The Organization of the Honduran Drug Trade (Part 2 of 3)

In the first installement of this series, we illustrated what a September 2012 UN report called a territorially-based crime group in Central America, with a discussion of the recently arrested Valle Valle family.

The second kind of criminal group identified by the UN are the transnational trafficking networks, or transportistas.  Transportistas work like a legitimately subcontracted transportation company.  Their relationship to suppliers is contractual, but they are free to work with anyone.  They move drugs between point A and point B where A and B are frequently under the control of territorial crime families.

They don't seek violence, and indeed seek to remain unnoticed.

The Chepe Handal organization was described as a transportista organization when it was dismantled.  Chepe Handal allegedly moved drugs for the Cartel del Pacifico from the departments of Colon, Atlantida, and Cortes, to the border region with Guatemala.

While the organized crime family where the Chepe Handal organization picked up the drugs remains publicly unidentified, the newly arrested Valle Valle family control the area where the Handal organization allegedly brought drugs to smuggle across the Honduras/Guatemala border.

Transportistas need to be crime families with established ties into politics and participating in the corruption of government officials, and Handal's organization fits that description.  It was large and diversified.  It owned hotels, a zoo, construction companies, retail stores in San Pedro Sula, and transportation companies.  Chepe Handal also bred thoroughbred horses.
 
While many of the Honduran border area crime families go unidentified, across the border in Guatemala territory is said to be under the control of the Mendoza crime family.  They have extensive land holdings along the whole border in ranches and agricultural production.  They also own hotels, gas stations, construction companies, and transportation companies, and move cocaine from the border region into the Peten.  That makes them an example of a transportista group.

But they simultaneously fit the description of a territorial group: they are now allied with the Lorenzana family of Guatemala, that controls the border territory of Zacapa in Guatemala.  Together they control much of the Honduras/Guatemala border, from the Caribbean inland to Ocotepeque in far southwest Honduras.

Another Honduran example of an alleged organized crime family would be the Arnaldo Urbina Soto family, arrested in July. The head of the family is the alcalde (mayor) of Yoro. One of his daughters, also arrested, was the head of the Honduran Congressional committee on children.

The Urbina Soto family is alleged to have participated in drug trafficking, 137 murders, car theft, building landing strips for drug planes, and the forced displacement of people. They owned large cattle ranches in Yoro, many houses described as "mansions", and ran an aviary that included ostriches.

While 137 murders might seem like a lot, in the context of some parts of Honduras, that's just a month's worth of homicides. Crime organizations need to keep their profile fairly low in order to succeed.  Murders need to be strategic and uninvestigated.

The Urbina Soto family most likely worked for the Zetas, who US sources say are headquartered in Santa Rita, Yoro. Their drugs are transported through the western Honduran Department of Santa Barbara and points south, reaching the Guatemalan border near Ocotepeque, with a handoff to the Lorenzana family in Guatemala.

Diana Patricia Urbina Soto, a National Party Congressperson from Yoro when arrested, was later released.  Her political visibility produced an unusual piece of information: she answered the question posed to congress members "Are you in favor of, or against the legalization of drugs?" by saying "In favor, in this way it will reduce the violence and control the consumption".

Given the UN analysis, that might well be how a member of one of these crime families views things. Drug trafficking is a business; they provide security and governance to otherwise ungoverned territories. Violence is not their main goal; when it happens, it is a side effect of cartel struggles or is specially targeted.

The Organization of the Honduran Drug Trade (Part 1 of 3)

On August 20th of this year the Valle Valle family of western Honduras was named by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control  as "significant drug traffickers" under the Kingpin Act. This weekend, members of the family were captured in Honduras.

In the August statement, the US named Miguel Arnulfo Valle Valle and his brothers Luis Alonso and Jose Reynerio Valle Valle. Not included was their youngest brother, Jose Inocente Valle Valle. 

A UN report from September 2012 on the drug trade in Central America provides a context for understanding these developments. The UN identified three groups of actors in Honduras that are at least tangentially involved in the drug trade, and how each of these groups relates to violence.

