As Honduran gangs terrorize the streets, many flee north

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario gives a harrowing account of a bus driver's cash drop she witnessed during a ride-along while reporting for her recent New York Times cover story, "Pay or Die: MS-13 and 18th street gangsters want to run Honduras." For nearly a decade, gangs have been extorting cash from transportation workers in Honduras on the threat of death. According to Nazario, the Honduran transportation industry pays an estimated $23 million to the gangs every year. This unofficial "tax" system is part of a larger culture of corruption in Honduras that reaches the highest echelons of the government. "This is what is driving a lot of the despair in a place like Honduras," says Nazario. "Because the police are paid off by the gangs, because the politicians are paid off by the gangs, because 30 to 40% of all the revenues of the government are estimated to be siphoned off in corruption by all of these players. The whole system is rotten."

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