Honduran Gangs Exact Heavy 'War Tax' from Bus Drivers
Jose's scars are a constant reminder of the day gang members set him on fire for failing to pay their "war tax" -- a daily nightmare for bus drivers in Honduras.
Jose says he was never warned he had to pay the "tax," imposed on bus and taxi drivers, small-business owners and ordinary residents by the gangs that have carved up much of Central America and made it one of the most violent regions in the world.
He was driving down Armed Forces Avenue on the west side of Tegucigalpa, the capital, when four young men hijacked his bus, unloaded the passengers at gunpoint and doused it in gasoline.
"Then they closed the door, busted the door lever to make sure I couldn't get out, and threw a lit match through the window," said Jose, whose name has been changed to protect him.
The gang members then fled in a pickup truck.
"They thought I had burnt to death, but I was still alive. I managed to get out through a window," said the slight 46-year-old man.
"I jumped out like a torch and rolled on the ground to put out the flames," he told Agence France Presse.
He was hospitalized for two months and is badly scarred on his jaw, neck and arms.
Others have been less fortunate.
Just last month, the charred body of 19-year-old taxi driver Noe Martinez was found inside his vehicle.
So far this year 50 people have been killed -- 17 of them drivers -- and 25 wounded in attacks on public transport, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
- Grisly phone call -
The violence is being fueled by a turf war between the region's two main gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Mara 18, which have carved up the lucrative business of drug trafficking, extortion and murder for hire in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The "maras," or gangs, have no shortage of creative methods to maximize profits on their extortion rackets.
The latest, said Jose, is to approach a ticket inspector at a bus terminal and give him a cell phone.
"We'll call you," they say.
When the phone rings, they tell him he must collect up to 600,000 lempiras ($30,000) from the company's buses by a certain deadline or they will start killing drivers.
"They've asked me for up to 200,000 lempiras, to be paid the next day. If you try to resist, they kill you," a 44-year-old ticket inspector told AFP.
He said drivers typically have to pay $25 to $30 a week in "war taxes," in a country where the average salary is around $350 a month.
- Cameras and panic buttons -
To fight this extortion, inter-city bus companies have begun running non-stop routes and putting passengers through tight security checks.
But that system is impossible to implement for city bus routes.
"We ride in fear because we've all been through an attack," said a 47-year-old vegetable seller who identified herself as Juanita.
"Once I pretended to be asleep when two of them got on the bus, but I didn't manage to escape.... Everyone gave them everything out of fear, because one of them had a pistol and the other had a knife."
The gangs' grip on Honduras has given the country the highest homicide rate in the world: 90 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, according to the United Nations.
"There's been a deterioration of the social fabric because of impunity and violence," said Wilfredo Mendez, the head of the Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights, an advocacy group.
Too many people in Honduras "see crime as a lucrative activity that is becoming the new norm," he said.
The police say they are investigating the extortion rackets, including cases of bus and taxi drivers being forced to hand their vehicles over to the gangs.
But the country's human rights commission has condemned the widespread failure to bring perpetrators to justice.
A bill before Congress would outfit buses with security cameras and panic buttons to call the police.
The head of the national police force, Colonel Gustavo Paz, said it is impossible to post soldiers or police on every bus, but that he hoped the bill would end the terror for public transport passengers.