First are the territorially based organized crime groups.  These impose order where the state government lacks control, offering security and protection in both city neighborhoods and the countryside.  They require an enforcement organization, and there must be a clear chain of command, often family based:

These territory-bound groups are intensely concerned with local affairs, and this limits the scope of what they can do. They can demand tribute (extortion), give credit at usurious rates (loan sharking), and dictate local employment conditions (labour racketeering) within their zones of influence. With their money and community standing, they can even affect voting outcomes and wield considerable political clout. They may move into high-level corruption, such as public procurement fraud. Once secure in their status as political patrons, they can engage in acquisitive crime at will, selling stolen property and smuggled goods with impunity.

The UN report goes on to say these groups often have to fight with rival outfits for control of contested territory, and this means they spend an "undue amount of time addressing symbolic infractions, sending messages to their constituencies about who is in control."

What this means is that they control the wholesale traffic through their region, and this often can include drugs as one of the sorts of contraband that flow this way.  They then subcontract risk, such as local distribution, to others. In Central America, because of these groups' geographic control, international drug trafficking is under their command.

These crime families are not interested in stirring up violence as part of their drug trafficking. Traffickers generally are interested in keeping the violence down and not drawing attention to themselves.  Thus they operate in remote areas with little state control.

The Valle Valle family fits this part of the UN model.

The US government alleges the Valle Valle family runs a business that moves thousands of kilograms of cocaine each month towards the United States, laundering the money generated through three coffee-producing companies (Inversiones Yosary, Inversiones Luisito, and Inversiones Valle), a cattle and dairy business (Finca Los Tres Reyes), and a hotel in La Entrada, Copan.

According to the US, the Valle family operates a drug business in the Honduran Department of Copan, in the municipality of Florida, Copan, along the Honduras/Guatemala border.  Here there are several legitimate border crossings, and other blind crossings between Honduras and Guatemala.  Florida is adjacent to the town of El Paraiso, Copan, where the Alex cartel, linked to the Sinaloa cartel, operates.

Once the Valle Valle brothers and their businesses were designated as "significant drug traffickers" by OFAC, the Honduran government in association with the US Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated their businesses, houses, bank accounts, hotels, and in the process located arms caches buried on one of their properties. However, the family had been tipped off, and their houses had been largely emptied of all possessions, just as other such operations have been leaked to the families about to be pounced on by the Honduran police and the DEA.

On October 3, Honduran security forces captured Jose Inocente Valle Valle in El Porvenir, Florida, Copan, about 30 minutes drive from the Guatemalan border,  and confiscated a gold plated AK-47,  many pistols of different calibers and over 600 rounds of ammunition.  Also confiscated was a picture of Jose Inocente with his arm around the former head of the Transit Police in Copan, Neptaly Aguilar Rivera.  Among his other possessions when captured was a belt containing 12 solid gold coins stamped "Sinaloa".

Sunday, the Honduran police captured two more brothers (Miguel Arnulfo and Luis Alonso) in El Espiritu, Copan, only a five minute drive from the Guatemalan border.

The Valle Valle family was  allegedly responsible for getting drugs from Honduras across the border to the right people in Guatemala, making up what the UN called a territorially based organized crime group. There others took over-- something we cover in the next installment of this series.

ZEDE Feasibility Study

KOICA, the Korean International Cooperation Agency, delivered its preliminary report on the feasibility of establishing ZEDEs in Amapala, Aliaza, and Nacaome in the department of Valle in southern Honduras.  KOICA handed off the preliminary study to the Honduran government in New York Monday while they were attending the UN General Assembly.  The feasibility study, which we previously have written about here, was delivered about 3 months late.

