Honduras imports gang truce from El Salvador

Last month leaders of the two biggest gangs in Honduras, the most violent country in the world, announced a truce in hopes of reducing violence across the country. Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the 18th Street Gang (M18) signed on to a similar truce in El Salvador a little over a year ago, and the murder rate quickly dropped by around 50 percent.

I agree that this is probably a good step towards addressing the terrible wave of violence that has
been killing around 7,000 individuals a year for the past few years, but there are a few differences between crime in the two countries that casts some doubt on the prospects for success in Honduras.

One reason is that the two gangs, which exist in both countries, are less centralized in Honduras than they are in El Salvador. And, they are responsible for a smaller share of violent crime in Honduras than they are in El Salvador. Mike Allison, writing on Al Jazeera English, has some good data the reflects a little bit of this difference (I'd recommend reading the whole article):

In El Salvador, it was believed that gangs were responsible for between 30 percent (the Institute for Legal Medicine [SP]) and 90 percent (President Mauricio Funes [SP]) of murders prior to the truce. In effect, no one really had a handle on the number of murders and other crimes committed by gangs. However, El Salvador's single year 40-50 percent reduction from 2011 to 2012 was quite dramatic. While the murder rate has inched up ever so slightly in 2013, the truce has proven quite resilient...[In Honduras] motive was determined in only 40 percent of the 7,172 murders committed in 2012. Authorities determined that slightly more than 1 percent (93) of all murders was gang-related. On the other hand, a 2010 United Nations study found that 30 percent of all murders were gang-related. A higher percentage of murders are thought to be related to drug trafficking, organised crime, personal revenge, and union organisation and land conflict. Reducing murders by one-third would be a tremendous achievement, but there is little reason to expect a Honduran gang truce to achieve the same immediate impact as the gang truce did in El Salvador.

A big part of the violent crime in Honduras is likely committed by groups associated with drug trafficking or organized crime. And, while gangs in Honduras are also thought to commit a smaller percentage of murders in that country than their peers in El Salvador, the gangs are also less organized, with a less coherent leadership structure. Part of this stems from the different geographies of the countries--El Salvador is a much smaller and more densely urbanized country than Honduras. But the response to crime in El Salvador over the past decade may have had more to do with the degree of unification of gangs in that country: the so-called mano dura policies enacted in El Salvador criminalized gang association and threw a vast number of youths into prison together, which had the effect of strengthening the cohesion of both the MS13 and the M18 within that country.

There does seem to be a lot of optimism around this truce, whereas the truce in El Salvador was kept hidden for months and government figures denied any role. Here, the president has embraced the truce and its prospects for a reprieve from violence--even the OAS has lent its support to the truce. Further, representatives of the two gangs have been very public about their hopes, promising "zero crime, zero violence." Zero crime is a tall order: even in El Salvador, as the murder rate has plummeted, non-violent crime such as theft and extortion has increased.

The two biggest challenges, I think, will be the degree to which the leadership of the two gangs can actually deliver on a truce. This was a concern among observers of the truce in El Salvador this time last year, though the gangs have apparently delivered. Will there be breakaway "cliques" in Honduras that undermine these efforts? And what will happen if the public doesn't perceive any drop in violence, or if the decrease doesn't live up to expectations? If the murder rate continues to sore at the hands of organized crime and drug traffickers, will the public lash out?

While no one expects this to be a panacea, and I doubt this truce will live up to expectations, any respite from violence in Honduras is a good thing. As Boz points out, even "a 10% decline in murders would be hundreds of fewer deaths, particularly in San Pedro Sula," the so-called murder capital of the world. And to be sure, things can hardly get worse.