Photographers Blog

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

San Pedro Sula, Honduras

By Jorge Cabrera

“Come in if you would like to and try to leave when you still can.”

Some weeks ago, I went to cover a soccer match in San Pedro Sula, considered the industrial capital of Honduras. It also bears the less honorable title of being the most dangerous and violent city in the world.

San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city after Tegucigalpa, has a homicide rate of 169 per 100,000 people and was named the world’s most violent city for a second year in a row. Lax laws allow civilians to own up to five personal guns, and arms trafficking has flooded the country with nearly 70 percent illegal firearms. Eighty three percent of homicides are by firearm compared to 60 percent in the United States.

FULL FOCUS GALLERY: SHOT IN SAN PEDRO SULA

I arrived when most of San Pedro Sula’s residents escape to the beach. Temperatures were hitting 40 degrees C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the shade and the heat was overpowering. I went out for a walk with a fellow journalist who only covers crime and while we were walking he described San Pedro Sula like a supermarket for journalists looking for dangerous stories.

We entered the emergency room of a local hospital and I could sense what he was talking about. It was packed with people, most of them from low-income neighborhoods, nurses and doctors were running around, trying to tend to everyone but it was obvious that there was neither enough medical staff nor materials to treat everyone.

I could hear screams from patients and the smell was suffocating.

Night had fallen and more and more patients with wounds inflicted by violence were arriving. A man with numerous stab wounds was brought in. His hand was almost dangling from his wrist – he had been attacked by members of the Mara 18 street gang who had wanted to kill him with machetes and then tried to dismember his body. He was crying while he was telling me how he had managed to escape to a road and how people helped him. But he moved and looked around as if nothing had happened to him. He seemed to be completely unconscious of his wounds and must have been in shock.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

By Jorge Dan Lopez

I was listening to the alarmed voice of a radio commentator. Once I realized what he was talking about, I began to worry about how long it would take me to get to the location.

Within minutes, all local radio and TV stations were talking about the man who had killed two children inside a school in Tactic and who was lynched by exasperated and outraged villagers. It took me three hours from Guatemala City to get to Tactic. In those three hours, the climate changed several times and so did the language.

While driving I started to remember the stories that are told in this part of Guatemala, in Alta Verapaz and Quiche, where people are predominantly of Mayan descent. Where “the people rule” and Mayan law is applied.

“Even Obama cares about us! The last time a gay leader was assassinated in Uganda, Obama asked [President] Pepe [Lobo] to protect us and investigate the crimes against us in Honduras,” says Bessy, a 31 year-old transsexual who does volunteer social work with the homosexual community during the day. For the last 11 years, Bessy has also been working nights as a prostitute on the streets.

Honduran government sources have documented the assassination of 34 gays, transvestites, and transsexuals in the past 18 months. Some of them were killed with great sadism and cruelty. Three days before Christmas, murderers tied Lady Oscar to a chair and set fire to her. A week earlier the body of Luis Hernandez was found in a ditch, her face beaten until it was unrecognizable.

I meet them in the basement of a pool hall located in a dangerous neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. There, along narrow and dark stairways, are several rooms where Bessy, Patricia and Tiffany live.