A leader of the notorious MS-13 gang from Honduras was captured this week in Nicaragua after five years on the run.
David Campbell Licona – who Honduran prosecutors say was the gang’s financial mastermind – was arrested along with five others in an operation carried out by national police in a suburb of the capital Managua. A search of homes and vehicles belonging to his group turned up more than $400,000 in cash and traces of cocaine.
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Experts say Saturday’s arrest of Campbell, where transnational gangs have a relatively small presence compared with neighboring countries, is further proof of the MS-13’s evolution in the drug underworld.
“[The arrest] seems to confirm the increased participation of the MS-13 in international drug smuggling.” said Tiziano Breda, a Central America analyst for the International Crisis Group who has studied gangs in the region.
In the past, analysts have questioned whether the MS-13, whose hierarchy is often unclear, is organized enough to become a major player in large-scale drug trafficking. But the case of Campbell suggests that the gang could be making progress in that direction.
Since Honduras amended its constitution in 2012 to allow for the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States, more than 40 large-scale smugglers have either surrendered or been captured, including most of the country’s cocaine kingpins.
The leaders of two of Honduras’s most powerful drug clans, the Cachiros and the Valle Valle, have all been in U.S. custody since 2015. “Faced with the void left by the Cachiros, the Valle Valle, and other drug traffickers, [the MS-13] is taking over the plaza,” said Lester Ramírez, director of governance and transparency for the Honduran NGO Association for a More Just Society. He recently directed a study on gangs in the country.
The following year, a Honduran court issued a warrant for Campbell’s arrest on charges of money laundering and illicit association. Police raided a mansion owned by the gang leader in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city and a hub of gang activity. But thanks to apparent warnings from corrupt officers, he was able to evade capture, eventually escaping to Nicaragua.
Until he went on the run, Campbell, who is believed to be about 50, led a life of luxury. “The gang leaders are a kind of elite. They have a very comfortable life in terms that they have access to many goods, many luxuries, houses, cars, women, jewelry,” said Ramírez.
Meanwhile, the gang’s so-called foot soldiers, mostly young men whose lives are so expendable to the leaders that they have a life expectancy of about 25 years, struggle to get by.
“There is a great inequality between the life of a leader and the foot soldier. But if we compare it with what they would earn outside of the gang, where they would have much fewer opportunities for income, then it’s all relative,” said Ramírez, underscoring the ease with which the gangs recruit new members in one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
A shift from street-level drug peddling to large-scale trafficking could make the gap even wider and rival the income generated by extortion, which until now has been the gang’s primary source of revenue, estimated at around a couple hundred million dollars a year just in Honduras.
Apart from mansions and luxury vehicles, Honduran authorities also seized a large transportation company owned by Campbell, which operated in several countries and was registered in Houston. Many of the trucks were found to have hidden compartments used for smuggling cash and drugs, suggesting that by 2016 the MS-13 had already begun to move into large-scale drug trafficking. In the years since, several cocaine laboratories discovered in the country have also been linked to the gang.
According to Honduran prosecutors, Campbell was an associate of another infamous MS-13 leader in Honduras, Alexander Mendoza, known by the alias “Porkys,” who was arrested in December 2015, but escaped from prison in spectacular fashion in 2020 and has been on the run ever since.
Mendoza had been serving time in a maximum-security prison until Valentine’s Day last year when he was brought to a courthouse for a hearing. Video from the scene showed alleged gang members dressed in police and military uniforms storming the courthouse. They freed Mendoza and killed four security officers in a shootout.
Critics questioned why there was not a larger contingent of security at the courthouse for a hearing involving one of the country’s most dangerous criminals, and suggested that there was complicity from the state at some level.
Honduras has been described as a narco state, and cocaine-fueled corruption is alleged to have reached the highest echelons of government. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been repeatedly accused by U.S. prosecutors of conspiring with drug traffickers. He has denied the allegations, arguing that they are part of a vendetta against him for arresting and extraditing cartel leaders.
Honduran prosecutors told local media that they intend to solicit the extradition of Campbell, but the country does not have an extradition treaty with Nicaragua.
