PUERTO LEMPIRA, Honduras – On the dusty streets of this impoverished port town in the heart of the Moskitia, a 15-year-old boy casually points out vehicles known to be owned by drug traffickers. “See that pickup truck?” he says, motioning down the street. “That’s a drug dealer’s.” Two top drug lords in town have recently joined forces, he says. The boy mentions them by name, as if they were neighbors. In small rural towns, most people are neighbors.
Isolation has allowed many things to flourish in the Moskitia: from great virgin forests with hundreds of species of wildlife, to a vibrant native language and culture. But it has also fostered its share of societal ills, including drug trafficking, unemployment, and illness from preventable and curable diseases. Automatic weapons on the Atlantic coast may not be as commonly seen in public as they are in other parts of Honduras and Nicaragua, but those who own them here are more likely to be decorated with a narcotrafficker’s flashy gold chain rather than a police officer’s badge.
A small security presence and millions of hiding places have made the Moskitia a popular transfer point for cocaine on its way from South America to the United States. On the Río Coco, the waterway border between Nicaragua and Honduras, unwitting Gringo tourists are vulnerable to interrogation by AK-47-toting thugs suspicious of U.S. drug enforcement agents.
THE Honduran National Police boast that they have confiscated more cocaine in the past two years (10,385 kilos) than in the nine years previous. This, they assure, indicates increased police effectiveness, not increased drug traffic. Yet few anti-drug stings have taken place in the Moskitia. Honduran police have a grand total of one helicopter and zero motorboats patrolling this vast wilderness. Nicaragua’s patrol is equally thin, focusing anti-drug efforts more on the southern Atlantic coast and the Corn Islands.
“We’re lacking in personnel and logistics,” said Honduran police spokesman José Martínez. “There’s not a big enough budget; we’re one of the three poorest countries in Latin America.” Illustrating his point, the police’s office secretary passes by, asking other policemen for donations to replace the bathroom door – a “nonessential” not covered in the budget.
LAST April, Nicaraguan police raided one drug-trafficking circle at the mouth of the Río Coco, killing one and injuring several others. But the proliferation of large, brightly painted homes sporting satellite dishes in a region with a known scarcity of legitimate employment opportunities suggests the drug trade is a more entrenched problem than sporadic police raids can solve.
THE drug trade appears to be reinforced by a workforce deprived of job opportunities and desperate to make some cash. Most Miskitos live as subsistence farmers and fishermen. Lobster harvesting provides some with a decent-salaried seasonal job. But it also produces dozens of paraplegics each year because of unsafe diving practices and few decompression chambers.
Trade is unlikely to increase as long as the region remains nigh cut off from the rest of Central America. The situation won’t be improving anytime soon for the Honduran Moskitia. Asked about government plans to build roads into rural Gracias a Dios, the Honduran Ministry of Infrastructure flatly replies: “We have no projects there.”
The situation is slightly better in Nicaragua, where bus routes run from Managua all the way to the Río Coco, and hundreds of workers are busy building new roads and bridges along the way.
Infrastructure E is not the only thing lacking here. Gracias a Dios has the highest school absenteeism rates in Honduras, and the lowest Spanish-language scores. For many families, a child’s hands are still worth more in the fields than at the chalkboard. Higher education is a problem even for those with the best grades. The nearest high school may be hours or days away, depending on the size of the boat’s motor. Universities are even less accessible.
In Raya, a small Honduran town with a large airstrip a few hours’ walk from Nicaragua, the daughter of the town’s only hotel proprietor watches soap operas on satellite TV – an uncommon nod to Latin American pop culture. “The politicians have forgotten us here,” she says. “We’re on our own.” Outside, horses graze on the airstrip and children chase a soccer ball around on the grass.
There are no gangs here to poison children’s minds, no smoke-belching vehicles or factories to poison their lungs, no suggestive billboards to poison their desires. There’re just endless miles of sea, sky, and greenery. Perhaps isolation – or abandonment – is the price of maintaining such a paradise.
