Honduras News - Daily News about Honduras

By Gustavo Palencia
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras

Violent street gangs terrorizing Honduras will talk to the new government about ending years of bloodshed, but first want random arrests of tattooed suspects to end, a mediator said on Monday.

Catholic Bishop Romulo Emiliani said both main youth gangs, or ‘maras,’ also wanted President Manuel Zelaya’s guarantee their leaders would be safe after two were killed during failed talks with the Central American nation’s last government. There was no immediate response to the demands from the government.

The scale of youth gang violence in Honduras has forced two successive governments to attempt negotiations with the maras akin to the 1990s peace talks that ended bloody civil wars with leftist guerrillas in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18, with an estimated 30,000 members, challenged Zelaya’s predecessor, President Ricardo Maduro, with a series of beheadings and an attack on a bus in 2004 that killed 28 people.

After taking office last month, Zelaya’s government said it was in talks with one of the gangs, but did not specify which.

Emiliani, who would mediate the formal negotiations, told Reuters that talks between both gangs and the government would likely begin within two weeks.

“The two maras are ready to talk,” he said. “Let us hope that these conversations will be successful and that we soon have peace and tranquillity in the country.”

The government has said it will help rehabilitate former gang members but will come down hard on those who do not want to return to a normal life.

Human rights groups have criticized authorities for hauling in suspected members just for sporting the intricate body and face tattoos that characterize both gangs.

The street gangs grew out of Hispanic youth gangs in Los Angeles and have terrorized Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala in recent years with a wave of murders and mutilations.

Heavily linked to drug-dealing, they terrorize poor neighborhoods with violent robberies of buses, businesses, homes and goods trucks and often face off against each other and the police with pistols and shotguns.

Under Maduro, the state fought the gangs with an army and police crackdown that reduced their presence on the streets but increased the fury of their attacks.