Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic violence, violent death, and rape.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch became the deadliest natural disaster to hit Honduras in over 100 years. Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga was living with her family in La Ceiba, on Honduras’s northern coast, when Mitch hit. Her mother lost the food stall that was her livelihood, and two of her brothers migrated to Denver, Colorado, for work following the storm.

Keldy and her mother moved in with her elder brother, Luis Fernando, who was a police officer. He was able to support his family thanks to Honduras’s new “high demand for elite law enforcement” (283). In 2002, Ricardo Maduro was elected president on a platform of being tough on crime. The “maras,” former gangsters from the United States, were starting to infiltrate Honduras as they had in El Salvador, and cops had free rein when it came to arresting anyone who might have an “illicit association.”

At 17, Keldy met Mino Zúniga, who would become her husband. They had two children in addition to Keldy’s first son, and she felt very “lucky” in life between 2001 and 2006. However, in December of 2006, one of her brothers was killed after refusing to pay a tax to gangsters.