The Timebomb That Exploded Twice: Behind The Massacres in Honduras' Women's Prison

BARRIO 18
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16 AUG 2023 BY VICTORIA DITTMAR AND HELEN MONTOYA

With a blaring siren, the Honduran Prison Police patrol car dodges through Tegucigalpa's congested morning traffic, screeching into the Escuela Hospital. In the trunk with two other women is Adriana,* a former Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS13) gang member, squeezing her leg with her hands to try to contain the bleeding from an open wound.

The paramedics and police begin to get the women out of the patrol car. Two women, seriously wounded by bullets or machete cuts, are placed on stretchers and quickly admitted to the operating room. Meanwhile, Adriana is placed on the sidewalk, where she waits her turn to receive medical attention.

At that moment, an uncontrollable weeping takes hold of her. A reporter approaches and asks her what happened. She cannot hold back her tears. She covers her face with her hands and her long black hair, and only manages to say, “They got into the section with an AR-15. The ones from the 18.”

The events that unfolded the morning of June 20, 2023, at the National Female Penitentiary for Social Adaptation (Penitenciaría Nacional Femenina de Adaptación Social - PNFAS), located 40 minutes outside Tegucigalpa in the town of Tamara, may have been the deadliest massacre ever recorded in a female prison in Latin America.

More:
https://insightcrime.org/investigations/institutions-gangs-violence-honduras-women-prison/

(Lengthy article. I never knew female prisoners keep their children with them in prison there.)