WE, THE MASSACRED

On June 20, 2023, between 7:50 a.m. and 8:56 a.m., the deadliest massacre in a women’s prison in modern history took place: At a penitentiary in the Honduran town of Támara, a group of inmates associated with the Barrio 18 gang killed 46 other women, and mutilated or wounded dozens more, according to official figures. Media alliance Redacción Regional tells the story of life—and death—inside the penitentiary, based on 30 interviews conducted over two years, as well as internal prison reports, legal and intelligence documents, witness accounts, a video, and photos related to the mass killing. This is a story about one hour of brutal violence, the reasons behind it, and the role played by authorities who, like the women who died and those who killed, knew that the war between Barrio 18 and MS-13 had been brewing inside the prison for a long time. They had multiple warnings about the bullets and flames that would ravage lives within the compound and did nothing to prevent it.

1. The Massacre 

A group of inmates affiliated with Barrio 18 is advancing through the corridors leading to Section 1 of the Támara prison, ready to kill. It’s 8 o’clock in the morning on June 20, 2023. Ten minutes ago, they subdued two of the four prison guards and stole their keys. Section 1 inmates can hear the two remaining guards crying out. The guards warn the inmates the women are coming for them, to get ready. But there is no time. The dieciocheras, as Barrio 18 gang members are called, are armed with rifles, pistols, Uzis and grenades. They also have knives, machetes and gasoline.

They open fire from the access corridor, killing five inmates. Ingrid, a Section 1 leader, takes 22 women to cell 4. Mama, the top leader, Monserrat, one of Mama's assistants, and at least 110 other women flee over walls and roofs.

Ingrid and her group use mattresses to barricade themselves inside a bathroom. Once the rioters realize their gunshots and machetes are hitting only mattresses and cots instead of bodies, they wield the most powerful weapon available in a prison riot: fire. Ingrid and 22 other women burn to death inside that bathroom.

Mama’s strategy is more successful. They manage to survive even though many are shot or stabbed.

The Barrio 18 members believe all women in Section 1 belong to the Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13), hence the viciousness of their attack. The slaughter doesn’t end there. Death and fire are wild beasts. Once released, it’s hard to know which path they will take, whom they will bite. According to a legal document describing the account, the killers head to other sections of the prison. They record and photograph the massacre. A number of those photos and a video will be sent to a few people outside the penitentiary, who will leak them to me.

Two middle-aged women on the ground cover their face with their hands in a weak attempt to defend themselves. But they have already lost. Another group of women cut them with machetes, stab at their sides with the blades. A young, petite gang member grabs one by the hair, almost gently, and stabs her in the neck about 15 times. The number of women lying on the ground continues to grow. One woman tries to strangle a victim with a nylon cord, but the victim manages to push her away. Another Barrio 18 member approaches and hits the victim over and over with a rock but fails to kill her. Several killers stab her in the neck again. 

In one of the courtyards, a woman lies dead, her skull crushed, the stone that took her life next to her head. Her killers have pulled down her pants and pulled up her shirt. The body of another young woman with several gunshots in her face and chest lies in a cell next to her bed. She’s still wearing her red pajamas.

A masked woman in a T-shirt from the film The Punishment holds a pistol.

It’s 8:56 a.m. According to official figures, 46 women have died at the Támara prison, plus dozens mutilated or seriously wounded. According to the humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch, the deadliest women’s prison riot in modern history has just taken place in barely an hour.

Paradoxically, this tragedy occurs during the term of the first woman president in the history of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. Her government had multiple warnings about the massacre. The victims had petitioned the prison director to transfer them, sent letters and pleaded. They said they would be killed and the killers said they would kill them. As proof, three years earlier they killed six women in the first Támara massacre. The authorities had internal prison reports and intelligence documents reviewed by Redacción Regional, warning of the imminent slaughter. But they chose to ignore it all.

