ABSTRACT
The Honduras branch of the Mara Salvatrucha transnational gang significantly expanded its territorial control in 2018, particularly around the city of San Pedro Sula and throughout the nearby Atlantic coastal regions. The MS-13 began operations in Honduras and the rest of Central America in the mid-1990s following the mass deportation of gang members from California. The MS-13’s primary objective is to gain control of key cocaine-trafficking and human-smuggling routes, to dominate the local drug-retail business and to create a parallel state with increasingly sophisticated political participation. The conflict’s root causes lie endemic poverty, corruption and political disenfranchisement, further complicated by impunity, which is the norm for the crimes that Honduras’s weak judicial system attempts to prosecute. In parallel to its direct involvement in political violence, the MS-13 paid significant attention to building a larger social base in Honduran communities, particularly around San Pedro Sula and the Atlantic coast.
