problems when he was on duty (perhaps because they knew that a gang was running the bar). However one night, after the bar had closed up and the night's profit was being counted, three men broke into the building. They had ski masks on and each carried an AK-47. Carlos was on the second floor balcony that overlooked the dance floor. He did not see them until after they had already fired. His two fellow security guards, who were guarding the ground floor, were instantly killed. The armed men went straight for the cash box, where they shot and killed the accountant.

The men could not see Carlos on the dimly lit balcony, ignoring him and focusing on scooping up the bar's money. All Carlos had was a Magnum .357 against three men with AK-47s, but he had claims he had the drop on them. He aimed at the group of men and fired all six of his bullets. As the smoke cleared in the darkness Carlos saw that he had killed all three of them. It is a moment that Carlos speaks of with pride. He stopped a robbery and he had killed the men who had killed his friends and co-workers.

Carlos had little time to reflect on his merits as a security guard. The three men who had robbed the bar had all been members of the much larger and much more violent MS-13 gang. Because he killed the robbers, the gang would then be looking to settle the score with Carlos. His boss gave him some money as thanks and told him to get lost. He was forced to move his entire family into hiding with him. After a few years of keeping a low profile, he took a job as a security guard for a company that sent him to protect a grocery store. He says he feels safe, but he always is keeping a lookout in case his past catches up to him. Carlos claims that he is no longer a hitman; he says that he prefers to be a legitimate security guard. Though he says he would be honored to work as a private security guard if the chance presented itself, saying that he has the experience and that his previous job record demonstrates that he is not a man to hesitate.

A man who has killed 17 people does not need to worry about being seen as hesitant to pull the trigger. I would hate to be the person who mistakenly robs a store while he is on duty. I only hope that the weight of poverty does not push him to take up any freelance work to feed his family. For now he has a steady job, but in Honduras those never seem to last long.

A Day of Two Funerals

2011-06-26T00:20:00.001-06:00

Most people hope to die of old age, to have a long and healthy life. For the average Honduran winning the lottery sometimes seems more probable. Many poor Hondurans do make it, but for everyone that makes it there seem to be two or three or four who are cut down in their prime by the difficult lifestyle that they live. One day, during my first week living in Honduras, I was witness two an example of both cases: the somber funeral to recognize the unfortunate death of a child killed by the forces of nature and her families own poverty; and the wake of and elderly man which devolved into a large farm party to celebrate someone who won the lottery and had been rewarded with many years of life.

Wilfredo was a traveling vegetable salesman. He would have to travel long distances to find cheap produce to be able to smake any money. He had recently reunited with his family after having spent a few years away from them, having illegally immigrated to the United States to work. With the money he had brought back from the United States, Wilfredo bought the cheapest pickup truck he could find and started selling fruit out of the back of the truck in various neighborhoods. His family had been living in a poor squatters community close to the mountains. With hopes that his fortunes where changing, Wilfredo moved his family out of their patchwork hut and moved into the city so that he could be closer to his work and to hopefully be able to see more of his family.

The family was now living in a cinder block one roomed apartment in town instead of the wooden hut that Wilfredo had built for his family close to the mountains. The apartment was in older part of town, where many low income families rented cheaply made apartment complexes. Cracks showed along many of the walls where the cinder blocks had long ago seperated from the mortar that had originally held the walls in place. The important thing though was that the rent was actually affordable. Wilfredo went to work on May 27th feeling that things were finally looking up for him and his family. In the early morning hours of May 28th his three daughters; Sara, Cindi and Alexa, slept in their small one room apartment with their mother. At 2:30 AM, a 7.3 earthquake struck offshore. 100 miles from where Wilfredo's family slept. Many buildings where much closer to the earthquake than their own apartment building. One would have to drive an hour to find the nearest beach, where the earthquake was felt the strongest.

Instead the earthquake shook their one roomed apartment. The old building had been made with no internal supports, no reinforcing rebar. It was meant to be low income housing, so little luxury in style or safety had been provided for. The cracks between the old cinder blocks widened and then the entire wall caved in onto Wilfredo's family. His wife managed to remove herself from the rubble. She then struggled in the dark to remove the heavy blocks that trapped her three daughters. She was able to easily remove Sara, her three year old, who managed to escape with just a small cut on her arm. Cindi and Alicia were not as fortunate. Alicia, the oldest, was severely injured. Cindi, just five years old, would not survive. She would be one of just seven victims of the quake.

Cindi, much like many of the Victims of the earthquake in Haiti, was a victim to poor construction techniques. There are few building codes and even fewer building inspectors. While Honduras does have engineers that build strong buildings, apartments like Wilfredo's family were renting and most houses for the poor are built as cheaply as possible. Most of the construction workers only have a 3rd grade education, perhaps 7th grade if they are lucky, which means that these professionals learn how to lay blocks quickly but not necessarily how to build the strongest and safest building. Even if they did know how to build a strong building, the supplies necessary would be too expensive. Wilfredo's daughter was a victim of the earthquake, but more still of her family's poverty. If it were not for the cheaply constructed apartment building that her family could barely afford, Cindi might be alive today.

Instead, Wilfredo had to bury his child. He had worked years in the United States to provide for his family. He had returned to Honduras with hopes of getting his family out of poverty. He just needed a break. He thought that a new truck and a new home would be just the right start. Within just a few short months of his return one of his daughter's had died and another was badly injured in the hospital. He could not even use his own pickup truck to take his Cindi's body to the cemetery, as it had broken down. There is a ray of hope for Wildfredo's family. Their old neighbors came out and helped the family. People who had little money for their own families opened their pockets to help cover the cost of the casket and cemetery plot. A truck was borrowed to act as the hearse and a bus was filled with mourners to travel to the graveside to honor Cindi.