The inmates who survived the second massacre are still in the same prison as the murderers. They continue to warn that it will happen again. At the end of this report, we'll describe what’s left at Támara in the aftermath of the massacre.

Now let's speak with the victims, and with their killers. They will tell us more about how the massacre was conceived, how it simmered in the pressure cooker the Honduras prison system has become, and how the murderers took advantage of a corrupt system. Here, they tell their story of death, and of life, in Támara, the great tomb of Honduran women.

 

2. Támara, those who will die salute you.

(13 months before the massacre)

In Támara’s Section 1, behind the thick bars of a padlocked fence, Monserrat—young, petite, dark-skinned—greeted me and cried out: “Coordinators! Coordinators!” A human megaphone, she was one of the prison’s “screamers,” as they are called, who are tasked with just that, screaming. They scream when the food has arrived, if an inmate is called in by management, when someone’s lawyer has arrived, or, as in this case, to announce an unexpected visitor.

Another young woman greeted me in a corridor with grandiose kind gestures. A brunette, holding a notebook, nails painted and decorated with minute designs. She was wearing make-up and her hair was dyed red. Her name was Ingrid.

She led me by the arm into the room as if she was taking me into an office inside a bank. The space was filled with cases of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and boxes of canned and fried food.

Ingrid was not a top leader in this section; her position as "coordinator," she explained, was more of an administrative role without much decision-making power. She basically helped facilitate other people’s lives, made sure they followed orders, and ensured a fair distribution of resources. She made it clear there was someone above her and other coordinators to whom they would bring my request—to allow me to sit down with them and talk about their lives. She told me to come back the next day, that she had to ask Mama, the woman in charge of that section of the Támara penitentiary. The boss.

When I returned the following day, Ingrid greeted me cheerfully. With a knowing look, she said Mama had reluctantly agreed to see me. That same day, I, along with a group of collaborators, began interviewing dozens of women who sat with strangers week after week and told us about their lives.

I spoke with at least 20 inmates. Wary and suspicious at first, after a few days they would stand in line to share their thorny paths filled with violent men, poverty, children and loneliness, death always hovering over them. 

Most of the women who shared their life stories would be dead 13 months later. 

Before beginning the interviews, I told Ingrid I wanted to start with her. “Not me," she said at the time. "I have nothing interesting to tell you. I think I might be too shy.” 

That was not true.

 

3. The First Massacre.

(Three years before the second massacre)

“Where’s that bitch? We’re going to serve her head on a silver platter.” Ingrid heard these words at dawn on her first night in prison. It was the Barrio 18 inmates, one of two street gangs that control much of Honduras, a majority at the penitentiary. They would stalk her cell threatening her. This was in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ingrid was in a cell that served as a sort of firewall for the virus, where newcomers were confined for a minimum of 15 days before joining the rest of the population. It was called “La Plancha”—“The Griddle.”

Ingrid was detained on May 18, 2020, in colonia Las Mercedes, one of the many bastions of Mara Salvatrucha-13 in Honduras’ central district. She and two other women were arrested in her house, where she lived with her husband and two children, and ran a beauty salon. The other two women worked for Mara Salvatrucha-13. An accurate use of the verb, as that's how they describe their role within MS-13—they are not part of the organization, just as someone who sells Coca-Cola is not “part” of The Coca Cola Company. 

The two women had arrived in her house carrying backpacks. All three were detained by a squad of the Fuerza Nacional Anti Maras y Pandillas [anti-gang force] while the visitors were getting their hair and nails done. One of those women was Monserrat, the screamer who two years later would announce my arrival with her deep voice and, three years later, would flee the fire and gunshots by climbing over the penitentiary’s roof.

The tabloid presses in Honduras, in keeping with their irresponsible practices, published headlines such as “Shakira and two gang members captured in colonia Las Mercedes.” "Shakira" was an affectionate nickname Ingrid had earned for frequently changing her look. The media misconstrued it as a bombastic gang alias.

