In the first two installements of this series, we discussed examples of what a September 2012 UN report called a territorially-based crime group and a transportista crime group in Honduras.
The third kind of group involved in the international drug trade are what the UN calls tumbadores, disruptive groups that prey on crime families and transportistas opportunistically, to take their drug shipments and sell them to others.
Tumbadores
often form from territorial groups, like crime families. In addition
to hijacking shipments of drugs, they may also extort the transportistas who must cross their territory to move drugs along, and they may contribute to street crime.
In Honduras, Los Grillos, a group operating near La Ceiba, have been identified as tumbadores. They've been competing
for territory with Los Pelones, also headquartered in La Ceiba. That
conflict generated over 373 firearm caused homicides in the first half
of 2011 in La Ceiba.
Both groups are said to operate by trying to hijack drug
shipments traveling from eastern Honduras through the La Ceiba area. They have reportedly
heavily infiltrated the police in La Ceiba, and carried out contract
killings on reporters in the La Ceiba region, including reporter David
Meza Montesinos, who was broadcasting exposés on police corruption in La
Ceiba when murdered.
More recently Los Grillos have expanded into the Bay Islands of Honduras, particularly Roatan where they're following the drug traffic in coastal waters.
Not included in these three main categories are street gangs, the Maras. The UN report concludes that they "have little connection to the transnational drug trade, and focus primarily on extortion and other local power struggles". This goes against a powerful representation popular with the Honduran (and some international) media that links the street gangs and drug traffickers together.
The Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Mara Calle
18 are territorial organized crime units. but are not
usually classified as organized crime units because their focus is not
financial gain. They provide small amounts of security and distribute
money to friends and family, but make no pretense of serving a broader
public good as do the crime families.
Their territorial control is about identity, respect and
their place in the world, according to the UN report. This focus on identity causes
them at times to work against their financial interests, feuding with others over
symbolic incursions.
They
are trans-national, but not organized trans-nationally. They are present across the United States, Mexico, Honduras,
Guatemala, and El Salvador, but there is no central leadership that
coordinates what each member organization is doing. Both gangs operate as small territorial units, cliques, that control or dispute a small local territory. Some analysts suggest there is a national structure
made up of the leadership of the largest cliques. Both may have cliques
that make opportunistic alliances across international boundaries but
outside of this, there is no international coordination of activities.
While neither
Mara is a major player in the international drug trade, both are involved in local distribution of drugs in Honduras. That doesn't mean they are benign; their
primary activities are major sources of violence in
Honduras: kidnap for ransom, extortion from transportation (bus,
taxi), extortion of local businesses and individuals, murder for hire, and theft accompany their involvement in street trafficking of drugs within the country.
Their street level drug
trafficking is mostly cannabis, with only a little cocaine these days.
Back when they arrived in Central America, they got their start by
trafficking crack cocaine, previously not a problem in Central America. But today, the cocaine trade is international business of the cartels.
In Honduras, the way the Maras have articulated with the territorial crime families and transportistas
is through murder for hire. In the Bajo Aguan, there's evidence that a
group calling itself Mara 61 has been hired by drug traffickers to
provide security and logistical support for their operations. Mara
Calle 18 was hired by the Zetas to carry out contract killings in
Honduras.
It
is the activities of the Maras in extortion and
murder for hire that produce the most violence in Central America.
In
El Salvador, when politicians and the Catholic church negotiated a
truce between MS-13 and Calle 18, it dramatically
lowered homicide rates, while extortion and other gang related crimes
continued unchecked. When the truce collapsed, homicide rates returned
to their former, high, levels.
The UN report shows that violence in Honduras
is a result of two primary forces, conflict between the various people
involved in the drug trade, and the high level of violence promulgated
by the Maras.
Collapsing these two sources of violence is a mistake that can lead to thinking strategies intended to fight the Maras are also countering drug trafficking, or that fighting drug trafficking will reduce the high levels of violence people endure in some Honduran cities. These are separate problems, even if each offers opportunities for the other.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Honduras Finding IMF Accord Difficult
Honduras failed to come to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for stand-by funding of the Honduran government over the next three years last week. Negotiations have now entered overtime with a deadline of today, October 7. Without an agreement and a dramatic reduction in deficit spending, the Honduran government of Juan Orlando Hernandez will have trouble making payments on the existing debt accumulated by the unrestrained deficit spending of the defacto government of Micheletti Bain and his successor Porfirio Lobo Sosa.
Marlon Tabora, President of the Central Bank, has been leading the negotiations with the IMF in Washington, DC since the beginning of last week. He has met with high level officials within the IMF including Alejandro Werner, Director of the Western Hemisphere Department.
There are two real sticking points in the negotiations. First, the IMF is requiring Honduras to divest itself of the state owned electric company (Empresa Nacional de Energia Electrica) and to programatically reduce the deficit spending from its current 5.2% of Honduras's Gross National Product to 1.7% by 2017. Given the National Party's propensity to overspend on security (military, new police forces like the TIGRES, FUSINA, etc) and gutting of social welfare programs, this reduction would leave it with little to nothing to spend on development, infrastructure, or economic stimulation, all areas which need more investment by the government.
While the conversations were extended two days into this week, Tabora has until this Friday, October 10, to negotiate a letter of intent with the IMF. Without a signed letter of intent by the end of this week, Tabora will not be able to present to the full IMF at its November 10 Directors meeting for final approval. Such an agreement was expected to provide between $190 and $200 million to meet this year's deficit. Without it, the government will have to sell bonds in the internal and external financial markets at substantial interest in order to pay for its current spending.
Marlon Tabora, President of the Central Bank, has been leading the negotiations with the IMF in Washington, DC since the beginning of last week. He has met with high level officials within the IMF including Alejandro Werner, Director of the Western Hemisphere Department.
There are two real sticking points in the negotiations. First, the IMF is requiring Honduras to divest itself of the state owned electric company (Empresa Nacional de Energia Electrica) and to programatically reduce the deficit spending from its current 5.2% of Honduras's Gross National Product to 1.7% by 2017. Given the National Party's propensity to overspend on security (military, new police forces like the TIGRES, FUSINA, etc) and gutting of social welfare programs, this reduction would leave it with little to nothing to spend on development, infrastructure, or economic stimulation, all areas which need more investment by the government.
While the conversations were extended two days into this week, Tabora has until this Friday, October 10, to negotiate a letter of intent with the IMF. Without a signed letter of intent by the end of this week, Tabora will not be able to present to the full IMF at its November 10 Directors meeting for final approval. Such an agreement was expected to provide between $190 and $200 million to meet this year's deficit. Without it, the government will have to sell bonds in the internal and external financial markets at substantial interest in order to pay for its current spending.
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 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.
Monday, October 6, 2014
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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
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.
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.
Monday, June 9, 2014
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:
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:
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.
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.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
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:
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 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.
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.
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