Author(s): Federico Vespignani

PHOTOGRAPHY MONOGRAPHS | 550BC

From the top of Cerrito Lindo you can see the planes taking off from San Pedro Sula’s airport in Honduras. On the other side is a labyrinthine expanse, and at this height above the city the night is beautiful.  It all seems so peaceful.  As the darkness surrounds you, you catch blue and red flashes over the town below.  An untrained ear would only hear fireworks but I can make out the caliber of different weapons.  Mostly, it is a regular pattern of 9mm bursts. Surrounding the hill is an imaginary border and the kids from the neighborhood will tell you “La Dieciocho controla.”  Their presence permeates every aspect of life in the hood and for some, the barrio is everything.  Gang membership is a grey concept in Cerrito Lindo - it is just a part of life in the hood.  It is the place you were born, where you are from.  It is what they live, and outside of these blood-drawn borders, death waits.  Barrio 18, also known as 18th Street, operate within a structure similar to the more infamous groups that make international headlines and they maintain their control of Cerrito Lindo by dispensing the same spectacular violence.  The government and the media both classify Barrio 18 as a transnational criminal organization, comparing them with drug cartels like the Sinaloa Cartel and others that are more well known.  But in reality, it is just loosely organised youths ruling over low-income communities with fear and the promise of safety.

Since the summer of 2018, I spent a few years with a group of kids from the Barrio 18 gang and watched as they grew up within this imaginary border, becoming look-outs and then soldiers. Some that I have known have lost their lives, some ended up in jail, some found god, and others left to look for something else.  On my last night with the kid soldiers of La Diesiocho, they burned my left hand with four matches - a scar to remind me of what we shared within Barrio 18’s Cerrito Lindo.  In the following pages you will see an endless night broken by an occasional flash of lightning.  I guess it is like swimming in dark waters under a full moon: it is scary, but still, somehow, the moonlight keeps you from drowning. — Federico Vespignani