They have in common the fact that they were affected in a direct way by violence and crime, and the courage to face the challenges to promote work against them, although they are openly in league with the organs of state security, according to the newspaper Proceso Digital.

The work of these women is particularly outstanding in light of the figures issued by the government of Honduras, which suggest that the Central American country accumulated more than 300 female victims of murder and 3,500 violent deaths only in the first semester of 2011.

Such data reinforces the view of the country as the most violent in the region and the world, with 82.1 homicides for each 100,000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations Office against Drug and Crime.

Between 2010 and December 2011, 17 journalists were murdered without their causes having been clarified, an unacceptable fact in a democratic society, in the opinion of the International Trade Union Confederation.

In spite of the threat that this entails, especially for a vulnerable population like women, the three women made an impact in the media because of the enormity of their tragedies, but more so because they spoke up and undertook the civic fight from their neighborhoods.

Portillo, for example, shocked people with the testimony about the death of her husband, General Julián Arístides González, who was at the head of the fight against drug trafficking until he was murdered by hit men in 2009.

In the middle of the “Honduran spring against crime”, as the media describe this part of the year in the country, the woman denounced that the ones who murdered her spouse were police officers, and although everybody knows it, the justice system never acted against the culprits.

“It is known those who killed him were policemen, that they locked themselves in the bunker of Casamata, it is in the files, everybody knows who has the file, the Attorney General knows it, the detectives know it. The people that killed my husband are from the Police”, she reiterated…continue news article from Prensa Latina here.