Poor Hondurans understand that their lives could over at any moment, or that of their own families. A wake or a funeral is a place where real Hondurans show their solidarity with the family. Most have been in a similar situation or hope that their neighbors will support them when the time comes. Unfortunately that time comes too quickly in some cases. Some times though it is not such and unexpected death. For one of Wilfredo's old neighbors the time for assistance came within the hour of burying Cindi.

Henri received the call saying that his father-in-law had passed away. He was not surprised. His father-in-law had lived a long life, but had recently had a string of health problems. Normally his wife would have been the one called and asked to travel at once to attend the funeral. His wife, however was far away, in Los Angeles working illegally in a restaurant. She could not, as was customary, attend to her family in its time in need. Her husband would have to suffice. Henri was not necessarily saddened by the loss of his wife's father. Instead he saw the death an opportunity to celebrate. He sought out the use of a pick up truck, invited along 13 or so of his closest friends and neighbors, and set out for the long trek into the mountains to his father-in-law's farm house. Along the way he spent the little money that he had on food, drinks and alcohol. All part of his plan that he needed to celebrate this death.

Henri and his father-in-law had no bad blood between them. They might not have always seen eye to eye on some things. His father-in-law had even suggested that he should have been the one to make the dangerous trip to United States to help provide for his family. The reality was that the man had lived a good life. By most standards he had been a poor man, but he had lived a long life and had been blessed with a large family. That made him wealthy in Henri's eyes.

After nearly two hours of driving up and down winding mountain roads, Henri and his friends finally neared the house. Turning up a final mountain road they began to encounter people who had been walking 5 miles to make it to the wake in time. They piled on a many people as the truck would take and continued up a nearly vertical road. Horses were passing them as their owners gracefully trudged up the mountain on their way to the wake. The sound of music and laughter was the first clue to Henri's group that they had arrived.

10 other pick up trucks lined a tiny soccer field on top of a small mountain. Nearly 150 people had showed up to pay their respects to an elderly man. They all seemed to think that it should be a part as well. Food, Music and Alcohol flowed freely as family and friends gathered. Few tears were shed that night, the most common reaction to the event was joy and laughter. The party was so packed into the small two roomed home that some quests even turned the old man's casket into a drink coaster as the talked about the weather or the year's crop yield. The glass panel showing the elderly man's face was the only space that seemed to be deemed sacred territory. Even then, many guests would come forward to pay their respects, mostly by toasting the man's long life with a swig from whatever beverage they had on hand.

As is customary in preparations for funerals for anyone that cannot afford a private cemetery, the family is responsible for digging the grave of their loved one. When Henri's group had consumed all that they had brought, they went to join the large group of men who where at the family cemetery. At 12:30 at night, a group of twenty some odd men were crowded around as they watched two men who were trying to pickaxe nearly solid rock. Six feet down, seven feet long and three feet wide. The men spent all night toiling in the rocky soil to finish preparing the old man's final resting space. Everyone paid tribute to the old man who had eeked out a living for his family in that same rocky soil.

Unfortunately in Honduras it seems that too often that one hears of a case like the first and too few like that of the old man. Old age seems to be a luxury for the rich and the lucky. The norm seems to be that one learns of a friend or relative's death followed by some truly sad or gruesome way that that person died. Speaking of death is not something that one likes to do, however sometimes death can shed light on realities in a way that nothing else could come close to.

Honduran Construction Companies

2011-06-25T00:21:00.002-06:00

The three main jobs for a Honduran are working as a Security Guard, a farm field hand or as a construction worker. While their are various wealthy construction companies there are also many neighborhood construction companies. These small time "companies" usually consist of at least 3 to 5 albaniles (construction workers) who have very little access to capital to invest into their business. Instead they must do with what is easily at hand. The results are varied, but my favorite example of Honduran ingenuity is the two wheeled, energy efficient work vehicle.

Hondurans do everything on a bicycle. They will pick up their two kids from school. They will modify them to create various business opportunities. Best of all they use them to deliver construction equipment and supplies to various job sites. On several occasions I have seen someone dragging 3 or 4 fourteen foot long segments of metal rebar on their bicycles. On one occasion the individual must have been nearly 6 miles from the nearest construction supply store.

Many neighborhood construction "companies" will contract themselves out for a job which will only make them a very marginal profit. In order to cut costs they will do whatever they can on the cheap. This means mixing all of the cement by hand, hand delivering any additional supplies from the store to their work site, as well as hauling around all of their construction supplies on the backs of their bicycles.

One Honduran construction worker makes my list of most ingenious businessmen. To make his life easier, he retrofitted his bicycle. He attached a support system that would allow him to haul his wheelbarrow around behind him, giving his construction vehicle a very useful third wheel. He was last seen riding to work one morning with his wheelbarrow in tow. Inside the wheelbarrow were two bags of cement (nearly 90 pounds each), a shovel, a pickaxe, his machete cradled under his seat (like all true Hondurans carry their machetes), and his bucket of tools sandwiched firmly between his legs as he pedaled on down the highway.

Think about that the next time you complain about your own commute to work! Poverty often provides that important impetus to spur ones creativity (stay tuned for many more examples of the ingenuity of a real Hondurans).