That’s why the Barrio 18 members stalking outside “La Plancha” were rattling their machetes and shouting over and over, “We want Shakira’s head already.”

“Those women threatened and insulted us. They’d say they were going to kill us,” Monserrat said in one of our interviews, “and all because we were in the news. That was the case for me and for other inmates, too. We did work with them [the MS-13], but we all knew this jail was controlled by their rivals [Barrio 18] so we didn’t want them to know.”

On day five inside “La Plancha,” Ingrid, Monserrat and two other women were managing as well as they could. For the first time, the Barrio 18 didn’t come to threaten them. They were able to buy some food, coffee and cigarettes from other detainees and decided to pass time singing and dancing.

But flames also like to dance.

“Fire!”

The shout dreaded at every Honduran penitentiary rang out at 2 a.m. on May 23, 2020. The fiery beast that has devoured some 600 detainees in Honduras in the past 20 years had entered Támara. Recent history told them it would be hard to tame. Ingrid and Monserrat forced the door open. “The hinges were all rotted out, like everything in this jail,” said Montserrat, and they ran from the fire.

Based on reconstructed accounts from at least 15 women, the fire started at the infirmary, when a Barrio 18 member set a mattress on fire to wreak havoc and give cover for her gang to murder MS-13 members. If their descriptions are accurate, everything went according to plan.

That day, Barrio 18 members killed six women—among them, three MS-13 workers known as Yuky, Kitty and Nicole. The found the last two in the ward for mothers and children. The attackers dragged them out, ripping their babies from their arms, then stabbed them to death. Days later, the attackers themselves would hand the babies over to their grandmothers.

The first Támara massacre changed everything. Unlike in the rest of the penitentiary system in Honduras, this prison had never experienced the binary rage that pits MS-13 against Barrio 18. While they acknowledged their belonging or affinity to either gang, the inmates didn’t take their opposition to the point of violence. 

After the massacre, dozens of inmates linked to the MS-13 by kinship, work or shared neighborhood were transferred to another prison. They wrote many letters, several of which they shared during my visits, as well as petitioning to authorities, including deputy police commissioner Ericka Fabiola Rodríguez, who was Támara prison director at the time and would be dismissed in December 2022 for allowing some inmates to leave the prison. They asked to never be returned to Támara, but five months later, they were. 

“The director said we were exaggerating. That we shouldn’t be afraid, that nothing was going to happen to us,” Monserrat said in our 2022 conversation.

I wrote and called the communications department of the National Penitentiary Institute to get their official version and that of deputy commissioner Rodríguez. A source in the department told me: “They are not going to give you any statement on this matter.” Indeed, I did not receive an official response.

The only thing the inmates achieved was that everyone who was in any way linked to MS-13 was placed in a separate section: Section 1—where 138 women were then confined. That is why we met there in May 2022 and why 28 would die there in 2023.

The first massacre heralded the onset of war: The prison was disputed territory. Letters sent by would-be victims and threats made by their would-be killers warned there would be more bullets, fire and death. These were not the only signs the authorities ignored. The last clue Barrio 18 members gave before doing what they had been threatening for three years was recorded in an internal prison log.

On the morning of June 17, 2023, an inmate dropped an industrial grenade in front of the prison guards. Identified in confidential documents as “Triple X,” the woman took the grenade, put it back in her backpack, and went on her way. This event, despite being reported to the prison management, was deemed of no consequence. No search was planned, no investigation was carried out and none of the security protocols were activated. Life went on with only a brief note as record of the event. Death would come only three days later. 

The deadliest massacre in the history of women’s prisons was a collective effort: Barrio 18 acted, and the authorities allowed them.

 

4. Déjá vu. 

(Day of the massacre) 

On June 20, 2023, Jerson spoke on the phone with his wife, Ingrid, at 6:30 in the morning. They talked about a package he was supposed to send her for the beauty salon she had set up at Támara. They discussed trivial matters, their children, the family business. He related this to me weeks later, sobbing, regretting not having talked about something more profound, as he dealt with his customers at an industrial supplies shop. Jerson and Ingrid hung up shortly before 7:30.

