[Video] On the Record: are the middle-classes any safer?

[ irishtimes.com/coffeevsgangs ]

Pamela and Daniel are marketing students in San Pedro Sula. They're middle class, their parents are professionals and they attend private university and speak English. They couldn't be more different to the students on the Kenco farm and this is why we want to speak to them. We had woken that morning to hear that seven people had been killed in separate homicides in the city in the last 24 hours. A staggering number for a single day - the number for the country overall was even higher.

We were struggling to understand how people could go about their business with that kind of violence. It's easy to frame criminality in terms of poverty - and certainly the poor have little protection from the criminality that has taken over their communities - but to reflect just how deeply violence has affected society we needed to understand it in terms of people like us.

Pamela and Daniel have opportunities, money, an education. They're just like the majority of middle-class students in Ireland, except, as they explain, they spend their time constantly looking over their shoulder. They are as afraid to move freely around the city as everyone else we meet. They're great ambassadors for Honduras and speak fluently and with confidence about their country and its problems, but just like everyone else they hope to leave.

Next week:
A Kenco student on why the road to the US is not a safe alternative

[ irishtimes.com/coffeevsgangs ]