When I visited Honduras earlier this year, it was my first time stepping foot in my maternal homeland. My mother had lived the first seven years of life in a tiny village nestled in the mountains surrounding Tegucigalpa before leaving for the United States in 1972. I was reluctant to make the trip with my grandmother and sister. As a self-professed news junkie, I was well aware of what had been going in Honduras since the golpe de estado back in June 2009. But my mother and grandmother assured me that the media was misrepresenting Honduras. Sure, there was violence in Honduras, they argued, but it was no more violent in Tegucigalpa than it was in Chicago.