A Deep Dive Into Honduras’ Criminal Dynamics and Its Borders

Steve Dudley co-director and co-founder of InSight Crime. Dudley is a senior fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, DC. He is the former Bureau Chief of The Miami Herald in the Andean Region, and the author of two books: “Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia” (Routledge 2004) and “MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang” (Harper Collins 2020).

Héctor Silva is a Salvadoran journalist. Spanish language editor and Senior Investigator for the InSight Crime Foundation. Silva studied journalism at the Central American University in San Salvador and in the University of Barcelona. He worked as a reporter and editor for La Prensa Gráfica in El Salvador for 15 years. He was a diplomat in Washington and a fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies at American University. In 2014 he wrote Infiltrados: A chronicle of corruption in the National Civilian Police of El Salvador (1993-2013) and founded Revista Factum, where he was co-director until 2019. He has collaborated with various media outlets for reports in Central America, including Spanish newspaper El País and The New York Times.

Victoria Dittmar is a researcher for InSight Crime based in Mexico City. She joined InSight Crime five years ago, and has participated in various investigations on organized crime in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico. She has also collaborated with the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS). Dittmar has a degree in International Relations from the University of Sussex and a Masters in Sociology from the University of Oxford.

Kurt Alan Ver Beek President of the Association for a More Just Society (Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa – ASJ). Kurt Alan Ver Beek has lived in Central America and worked on issues of development and justice since 1988. He holds a master’s degree in Natural Resource Development from the Azusa Pacific University and also completed a PhD on the Sociology of Development at Cornell University.

He is a sociology professor and Director of the Honduras Program at Calvin College, where he and his wife, Jo Ann Van Engen, lead the Semester on Honduras. ASJ aims to create a more just society through a fairer application of current legislation and by increasing the role of the church in the promotion of social justice. ASJ faithfully works with vulnerable communities in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, where in recent years there has been over a 50 percent decrease in crime, thanks to the organization’s interventions. As well as tackling rising crime in Honduran communities, ASJ also contributes to reform processes aimed at improving justice, security, health, education, governance and transparency.

While working with Calvin College, Prof. Ver Beek has also undertaken short-term consultancy work with international development organizations, including World Vision and Tear Fund UK.