"Satan himself lives here in San Pedro," a mortician from the second largest city in Honduras told The Guardian. "People here kill people like they're nothing more than chickens."
With a murder rate of 169 per 100,000 people in 2011, San Pedro Sula was named the world's most violent city in a study by Mexico's Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.
Over the last few years, homicides in Honduras have risen, even while violence falls in neighboring countries like El Salvador and Guatemala.
Arms and drug trafficking have flooded the country, contributing to high gang violence. Lax gun laws (civilians can own up to five personal firearms), corruption, and poverty make life in San Pedro Sula even worse.
What's more, inmates have controlled Honduras' 24 prisons since the state gave up on rehabilitating convicts, according to a recent report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In 2008, the mounting number of murders forced San Pedro Sula to store bodies in refrigerated trucks before transporting them to mass-burial sites.
A military coup ousted former president Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and the tense political environment only caused more problems. Here, one of his supporters holds his photo during a protest in San Pedro Sula, many of which turned violent.
Source: New York Times
A shocking incident in 2010 saw 18 people massacred in a shoe shop as part of a gang war. This photo shows police searching for weapons the very next day.
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