a ‘Bukele-style’ Alcatraz that will imprison 2,000 drug traffickers on a paradise island

The Bukele formula continues to cross Latin America. From El Salvador, a model of apparent success against organized crime inspires neighboring countries such as Honduraswhich wants to fulfill its promise to strengthen control of the prison system by building his own megaprison on Swan Islands. Xiomara Castro’s plan is ambitious: she aims to install a complex for 2,000 inmates 250 kilometers from the coast. Isolated from everything, and waiting to see the light at the end of the year.

The project is born from a new security policy, more reactive and militarized, that seeks to combat organized crime in the country. Because, although homicides have been reduced by more than half in the last 10 years, Honduras continues to register the highest rates of violence in the region. To such an extent that counting only 48 municipalities with zero homicides in 2023 is, as the Government once presumed, a cause for celebration.

Swan Islands —or the National Marine Park, as the archipelago is recognized by law— It is the location chosen for the maximum security prison that will contain the influence of the gangs. Castro ordered to build it in 2023, after gang clashes at a women’s prison near the capital, Tegucigalpa, will cause the death of 46 inmates last June. However, the idea has not materialized: although it was expected that the tender to build the prison would be called at the beginning of the year, it has been postponed.

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Everything will be regulated in the coming months, the Government assures. But it will not have the approval of the College of Civil Engineers, which warned that the building could deplete the fiscal coffersnor from regional biologists who They fear that it will damage the ecosystem of the Caribbean island. “It is a dark project; it is not known where it is headed,” stressed Modesto Ochoa, president of the Comité for the Defense of the Flora of the Golfo de Fonseca (Coddeffagolf), to The Herald.

An ‘Alcatraz’ in paradise

The Swan Islands comprise an area of ​​approximately 8 square kilometers in which the islets of Big Swan, Small Swan and Booby Cay are located. The only possible form of communication is via satellitewhich authorities believe will prevent inmates from directing gangs from prison. But not only that: escape is also a challenge, since it takes almost a day to arrive by boat from the nearest coast.

“It is the furthest they can be, so these gang leaders will feel the pressure once they are on the island. The idea is that they lose contact with the entire society and can really pay for their crimes.“, assured in July 2023 the then head of the Honduran Armed Forces, Jose Fortinnow vice minister of National Defense and one of the main speakers of the controversial military operation Faith and Hope that the country launched after the riots in the Támara Women’s Center that year.

In any case, the future island construction depends on the obtaining ato environmental license still pending. “We are working for it, we cannot violate any of the laws,” he said earlier this month. Ramiro Muñozcommander of the Honduran Military Police of Public Order (PMOP). Besides, they don’t exist yet data on the total cost of the investmentof which will depend on the construction conditions and standards that are established when it is known which company will be in charge of the project.

Biologists, against

According to authorities, the objective is for the prison to contribute to improving public security in Honduras and reducing overcrowding in prison systems. However, this has not achieved the approval of the country’s College of Biologists. They consider that the location could cause an increase in marine pollutionthreatening the currents of the Gulf of Honduras and the biodiversity that inhabits the largest transboundary reef in the world.

Specifically, activists opposed to this plan focus on the risks that routine activities such as waste and wastewater treatment will entail, as well as the possibility of accidents or spills from prison operations or from the boats themselves that arrive at Islas del Cisne. These movements, they criticize, can bring serious threats to the delicate ecological balance of the coral reefs.

In the face of such controversy, the Secretariat of Natural Resources (Serna) has intervened publicly on multiple occasions to remind that The objective has always been and will be that the center has a minimal environmental impact. “It is going to be built, we have already visited the land a few days ago with the team of professionals to study it,” said Minister of La Serna, Lucky Medina, bluntly in January. Because “It’s totally viable”he settled.

In statements to the media, Medina reported that the penitentiary will be built on the island of Cisne Grande, which “is already damaged” by the establishment more than 50 years ago “of a landing strip nearly two kilometers long which in its time had asphalt,” he explained. In his words, in the area there are other rubble and “orchard plantations.” This is the area chosen for the future home of 2,000 prisoners, whose surveillance will be carried out “at the highest level”.

Bukele cove in Latin America

The Swan Islands project arises from the package of measures that the Government of Xiomara Castro launched in February 2023, after announcing a state of exception that extends until today. This last measure aspires to have the same success in the fight against gangs that El Salvador has already had. “If they have done something good there, why not copy it? We will not allow this terror to continue.”“said the Deputy Minister of Defense.

It is true that the popularity of the leader of the Libertad y Refundación party is not the same as that of Nayib Bukelewhich boasts of having turned the country into one of the safest and having almost 70% of the population in favor of its Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). However, Honduran society is similar in that it also “prioritizes the solution to its security problems over the maintenance of a solid democratic State”, data that is extracted from the Latinobarometer from 2023 and seconds Anna Ayuso.

The Spanish expert, iSenior researcher for Latin America at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB), explains that the bukelization of the country is nourished by one fact: the citizens ““They are willing to put the possibility of living safely first.” to anything else. This has led to, in recent years, countries like Honduras “have abused the state of emergency“, with the “consequent limitations on the rights of free movement, assembly, etc.,” he says in statements to EL ESPAÑOL.

What is intended to be emulated “is a militarized model that is based on preventive action and the creation of maximum security prisons.” However, this one also has its shadows. EThe ‘hard hand’ model has not had the same result in Honduras than in your neighbor. In the first six months since the state of emergency was implemented, the National Police arrested 4,033 possible criminalsof which 3,280 were released due to lack of evidence against him.

Multiple NGOs They fear that the Islas del Cisne megaprison will violate the rights of inmatesas, as documented Human Rights Watch (HRW)occurs in El Salvador. Recent reports reveal that “authorities have subjected detainees, including hundreds of children, to extreme overcrowding in overcrowded centers.” Furthermore, the UN Committee against Torture noted in 2023 the risk that the CECOT could incur mistreatment of prisoners.

In the past, island presidios were common throughout Latin America, with facilities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Peru. However, its popularity was declining until the closure of the last one, in Islas Marías (Mexico) in 2019. Honduras intends to return to this model, partly with the intention of partially relieving its prison system.

In a report published in 2019, the International Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)—independent body of the Organization of American States (OAS)— put the overcrowding rate in Honduran prisons at 88%, They barely have the capacity to detain 15,000 people. This level of human concentration means that, in the absence of control, the leaders of the different gangs have more freedom to control the internal dynamics of the prisons.

In addition to the Islas del Cisne center, which aims to house more than 2,000 criminals linked to drug trafficking before 2025, The Government assures that it will build another second penitentiary between the Department of Olancho and Cape Gracias a Dios, on the border with Nicaragua. As these are remote areas and far from any urban centerboth buildings —the latter located in the Patuca National Park— They would be surrounded by areas with a high concentration of wildlife, which would make the escape a more than difficult mission.