The director of Honduras' main federal prison said on Friday he has ordered a "red alert" based on intelligence that inmates, including gang members, may be planning a riot or a mass escape during national elections this weekend.
But three members of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 gang serving time here say the real danger today will be the probable election of a president who plans to impose harsher penalties for gang members -- a plan they say will backfire and only unleash more violence.
The two leading presidential candidates -- ruling National Party nominee Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Liberal Party challenger Manuel Zelaya -- are locked in a tight race with no clear winner.
Lobo Sosa has proposed imposing the death penalty for violent gang members and others who commit "abominable" crimes such as sexual assault, drug trafficking, murder and terrorism.
Zelaya has said he would support life in prison for violent criminals, and in the campaign's final days, pledged to be tough on gangs.
The 250 members of the Mara Salvatrucha and 167 members of the rival Mara 18 housed inside the National Penitentiary of Honduras are not very keen on those campaign pledges and, as a result, could cause problems on election day, said penitentiary director Marvin Rajo, 30.
"It's possible that chaos could be unleashed here," Rajo said in his office at the prison in Tamara, 32km north of Tegucigalpa.
"If we have any crisis in the jails on Sunday, it will start here," he said.
Honduras operates 24 prisons housing 11,000 inmates, including 1,800 gang members, in facilities that are vastly overcrowded. The national penitentiary, with its capacity for 1,500 prisoners, has a head count of more than 3,600 prisoners, Rajo said.
Rajo has doubled security at the prison after receiving intelligence that inmates may be planning to riot or attempt a mass escape on election day.
But Mara Salvatrucha gang members Julio Cesar Rodriguez, 26, Hector Hernandez, 25, and Carlos Martinez, 29, interviewed in a prison recreation area moments before Rajo made his comments, said the real trouble will come when a new president tries to implement the stronger punishments against gangs.
If Lobo Sosa gets Congress to approve the death penalty, for example, "it will increase the violence," Rodriguez said.
"A war from the government will not bring an end to the other war," he said.
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