IAN WILLMS

HOPE DWINDLES FOR HONDURANS LIVING IN PERIL 

(For The New York Times, 2014)

The pastor came one afternoon to survey his church, or what was left of it: remnants of a “welcome” sign and a strip of Christmas garland still tacked to the wall.

The gang took the chairs. They took the light fixtures. They took the doors. They had given his family 24 hours to get out and so they did, abandoning their home and the small evangelical church he led.

“There was no other way,” Pastor Jorge Rivassaid the other day, on the porch of a house in another part of this violent city, where the family has taken refuge. “We would die there.”

When he moved there 20 years ago, Mr. Rivas commanded respect, even among the gang members. The neighborhood, Chamelecón, was not yet the most dangerous in one of the most dangerous cities in the hemisphere.

Read the full story by Randy Archibold / The New York Times.

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