Robert Ordoñez, Minister of Public Works for Honduras, told the press that study suggests the development of world class port facilities in Amapala, located on the island of El Tigre in the Gulf of Fonseca.  It suggests a free trade zone be developed in Alianza to provide warehousing and logistical support for shipments coming through Amapala.  It likely also requires Amapala to be connected by a bridge with the mainland for the movement of goods to the logistical area.  In Nacaome, the Koreans suggested developing an agricultural research center.  Amapala and Alianza qualify as low population density coastal regions not requiring approval of the local populations under the ZEDE law.

In August of this year the Honduran Supreme Court rejected a case brought by more than 50 Non-governmental organizations challenging the constitutionality of the ZEDE law.

Designs are expected to be finalized for all three projects by March of next year.  Parallel to the development of the designs, KOICA and Honduras will be holding conversations with the Interamerican Development Bank about financing the projects.

US Crew Runs Afoul of Honduran Gun Laws

US attitudes towards guns are notoriously different than those elsewhere in the world. And despite the well-promoted image of Honduras as inherently "violent", it is aligned with the rest of the world in restricting access to guns.

Now that difference has tripped up a ship's crew from Aqua Quest International, a self-described "Ocean Exploration and Archaeological Recovery Corporation " out of Tarpon Springs, Florida, that has landed itself in jail in Honduras by being ignorant of Honduran gun laws. Unfortunately, the news media in the US are not doing a very good job of understanding the actual laws involved, being too ready to accept another ready-made image: that of the corrupt foreign officials. While sometimes that definitely fits the Honduran case, this seems to be an exception: the Honduran legal system is working the way it is supposed to.

The Aqua Quest International crew was on its way to take a contract with the town of Ahuas, where a DEA supervised helicopter murdered 4 Honduran citizens including a pregnant woman in a botched drug interdiction.  The contract was to dredge the lower Patuca river, recovering sunken mahogany and ceder logs worth thousands of dollars.  Aqua Quest would get 30% of the sale price of the logs recovered.

It is not uncommon for ships sailing in US coastal waters, and even in the Caribbean, to have guns on board, but the Captain must be aware of local laws concerning guns before entering a port.  In many countries, Captains with guns have to sink a container with the guns onto the ocean floor, in international waters, marking the location, and retrieve them after leaving port.  This is a complicated, and not always successful project.  But local laws apply when a ship enters a port, and that includes gun laws.

But the captain and crew from Aqua Quest International entered Puerto Lempira not knowing Honduran law, and apparently not knowing that they were breaking it.  They declared their guns to the military vessel that checked them as they entered Honduran national waters, and were expecting the Port Captain to decide if they could keep their guns or needed to have them locked up.  Instead they were met by, and arrested by, the local police.

Their lawyer, Armida Lopez de Arguello claims this is a violation of maritime law.

It is not.

Honduran law is very clear. 

If you want to bring a gun into Honduras by sea, air, or land, you better already have a permit issued by Honduras.  Any attempt to bring a gun in without such a permit, aboard ship, via air, or overland, will get you arrested and thrown in jail.  Wikipedia mentions it, and cites a section of the US State Department website on Honduras. 

Under the heading "Firearms" the State Department website clearly states:

Firearms: No one may bring firearms into Honduras, except for diplomats or individuals participating in shooting or hunting sport events who have obtained a temporary firearm importation permit from the Honduran Ministry of Security prior to their travel to Honduras.

Firearms for personal safety or for purposes other than those mentioned above must be purchased locally through a store named “La Armería.” These stores are regulated by the Honduran Armed Forces and are located throughout Honduras.

It's even on the Honduran Embassy website, albeit in the Spanish language FAQ. 

A little research on the internet might have saved the ship's Captain and crew from its current predicament.

The ship had two shotguns, two handguns, and a semi-automatic "sports rifle" that resembles an AK-47.  Shotguns and hand guns can be easily permitted in Honduras, but that semi-automatic "sports rifle" cannot. Possession of such a rifle in Honduran territorial waters is itself a criminal act.

Despite easy access to the facts of Honduran law, most of the English-language media seem perplexed as to why the crew were arrested. 

Fox news used the phrase "trumped up changes", echoing the words of Stephen Mayne, the company's chief operating officer, brother of the ship's Captain, Robert Mayne, Jr., who is also the company's CEO. 

