The Posse Deals Out Their Own Justice

Alejandro, his wife and four kids lived peacefully in squatter's village in their small one room shack. Their house was made from old tarps, card board and the few pieces of wood and metal roofing panels that Alejandro had been able to find at the city dump. The house sat at the edge of a stream bed that snaked down from the mountains providing a cool place for Alejandro's children to cool off from the tropical heat. On the other side of the stream was another village, almost of equal poverty. One day a large group of people from from that village crossed the stream and made their way straight for Alejandro's house.

Paying the Ultimate Price for Employment

Francisco lived a peaceful life. He liked the rural area, where he and his family were tucked into the hills of the Valle de Sula. Francisco , his wife and his four kids shared a house with his parents. It was a safe place to raise his children, much safer than the city where he worked everyday. To support his family, Francisco would leave at 5 AM each day so his long commute would not make him late. He rode his bike each morning down the 2km dirt road until he would reach the paved highway into town. From there it was nearly 15kms into town. Six days a week Fransisco would make the trek into town, labor all day as a construction assistant and then at 5:30 PM he would bike the 17km home. After working 60 to 70 hours each week, he would be able to brink home nearly $55. If he could maintain steady work, that would mean that Francisco would earn nearly $1,000 more than the Gross National Income per capita of nearly $1, 700.

Francisco's wife had pleaded with her husband to take the bus.  It would only cost him 60 cents each way, but for Francisco he knew that meant that almost 15 percent of his pay would be spent just getting to work each day. He finally convinced his wife that he preferred to ride his bike than having to walk the 2km road uphill to his family's home. For years Francisco had been able to keep steady work, unfortunately the Honduran rainy season meant that fewer construction jobs were planned during the winter months. Little by little he was saving money, even hoping to find some land to build a house and move his family out of his parent's house.

Then one Friday night Francisco did not make it home. His wife always worried about him, but he would sometimes stop and visit with friends or even stop in at a local bar on his way home. It was not until the frantic screams from her mother-in-law that she knew something had happened. A neighbor of Francisco's who was coming home from work as well was the first one to reach Francisco's family to tell him that he was dead, shot in the head not more than 20 feet from the entrance to the dirt road that would have taken him home. By the time his family got to the road, a group of people had already gathered around Francisco's body.

A Day of Two Funerals

Most people hope to die of old age, to have a long and healthy life. For the average Honduran winning the lottery sometimes seems more probable. Many poor Hondurans do make it, but for everyone that makes it there seem to be two or three or four who are cut down in their prime by the difficult lifestyle that they live.  One day, during my first week living in Honduras, I was witness two an example of both cases: the somber funeral to recognize the unfortunate death of a child killed by the forces of nature and her families own poverty; and the wake of and elderly man which devolved into a large farm party to celebrate someone who won the lottery and had been rewarded with many years of life.

Wilfredo was a traveling vegetable salesman. He would have to travel long distances to find cheap produce to be able to smake any money. He had recently reunited with his family after having spent a few years away from them, having illegally immigrated to the United States to work.  With the money he had brought back from the United States, Wilfredo bought the cheapest pickup truck he could find and started selling fruit out of the back of the truck in various neighborhoods. His family had been living in a poor squatters community close to the mountains. With hopes that his fortunes where changing, Wilfredo moved his family out of their patchwork hut and moved into the city so that he could be closer to his work and to hopefully be able to see more of his family.

The family was now living in a cinder block one roomed apartment in town instead of the wooden hut that Wilfredo had built for his family close to the mountains. The apartment was in older part of town, where many low income families rented cheaply made apartment complexes. Cracks showed along many of the walls where the cinder blocks had long ago separated from the mortar that had originally held the walls in place. The important thing though was that the rent was actually affordable. Wilfredo went to work on May 27th feeling that things were finally looking up for him and his family. In the early morning hours of May 28th his three daughters; Sara, Cindi and Alexa, slept in their small one room apartment with their mother. At 2:30 AM, a 7.3 earthquake struck offshore. 100 miles from where Wilfredo's family slept. One would have to drive an hour to find the nearest beach, where the earthquake was felt the strongest. Thousands and thousands of buildings where much closer to the earthquake epicenter than their own apartment building.