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"Gang Violence and Child Development in Honduras"
Franklin Moreno
University of California, Berkeley
For the past few years, I have been conducting research on social-moral development and gang-related violence in the city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. I have the good fortune to be collaborating with staff at the National Foundation for the Development of Honduras (FUNADEH) who have been pivotal in helping me interview children and adolescents living in neighborhoods marked by gang violence. During my initial study in 2016 I met individuals working in various governmental and non-governmental organizations, community leaders and youth who taught me of the psychological and actual dynamics of the violence that shape their lives. For instance, I learned of the gang-enforced borders that are a threat to not only neighborhood residents of all ages but also to taxi and bus transportation, FUNADEH’s own efforts, and the distribution of goods within the communities.
After reflecting on those initial experiences, for my dissertation research I decided to focus on two dimensions of the violence that severely erode the sense of safety for residents of many neighborhoods: extortion and gang-enforced borders. One aim of the study is to examine how children and adolescents coordinate and apply moral and non-moral concepts in situations of gang conflict. In addition, because a major concern among policy-makers and prevention practitioners has been that children exposed to the violence internalize it and, thus, accept it (Ransford, Decker & Slutkin., 2016; United States Agency for International Development, 2014), a second aim of my study is to assess whether or not there are differences in how youth evaluate and reason about violence as a function of exposure. A third aspect of my study assesses what attributions children use to explain why extortion or gang-enforced borders occurs. Throughout the fall and early winter of 2017, I interviewed 80 participants (females n= 40), divided into groups of 10-11 and 14-15-years-olds. Youth were recruited from neighborhoods in San Pedro Sula, Honduras marked by high levels of gang-membership, enforced borders and extortion, and from comparison neighborhoods in Managua, Nicaragua with no gang-enforced borders and extortion.
While conducting my study, I stayed with friends in neighborhoods controlled by gangs during the political upheaval following the presidential elections in November. There I learned firsthand of how certain forms of the gang violence may shift in their functioning as a response to broader forms of social-political conflict. These experiences have taught me much about how dynamic violence is and the complexity of what children must grapple with as they get older. They have also taught me, as a researcher, of the importance in building partnerships and trust. I am currently assisting staff at FUNADEH on developing evaluation tools for their violence prevention programs, as well as preparing workshops for staff and coordinators of youth outreach centers in San Pedro Sula, from which to discuss my research findings, their implications for prevention efforts, and future directions of research with them. Lastly, I have come to better understand how the violence in Honduras not only shapes the lives of children and families there and of those who flee as refugees, but it also impacts the lives of community members, children and adults, here in the United States and vice versa.
References
Ransford, C., Decker, R. B., & Slutkin, G. (2016). Report on the CURE violence model adaptation in San Pedro Sula, Honduras (Impact Study) (pp. 1–12). University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health: CURE Violence.
United States Agency for International Development. (2012). Adaptation of the Ceasfire model for San Pedro Sula, Honduras: Pre-assessment report (pp. 1–15).