At 7:50, the guards—identified in an internal document of the Honduran court system as NYRC and LLMGM—arrived for roll call in Section 7, where Barrio 18 inmates were held. Gang members captured and subdued them, taking their keys, batons and radios, which they then used to inform the prison authorities not to enter. They were holding hostages. 

The prison staff, finding it impossible to protect the lives of Section 1 women—there were only four police officers for 912 inmates in 10 sections—chose to warn them of the imminent attack. “Everyone look sharp, the women from (section) 7 are coming!” was recorded in the timeline of the judicial report describing the event.

Prison management called the National Penitentiary Institute; unlikely as it may seem, nobody answered. They then called the Marco Aurelio Soto men’s prison, also located in Támara, which sent the first military police to arrive. None of them entered the prison.

According to some inmates I spoke with, and according to the same legal report, in addition to radios and keys, Barrio 18 members stole lists of inmates and the sections in which they were held. They used these to search for their targets, one after the other.

Section 1 inmates could not “look sharp”—they were not ready. In 2022, I had asked Mama, the section leader, about their contingency plan for repelling the imminent assault. At the time, Mama laughed it off, boasting they were more than prepared. They were not. 

There is an expression in Honduras’ slums and underworld: When there is a spike in murders, people say “anda suelta la calaca,” alluding to death as if it were a free-roaming, unstoppable entity.

On the day that Mama and Monserrat escaped over the roofs, and Barrio 18 members set Ingrid and 22 other women on fire, la calaca—death—was already roaming free at the Támara prison. 

In none of the legal reports, survivor testimonies, or forensic records do we find a precise record tracing the path death traveled after the fire and 28 murders in Section 1. They only take stock of the end result. In Section 2, Barrio 18 members killed six more women; in Section 3, two. Four in Section 4, two in Section 5, three in Section 9.

According to forensic reports, most of the women were killed using firearms of various calibers, but they were also stabbed dozens of times, and at least five had fractured skulls. They were bashed in with rocks.

From the prison roof, Mama’s group asks for help from the military police stationed at a watchtower. According to testimonies leaked by third parties and to the legal investigation itself, the police mock them and aim their rifles at them.

The violence stops at 8:56. A loud whistle is heard and the Barrio 18 returns to their section.

At 10:30 a.m., María arrives at the penitentiary. She represents the MS-13 as an entity within the penitentiary system. In plain terms, she is Mara Salvatrucha-13’s attorney, and her name is not María.

“When I arrived, I ran into Ingrid’s son, 19 years old. He knew about his mother and was inconsolable. Poor boy. He had collapsed on the ground crying,” she would relate weeks later while we drank rum at a hotel in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Toward noon, Beyoncé arrived—a trans woman who worked at an NGO defending human rights in incarcerated populations:

“When I arrived, they still had the women from Section 1 in the dead zone (a safety area around the perimeter of the prison), and those women were really nervous, shaking and traumatized. When I got there, some women from other sections had gotten out and were outside by the parking area barrier, and the police brought them into the guards’ bathroom so they wouldn’t escape. They thought it was a prison break. They’re the ones who started telling me: they killed Ingrid, they killed Kenya, they killed Loures, they killed Vivian…” 

Hours later, the Policía Militar del Orden Público conducted an inspection of Sections 7 and 6, which had been assigned to Barrio 18 members. They found a stockpile of 19 short and long firearms, drugs, the radios stolen from the guards, and two fragmentation grenades, like the one that fell out of Triple X’s backpack three days before the massacre.

 

5. Section 1.

(13 months before the massacre)

“So, who is Mama, the woman in charge in this section?” I asked Ingrid during an interview in May 2022. During our conversations and at any request I made, they always played the same card: “We’ll have to check that with Mama, our leader.” Finally, I decided to reach out to her directly.

