"Sometimes I feel like we are pawns in a game.
God whispers in one of my ears while the devil speaks to me in the other.
I try to do good but something stops me."
Since the summer of 2018, photographer Federico Vespignani spent a few years with a group of kids from the Barrio 18 gang in Honduras and watched as they grew up within this imaginary border, becoming look-outs and then soldiers.
Surrounding the hill is an imaginary border and the kids from the neighborhood will tell you “La Dieciocho controla.” Their presence permeates every aspect of life in the hood and for some, the barrio is everything. Gang membership is a grey concept in Cerrito Lindo - it is just a part of life in the hood. It is the place you were born, where you are from. It is what they live, and outside of these blood-drawn borders, death waits.
Some of the portrayed in this book have lost their lives, some ended up in jail, some found god, and others left to look for something else.
The photographer Federico Vespignani (1988) is an Italian photographer and cinematographer. Since 2015 he has covered organized crime and environmental issues in Central America.
