'Homies Were Burning Alive'

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS -- In first-ever interviews, representatives of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) gang in Honduras this week described how security forces were to blame for the May 17 prison fire that killed 105 of those they call their homeboys. In addition to starting the fire, police and prison guards allegedly kept the facility's gates locked for over an hour while trapped inmates were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation.

Human rights observers, children's advocates, and MS members say the tragedy is a direct consequence of Honduras' mano dura (strong fist) policies. These policies employ suppression tactics based on New York City's "zero tolerance" police strategies of the '90s, and were instituted on the advice of the Manhattan Institute think-tank and the Giuliani Group, which have exported the New York model to Latin America.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani's policies, while popular with many New Yorkers, resulted in notorious police shootings of innocent individuals such as Amadou Diallo. The tactics also included stop-and-frisk sweeps that led to the preventive detention of thousands of young blacks and Latinos, until lawsuits challenging racial profiling methods spelled the demise of the NYPD's Street Crime Units.

An over-the-top version of the New York City model is, however, gaining a new lease on life in countries like Honduras and El Salvador as the street gangs become a global phenomenon -- fueled mainly by deportations from the U.S.

A survivor of the May 17, 2004 prison fire in San Pedro Sula, Honduras shows his burns. 105 members of the MS gang died; inmates blame police. One of 51 members of the 18th Street gang executed by police in El Porvenir prison, Ceiba, Honduras on April 5, 2003. Thirty Honduran youth, ages 12 to 17, were detained indefinitely without charges or trial dates, in a cell without a toilet, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

In the past five years, over 900 kids, 18 and younger, have turned up dead in the streets, ditches, or dumpsters of Honduras -- in terms of the nation's population, that is roughly equivalent to 45,000 fatalities in the U.S. Honduran officials estimate that 20 percent of the victims were killed by police or private death squads who prowl the streets in station wagons with tinted windows and no license plates. Most of the victims -- usually deportees from Los Angeles -- were identified as gang members because of their tattoos, although a majority had no criminal history.

The prisons themselves have become the scenes of mass-scale killings. On Apr. 5, 2003, 68 inmates affiliated with the 18th Street gang were killed in a prison massacre near La Ceiba, in northern Honduras. Initially, prison officials blamed the inmates for causing the fatal fire, but a government-appointed commission later concluded that 51 of the dead prisoners had been summarily executed by police officials, who then set the fire to cover up the killings. No one has been charged for these murders.

The latest fire catastrophe on May 17 was in a prison near San Pedro Sula, the center of maqiladora employment in northeast Honduras. Police officials blamed the blaze on faulty wiring, but human rights observers are skeptical -- and with good reason.

The evidence on hand justifies their suspicions. The fire broke out only in the MS cellblock even though the prison has more than 15 other blocks. Before the fire started, inmates phoned friends on the outside to express their worries about smelling gas in the air. After the fire exploded and inmates began screaming, police officials on the scene failed to open the compound gates for two hours. They instead fired shots in the air to discourage inmates from escaping. Firefighters didn't arrive for at least an hour, even though a substation was less than five minutes away. And three massive containers of water, used for showers, were inexplicably empty on the day of the fire.