“She’s here, but she won’t want to talk to you. Impossible.” 

I then asked them to relay my message.

Mama appeared before me. She was imposing and warrior-like. “You have 10 minutes. What do you want to ask?” she said tapping on an imaginary watch on her wrist, as if instead of inviting her to talk I’d challenged her to fight.

Mama was one of only a small handful of women with power within the MS-13, which banned women around 2010. This doesn’t mean there are no women in the organization. After about 12 years studying this Honduran organization, I would say there are more women than men in its entire organizational apparatus. The 2010 ban is about not allowing any women to join the gang in an official manner. Women are no longer allowed to go through what anthropologists call a rite of passage—or a “jump,” adopted from the English language—allowing a member to become a homeboy or homegirl, an official marero or marera (a member of the mara, or street gang), with power and hierarchy over those who haven’t achieved that status. I suppose it’s a similar difference to working at an attorney’s office and being made partner. 

Mama was jumped in in the ‘90s by gang members deported from Los Angeles to one of the toughest neighborhoods in Central America: Chamelecón, in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. While LA gangs were by definition built on machismo and misogyny, there was more space in them for women to play a role. After migrating to Central America, that space got watered down, mixing with a society that is extremely aggressive toward women. In Honduras, even those women who had been jumped in and had their bodies tattooed with the M and S lost their power, relegated to the level of objects or animals. But some survived—very few—thanks to bravery, strategy and violence. Mama is one of them.

Making Mama even more of a rarity in the street gang world, she is Garifuna, one of the peoples borne of colonial times—and one of the poorest groups in Central America—descendants of the slave revolts and the Arawak and Calipona Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands. In addition to a great variety of cultural traits, the Garifuna are characterized by their almost complete absence from Honduran gangs or other types of organized crime.

Mama is a Black woman with a deep, resounding voice. She is large, like a mama bear. The day we met her, long dreads reached the middle of her back. Her strong, rugged arms contrasted with exquisitely painted nails decorated with Ingrid's minute designs. Her eyebrows and eyelashes also boasted a magnificent design, and golden jewelry dangled from her neck and ears. A ring on every finger, scent of vanilla wafting all around her.

“As you can see, the State doesn’t feed us. We’re fed by what we get from our family (MS-13). They’re keeping an eye on what we need. They take care of us,” she said with pride.

She wasn’t exaggerating. Her section was filled with all the treats allowed inside a Honduran penitentiary: Twice a month, the MS-13 sent everything they asked for. The last delivery had included dozens of cases of Coca-Cola and other soft drinks, sweets, at least four cakes for that month’s birthdays, a side of pork and a side of beef, among a long list of requests.

“I make a list with the cooks and based on what the girls ask for. If they’ve been behaving, I give them whatever they want. Last time, they asked for surround sound speakers, supposedly they wanted to have dance classes. They behaved and I granted it,” said Mama while leading me down the halls to where her 137 wards lived.

“Everyone look sharp! We have visitors,” yelled Monserrat at a sign from Mama and dozens of half-dressed women ran from the yard to their quarters to put more clothes on. One let an explicit erotic phrase slip as she walked by me but was swiftly pulverized by Mama’s wrathful gaze.

Section 1 is a square area with corridors and a yard at the center, with six large rooms the women have subdivided for groups to sleep in. There is a kitchen, a pantry and a multipurpose room that hosted Zumba classes on one day, then an anthropologist-journalist interviewing inmates on another. It was reasonably clean. The women inside carried themselves like women do in any detention center. Most were rather young. Belinda and Kenya were dancing Zumba holding five-pound weights, even though Mama had warned them they couldn’t use the speakers while I was there. Oneyda, Ruth and Sirian gathered in a corner, seemingly sharing some juicy gossip they didn’t want anyone to know. In her small beauty salon, Ingrid did the inmates’ hair and nails, and had even taught others hairdressing and applying nail polish and acrylic nails.

