Honduras sends police to the streets in fight against gangs

By Gustavo Placencia and Marvin Valladares

(Reuters) - After a month of an "iron fist" policy aimed at fighting rampant drug- and gang-related crime, Honduras police say they have seized hundreds of guns and arrested alleged gang members.

Under this hardline approach called "mano duro" in Spanish, Honduran President Xiomara Castro has used emergency powers to send security forces into crime-ridden neighborhoods.

She plans to jail over 20,000 inmates in a new mega-prison.

The strategy is a lighter version of neighboring El Salvador's tactics. There, President Nayib Bukele has also suspended constitutional rights, implemented mass trials and incarcerated around 2% of the adult population and thousands of minors.

In Honduras, there is widespread skepticism whether the government will be able to emulate the results in El Salvador, where crime rates plummeted and life has been transformed.

"Unfortunately they have extended the (emergency) measure to obtain results, but we ask ourselves: What results did the police really expect and what results do citizens expect?" said lawyer and security analyst Saul Bueso.

"They say massacres have decreased, that assaults in places have decreased, but when we read the papers we see massacres and murders continue."

Residents who have seen previous governments fail with hardline tactics remain unconvinced. 

"Iron fist? Don't believe it," said resident Norma Ochoa in the capital Tegucigalpa, where patrols routinely pass. "In terms of murders, death, crime, in so many things we are suffering and today, God is the only one who sustains us."

(This story has been corrected to remove Castro designating gang members as terrorists, which was proposed but did not go into effect, in paragraph 2)

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia and Marvin Valladares in Honduras; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)