Gangs like Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 are known for running the drug trade with gruesome violence, sporting full-body tattoos and subjecting new recruits to bloody initiation rituals that sometimes include killing a rival.
Fourteen-year-old Cristian competes with stray dogs, scavenging birds and hundreds of other trash-pickers for food at a Honduran dump, but when the army offers him a square meal, he warily declines.
Colonel Elvin Corea, whose uniform stands out against the rotting piles of garbage at the Tegucigalpa dump, says the teenager is probably scared of being targeted by one of Honduras’s notoriously violent gangs if he takes part in “Guardians of the Nation,” a controversial army program to steer at-risk youth away from drugs and crime.
“Signing them up is getting difficult. The youngsters don’t want to participate because the gangsters threaten them,” said Corea, who heads the program in the capital.
“The gangs feel threatened because the program cuts into their recruitment.”
When the program first launched at the dump, where the gangs have a tight grip, police had to provide protection for families that enrolled their children, Corea said.
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