Without a doubt, the women were hurting. All the ones I spoke with had children outside and were terrified of being killed by the Barrio 18. But they tried to be happy. They laughed hard and sang their makeshift karaoke—where it was hard to compete with Monserrat, the human megaphone. They didn’t seem to be or behave like violent people. According to legal archives, only three of the women killed in that sector had been involved in homicide. The great majority of them were linked to extortion and drug trafficking. They celebrated their birthdays and those of the children they missed, wailing in pain while blowing out their candles.

In the pantry, there were two large freezers holding all kinds of fresh, frozen and cured meat. There was also ice cream, yogurt and cakes. “Courtesy of the family, you know,” said Mama.

Since that day, once we had talked to dozens of inmates, our team and Mama checked in daily over the weeks I visited the penitentiary.

Mama was a rational woman. She knew she had power, but unlike the male gang leaders I have spoken with, she didn’t need to remind you every five minutes. She was also a sensible woman. She put on her warrior face when talking about “las panoyas,” a derisive word she used for the Barrio 18 members, but tears would run down her cheeks talking about her children and the pain of not having been able to raise them herself. Mama would wait for me, punctual and looking sharp standing on her side of the fence, teasing me in her deep Garifuna voice as soon as I stepped into the penitentiary, scolding my habitual lateness.

“Here we are surrounded. The panoyas control all the other sections and some of them are real tough, they’re assassins.”

The problem is, Mama had no warriors in her section—at most, she had MS-13 administrative collaborators. Most were there for petty crime or extortion and were placed in Section 1 simply because they'd lived in MS-13-controlled territory or had a relative linked to the organization.

“The thing is, many fall in with the Mara once they’re here. Outside, they were nothing, but the system gets them into it here,” Mama explained.

That was the case for Ingrid, who had entered as just another Honduran and, by the time I met her, referred to the Mara as her family, to the point of achieving the position of coordinator. For that reason, in this report I refer to them as Section 1 inmates and not as emeeses [MS-13 members].

Mama and her group lived well, where possible. The MS-13, in addition to sending a good amount of food, would provide treats upon request. The mechanism was simple—simpler than I had imagined. Mama explained she made a list and had it sent to the penitentiary’s director. With her approval, the letter would reach the MS-13. Days later, a truck would arrive with her order. After a cursory inspection by the authorities, it entered the penitentiary. Before my visits, the MS-13 had funded painting, beds, mattresses, fans and all the new wiring in Section 1. According to Mama, this was meant to prevent fires.

 

6. A Time Bomb: “homegirls” against civilians

(Támara. Five years before the massacre)

“We’re here for whatever they need from us,” said three coordinators in the Barrio 18 section during one of my 2018 visits. "They" referred to the gang’s male leaders.

Barrio 18 members wore men’s shirts much larger than their size. They wore Nike Cortez shoes and talked and walked around brusquely, taking up a lot of space. 

That time, I spoke with a group of about ten women. They mainly complained about the conditions of the facility. When I asked about their role in Barrio 18’s mega-organization, they kept quiet or portrayed themselves as less lethal tools of organized crime, with little or no decision-making power.

During that visit, when I asked about the origin of the hatred between their organization and Mara Salvatrucha-13, they hedged or answered with talking points and well-worn phrases like: “You know, those pieces of shit (emeeses) think they’re better and get to control the country but that’s not how it works.”

In Honduras, official figures list MS-13 as having almost twice as many members and controlling more territory than Barrio 18. But a study I took part in in 2019 showed that authorities captured twice as many Barrio 18 members as MS-13. That advantage on the street gives MS-13 a much wider margin to grow as a mafia and consolidate their operational networks. However, it gives it a clear disadvantage in penitentiaries, especially women’s prisons, where the “MS-13 population” is formed by women without experience using machetes or rifles, with no ability to unleash or shepherd la calaca.

