Casa Blanca gang neighborhood
Pastor Danny in Honduras
From 2018 through early 2019, The New York Times followed Pastor Danny and the young men of Casa Blanca gang in this tiny corner of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, one of the deadliest cities in the world, and witnessed firsthand as they tried to keep the gangs at bay.
Almost no one was trying to stop the coming war — not the police, not the government, not even the young men themselves. The only person working to prevent it was a part-time pastor who had no church of his own and bounced around the neighborhood in a beat-up yellow hatchback, risking his life to calm the warring factions.
“I’m not in favor of any gang,” said the pastor, Daniel Pacheco, rushing to the Casa Blanca members after the shooting. “I’m in favor of life.”
A single mother of three, Fanny was a surrogate mother to the Casa Blanca members. She had known them since childhood; they had defended her son from bullies in grade school. As they grew up, her house became a refuge, a place to escape broken homes.
Fanny drew respect in the few blocks controlled by Casa Blanca, but she had no sway beyond the neighborhood, which was where the pastor came in. He knew the leaders of all the gangs.
He had a slight paunch and a wide face that permanently lingered on the verge of a smile. An evangelical minister, he delivered Sunday sermons outdoors in the stifling heat and worked construction to make ends meet.
Then in 2014, a 13-year-old girl in the neighborhood was kidnapped by gang members. Her parents owned a small corner store and had failed to pay their extortion demands. As retribution, they abducted the girl and took her to a private home, where they raped and tortured her for three days before killing her and burying her in the floor.
“People watched as they grabbed her from the street, yelling for help, and no one did anything,” recalled Mr. Pacheco, 40, known mostly as Pastor Danny. “They were all scared for their lives.”
Pastor Danny’s daughter was the same age as the girl. Overwhelmed, he visited the house after the police had cleared the scene. The shallow grave was still open, a small hole in the living room, scraped out of the clay floor. He filled it with his hands.
“I made a promise there,” he said. “I was going to do something.”
Four years on, he still kept the newspaper clippings of the murder, to remind him of that promise.
