Ron T wrote in message news:...
> In article <3F358023.3020002@cruzio.com>,
> "f. augustine" wrote:
>
> What's happened in the last 15 years to make it seem unsafe?
> >
> > faye
> >
> >
>
>
> Hi Faye,
>
> simple answer - gangs..
>
> Crime has gone up in Honduras as the economic situation wnt from bad to
> worse. Following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, many people moved to the
> cities looking for work and found little. They had to survive and turned
> to crime. Then the USA start wholesale deportation of gang members in
> Southern California and the streetwise kids became the leaders in
> Honduras. The underpaid, poorly trained police were not ready to deal
> with these violent gangs and things got really bad. It is just under the
> current administration that any effort is being made to correct the
> situation, but it will be a long battle.
>
> Honduras is still a great place and with a few precautions and common
> sense, it can be visited safely (one can easily say the same thing about
> any large US city).
>
> Most Hondurans are how you remember them though.
>
I'll second Ron's opinion. I live in Honduras full time. I teach
school in Siguatepeque. Yes there are problems, yes they are working
to control them. We are seeing gangs moving into Siguatepeque. As the
squeeze is put on them in Teguz and SPS, they are fleeing to the
central part of the country. They are currently conducting massive
roundups of gang members country wide. Membership in a gang is a
felony punishable with 9 years in federal prison here. It jumps to 12
years if the person is a leader. That's in addition to sentences for
any other crimes.
The only violent crime I've been subjected to in the past year occured
at Les Davis Beach in Tacoma Washington when were were robbed while my
daughter was scuba diving. The significant other was a crime victim
while in Honduras two years ago - his car was stolen from an airport
park n ride in Seattle Washington!
Sandi |
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