Mama understood this, and one of her goals was to find more adept women at the prison. She knew that Barrio 18 did have dozens of inmates linked to the organization, including several homegirls. MS-13 did not, creating an enormous difference. That's why Mama pampered her section mates, bought them cake and protected them. She was getting ready to fight, but the fight arrived too soon.

“Visitor. Coordinators to the entrance!” yelled one of the screamers in Barrio 18’s section, four years after my first meeting with them in May 2022, 13 months before the massacre.

These women were different than the ones in Section 1: They had Barrio 18 in their eyes. Some were tattooed up to their neck and wore jewelry with their gang emblems. Two large women listened as I gave my spiel about life stories and how important it is for future generations. They didn't look me in the eye and didn’t give me any concrete answers. One of them tenderly stroked a lame kitten. The animal had green eyes and a nylon cord tied around its neck. It was her pet. The women changed their tone when talking about the cat. They said she was a stray, that her mother abandoned her because she had a crippled leg. I don't remember the name, but it was childish, cutesy. They said that, in order to give interviews, they'd have to consult with their commanders, and those commanders with higher commanders. In the end, they agreed to let me and my team interview them.

After my first impressions, I learned that their life stories were largely similar to those in Section 1—a long trail of sexual abuse, broken families, impossible love, gangsters inviting them to join a new family, giving birth to the gangsters’ children, and then, at the end, prison bars.

The difference was death. Some had been preparing for it for too long; others were not ready.

 

7. Ashes

(A month and a half after the massacre)

Ana is waiting for me in front of a shopping center in Tegucigalpa. She has her purse clutched to her chest, wary eyes looking from side to side. Her daughters have told her not to talk to anyone, that it could be dangerous, not to leave the house. But she didn't listen. She grabbed her bag and called me, determined: “I’m going to talk, Don Juan. I’m going to talk because what happened there is unjust.” It is August 2023.

Yésika, her daughter, was killed in the June 20 massacre, though most likely she was not among the kill targets. She had been in the penitentiary for eight years, had witnessed the first massacre in 2020, and had never been attacked or threatened. She attended one of the four churches at the prison and, when she was killed, she was preparing the daily evangelical service, along with other women.

Ana was at home when two of her daughters called her. There had been a fire in the prison where Yésika was being held. Ana is older, has difficulty walking and gets disorientated in the street, but that day she paid no mind to her daughters’ pleas and went to the public hospital with them. She thought that’s where her daughter would have been taken if she was injured. She never imagined Yésika would be dead. She slipped through the gates, almost getting crushed by the crowd, but made it to the ward where the prison wounded were.

“There were about 40 women with gunshot wounds. I went from bed to bed asking them. ‘We don’t know anything, mother’, they said.”

She entered the intensive care area, wrestling her way through the military police who were guarding the wounded. “I didn't care. I uncovered all the faces to look but nothing. Several were dying, but not my daughter,” says Ana, no longer attempting to hide her tears.

She headed to the prison with her daughters. They slipped through the entrance gate; Ana stayed behind. But then, amidst the sea of screams and cries, she recognized her daughters’ cries. A mother will always recognize that sound, she said, no matter how hard the world roars. She was able to reach them, and when she saw them crying, she knew Yésika had been killed.

That day at 11 o’clock at night, at the morgue, she was asked to identify her daughter’s body from behind glass. That was the easy part. Bullets had been kind to Yésika. She hadn’t been reached by fire, or the fury of the rocks, machetes, or blades. Yésika died a clean death, or a less nasty death.

Ana says her daughter’s body only had stitches on her chest, in spots where she thinks she must have been shot. But during her wake, her daughter’s face slowly turned black and blue, a deep purple—as if she’d been shot in the head, as if in protest.