NPR covered the story this week without mentioning Honduran law. 

Stephen Mayne told the Macon Telegraph that:

“They shouldn’t be (in prison). (The crew) did everything by the book. They’ve been detained unlawfully by officials with suspect motives.”

Only a few media outlets got the facts right, and it makes for some strange bedfellows.

A New York Times article quotes a government prosecutor in Tegucigalpa as saying that the men should have had a permit for the guns because they had entered Honduran waters. The Voice of Russia reports that "the Honduran armed forces said the crew was arrested because they didn't have permits to possess guns in the country."

It's pretty clear that the actions of the US group were due to ignorance of Honduran law.  A Honduran appeals court will decide if they will continue to be held for trial, or can be released awaiting trial, later this week.

Meanwhile, we can hope that in the interim, more of the English language media can learn the facts, and begin to explain them to a US public that at times really doesn't understand that in other countries, being casual about firearms is not acceptable.

Whose Observatory of Violence?

Who controls the crime statistics?  Honduras has an Observatorio de Violencia, long a part of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH).  The Security Ministry has outsourced its collecting and reporting of crime statistics to a private company,  Ingenieria Gerencial, owned by the Security Minister, Arturo Corrales.  Just about no one believes the crime statistics Corrales has been peddling.

So in February, Corrales announced the formation of 30 separate municipal Observatorios de Violencia, modeled after the successful program in Colombia, the  Observatorio para la Prevencion de Violencia y Lesiones de Colombia.  This program, and the existing Observatorio at UNAH, both owe their existence to pilot projects done by the CISALVA institute of the Universidad del Valle de Cali, in Colommbia 2002-2004, financed by Georgetown University and USAID.

In 1996 the Organization of American States Pan American Health Organization recognized that violence was a health problem, and in 2008 published a manual of best practices derived from what was learned in the Colombia pilot program.  The manual was written as part of a project to roll this program out in several Central American countries.  Ultimately Panama and Nicaragua were part of the initial pilot program.

Honduras was considered for that pilot program, but because of internal political considerations, was dropped.  The OAS wrote in the methodology manual for these municipal observatories in 2008:

It should be noted that Honduras was selected for the first phase [of the roll out by the UN], and later postponed for political reasons, in actuality the methodology has been successfully implemented developing a national observatory and a local observatory in the capital city of the country, founded in the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras, UNAH, with the technical aid of the UN Development Program (PNUD in Spanish) and financed by the Swiss Agency for International Development.

So basically, the OAS/Pan American Health Organization is saying in 2008 that Honduras already has a national program that follows the best practices methodology they're promulgating, and doing it successfully.

So why is Arturo Corrales rejecting the Observatorio de Violencia at UNAH and proposing to supplant it with 30 municipal Observatorios doing the same work?  Corrales falsely claims you cannot do this at the national level:

The objective for establishing these municipal observatories of violencis is to characterize the causes of death and this can only be done at the local level, not the national level.

But the OAS, who after all, wrote the best practices manual, just said that the methodology was successfully being implemented at the national level in Honduras by the UNAH Observatorio de Violencia, so either Corrales is unfamiliar with the actual program and methodology, or he's being disingenous.

The irony here is that the UNAH Observatory already has proposed to do exactly this, almost a month ago.  For the last several years it has been establishing local observatories of violence in selected municipalities.  On March 27,   they announced the creation of a local observatory in Tela and said they sought to extend this to the whole country.  In fact, there already are local observatories in Comayagua, Choluteca, San Pedro Sula, Choloma, La Ceiba, and Juticalpa.  At least some of these are places Corrales intends to install his own observatories.  Maybe instead of developing a competing program, Corrales should embrace the existing one?

Why should Honduras spend money on setting up municipal violence observatories when everyone including Corrales agrees the UNAH program is exemplary? Migdona Ayestes, head of the UNAH Observatorio de Violencia, thinks it may be that Corrales doesn't understand the mission and function of an Observatorio de Violencia.  She arranged to meet with him  to explain it to him.