The Honduran government gave a stipend of 50 thousand lempira (USD $2,031) to relatives of the 46 victims at Támara, which in Ana’s case paid for Yésika's burial. The authorities—the same ones who chose to ignore letters sent by the victims, reports warning of their demise, who'd allowed a grenade into the penitentiary three days before the deadliest women’s prison massacre in history—have paid out at least $100,000. And Yesika was further humiliated even after her death: The government would only allow Ana to bury her daughter in the capital—in a cemetery set aside for the MS-13.

Ana doesn’t want me to leave without showing me something. With arthritic, calloused hands, she picks up her phone and taps on the screen until she finds what she’s looking for. A photo of her daughter. She wants me to see her alive. The photo was taken at the penitentiary’s church. It shows Yesika smiling and holding a sign that reads: “Soy libre”—I am free.

Yésika has at least been buried. Ingrid and the other women who were burned to death have not. The Honduran government still doesn’t know which remains to give to which family. Fire clad them all in a deep black and only DNA testing can give them back their identities.

Two and a half months after the massacre, the Honduran State still has not provided an official list of the names of those who perished—only preliminary lists that incorrectly include survivors among the dead and over 10 women who were killed among the survivors. Vilma González Aviña, Mama’s real name, is still included in the preliminary list provided by the National Penitentiary Institute. I asked a few prison officers on what basis they'd listed Mama among the dead. They replied that, since she was one of a handful of recognized MS-13 members, they simply took it as a given that she had been one of the first targets of Barrio 18.

Lacking official information, a group of Honduran human rights activists have drafted a list so that the women’s names are not lost or buried in a government office, or remain hidden in their families’ grief. It has been painstaking work, including conversations with relatives, guards, and the few calls some inmates have made from inside Támara. This is the most precise documentation about the identity of these women. Death has already won. This is a way to prevent them from being lost to oblivion as well.

According to an activist group, the following women lost their lives in the great massacre of June 20, 2023 in the Honduran prison known as Támara.

VICTIMS:

1. Yesika Yaneth Avila Barahona
2. Lourdes Yamileth Osorto
3. Ana Dilcia Aguirre Rivera
4. Johana Elizabeth Midence Martínez
5. Irma Aracely Velásquez Vásquez
6. Vivian Melissa Juárez Fiallos
7. Senia María Ocampos
8. Diandra Mariel Andrade Zelaya
9. Natalia Sarai Romero Ponce
10. Rosa Nohemy Padilla García
11. Yosselin Selena Espinal Osorto
12. María Josefa Rodríguez
13. Nancy Sarahy Flores Vásquez
14. Estefany Elizabeth Flores Palada
15. Estela Joselyn Barahona Grandez
16. Hilsy Lideny Zambrano Zambrano
17. Nora Elizabeth Lazo Jiménez
18. Martha Mariela Contreras Chinchilla
19. Claudia Patricia Baquedano
20. Suami Mariela Rodríguez Santos
21. Reina Karina Flores Moncada
22. Norma Estela Mejía Mayen
23. Paola Yamileth Henriquez Izcano

POSSIBLE VICTIMS:

24. Belinda Yamileth Henríquez Izcano
25. Miriam Griselda García Ortega
26. Fanny Yaneth García Ortega
27. Maribel Euceda Brevé
28. Karla Maribel Soriano Euceda
29. Oneyda Aracely Zavala Euceda
30. Joselin Margot Matute Santos
31. Yeny Patricia López Castro
32. Ingris Celeste Canales Motiño
33. Sandra Maribel Hernández Martínez
34. Elida Verónica Pavón Sánchez
35. Ruth Yolanda Moreira Rodas
36. Dania Jaqueline Cruz Reyes
37. Greisy Yolany Santos
38. Sirian Daniela García Henríquez
39. Judith Ondina Rápalo Borjas
40. María Feliciana Alemán Mejía
41. Kimberly Isamar Ramos Ardón
42. Kenia Nurieth Méndez Ponce
43. Elsy Marian Cortés Rodas
44. Sandra Xiomara Rodríguez
45. Claudia Patricia Baquedano
46. Litny Merary Herrera Girón