However, there seems to be two other  answers here.  On the one hand, these would be the "Official" observatories that would collect and disseminate statistics through the Security Ministry.  That should give everyone pause.

Corrales, though, went on to say that they would be more inclusive, involving more of civil society, and let them be able to take local preventative action and measure the results of such actions through their local statistics.  So its also about decentralization, taking the responsibility for crime fighting decision making from the Security Ministry and making responsibility for devising strategies to fight crime the responsibility of Mayors and their local observatory.

This kind of local decision making is a part of what is envisioned in the OAS best practices manual.  How that will translate in Honduras, where the police force is nationally controlled by the Security Ministry remains to be seen.
It has the benefit of taking responsibility for crime statistics away from the national government and puts it on municipalities, which Corrales must like.  Currently his job performance is evaluated by the national crime statistics, hence his investment (and profiting) from producing and reducing them.

There's no explanation for where the funding for these local observatories is coming from.  The OAS manual calls for an IT professional and a computer to host the database and map server/gis system that registers and displays crimes, and these cost money.  There is not necessarily such a person already in every municipality who can be freed up to support such a program.  The computers need to allocated, and the specified software packages installed and configured on them.  Presumably Corrales is freeing up money from some other part of his budget to cover the expenses of such a program roll out and operation.  It certainly wasn't in his 2014 budget.

So right now it looks like Honduras will have competing Observatorios de Violencia for the forseeable future.

Constitutional Branch Defends Itself

The Constitutional Branch of the Honduran Supreme Court attempted to defend its actions in declaring a winner in the municipal elections of San Luis, Comayagua a week ago. The notice they released makes it clear they're responding to pressure on social media.  Their defense is akin to stamping their foot and saying "because I said so".

The court reaffirmed its belief in the rule of law, and stated that its decision in this case was well founded in the constitution and laws of Honduras.  It also reaffirmed its right to hear the case, claiming dominion over the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE).  It further wished to point out to the public that it was Santos Zelaya Chacón who sought to appeal the TSE's decision claiming his due process rights had been violated.  So its not the Supreme Court's fault that they had to hear this case, its Santos Zelaya Chacón's according to their logic.  The court argued that tossing a coin does not strip one of one's rights to appeal the election, except that it does in the TSE rules to which all candidates agree when running for office.

The court went on to allege that the Municipality of San Luis was notified not to allow anyone to assume office, that the case had been admitted, but that the Municipality ignored the court.  Finally, the court says its decision was firmly based in law and the constitution, without providing any backing for that claim.  They have not released a written judgement and this decision may never be published.  They simply assert they did the right thing. 

This branch of the court, packed by Congress with supporters of the neoliberal policies advocated by Juan Orlando Hernandez, you will recall, voted to install the National Party candidate, Santos Ivan Zelaya Chacón as Mayor of San Luis despite the Tribunal Supremo Electoral ruling that the election was a tie.  Tie runoff procedures in Honduras call for both candidates to agree to settle the tie by the toss of a coin.  Both candidates agreed, a coin was tossed, and Lenny Hernandez, the Liberal Party candidate won.  The Tribunal Supremo Electoral awarded him a certificate of election, and on January 27, 2014 he assumed office.

The TSE is supposed to be the ultimate election authority, but of course, that is no longer the case in post-coup Honduras. The hierarchy now goes Congress -> Supreme Court -> Tribunal Supremo Electoral.

In the meantime, Santos Ivan Zelaya Chacón decided to appeal to the Supreme Court claiming his due process rights had been violated.  The Constitutional Branch of the court took the case, and issued a 5-0 decision agreeing with him, and awarding him the election.

Since then, the Liberal Party filed a challenge appealing the decision; their appeal was apparently rejected by the Supreme Court with the statement that they have no standing.  The Constitutional Branch ruling is threatening the pact between the National and Liberal Parties in Congress.  The TSE then voted to affirm the Constitutional Branch ruling, and the very next day, the building housing the Mayor's office burned down in Sal Luis.  The same week a Liberal Party leader in San Luis was murdered.

Edmundo Orellana, admittedly a partisan of the Liberal party, wrote yesterday that:

Everything that has happened is the fault of the Constitutional Branch; none of these things would have happened in this municipality if they hadn't stuck their noses where they shouldn't.  This is a political problem and the Supreme Court is not authorized by the Constitution for this.  The magistrates have violated the Constitution of the Republic and thereby are exposed the consequences of this violation.

We happen to agree with Orellana, that the court took an ill considered and  unreasoned political decision, not a legal one.  We do not choose to question the court's assertion that Zelaya Chacón's due process rights were violated, but rather question why they themselves trample on the due process rights of the opposing candidate and the voters by appointing Zelaya Chacón as Mayor, unilaterally, and without any offered justification, other than that the TSE denied him his due process rights. The TSE's alleged error in denying Zelaya Chacón his due process rights does not merit the court ignoring the rights of the voters, and the rights of the opposition candidate, Lenny Flores.

Congress in the meantime is working on a compromise solution in which there would be a new election.  Yes, for once the Honduran Congress is making sense.  Both the legitimately aggrieved Liberal Party and even the voters of San Luis itself have called for a special election to determine the outcome, but Zelaya Chacón says he will not recognize the outcome of any such special election, arguing that only he had his rights trampled on by the TSE.

Cooler heads have prevailed.  The threat of the Liberal Party to break its alliance with the National Party over this issue worked, after they meet with the leaders of the Anti-Corruption Party and Libre to present a unified front in Congeress calling for a new election, which the National Party rejected.  The compromise solution arrived at, preserving so far the fragile Liberal-National Party coalition, has been for both candidates to irrevocably resign from candidacy to the office.  This probably will force a new election for Mayor in San Luis, Comayagua, but the Tribunal Supremo Electoral isn't saying that, as yet, preferring to wait for the paperwork and "study" the issue.

The only way Hondurans found to preserve anyones rights after the Supreme Court acted was to preserve no ones rights.  Lenny Flores and Santos Zelaya are now out of it, but the political parties will probably get a chance to propose new candidates for Mayor, and the people of San Luis might finally get a chanced for representation that they voted for, instead of representation imposed on them by a fully politicized Supreme Court.

Nice Work If You Can Get it!

The press has blown the whistle on waste in Coalianza, the government commission that negotiates and regulates the sale of government assets to the private sector, and forms government - private partnerships in Honduras.

It seems that the 3 commissioners of Coalianza recieved a pay raise when they took office in January.  Two of them, Miguel Ángel Gámez and Erasmo Virgilio Padilla had their pay raised from roughly 150,000 lempiras monthly ($7142.86) to 199,000 lempiras a month ($9576.19).  The third commissioner, Zonia Morales, received a raise from 111,800 lempiras ($5323.81) to 159,000 lempiras a month ($7571.43).  By comparison, the President receives a salary of 86,000 lempiras monthly ($4095.24).

The commissioners acknowledge the raise, but claim it was authorized in 2013 and figured into their budget.  When asked why they continued to accept these overly large salarys, Gamez told the press that in fact, they hadn't yet had a chance to have a meeting!  For the last three months, the time they've been collecting these salaries, they've done nothing.  When asked why that was, Gamez redirected blame back on the current government, stating:

They still have not named the Executive Secretary of Coalianza.  This looks to me like a bad intention and far from benefiting, it damages the institution.

So, Gamez is throwing it back on the government, which he says hasn't named his boss, so they could not meet and roll back their enormous salaries.  Boo Hoo.

Luckly Juan Orlando Hernandez did just that today, acting to roll back all three salaries to 150,000 lempiras a month.  They still have not met.  They still have not done anything.  They just keep collecting some of the highest salaries in the government for sitting on their hands.

That's government waste of slightly over $80,000 in salaries in this one small agency.  Nice work if you can get it.