In Honduras tattoos can set one’s path for life, or for death. They have unequivocally become a sign of gang involvement; so much so that those wanting tattoos for other reasons can find themselves discriminated against when searching for jobs or even have their lives threatened. A government-sponsored program, which began in 2012 with a lazer removal machine that ultimately broke, twice and has been suspended indefinitely, had previously served hundreds of people in three different cities in desperate need of new beginnings. Since the program went defunct, former gang members use anything from burning cigarettes into their ink-marked forearms to hair relaxing chemicals splashed onto shoulders marked with numbers and letters, in order to erase their torrid pasts. Those who attempt to stay and leave the life occasionally do so through delicate negotiations between their gangs and the evangelist church, yet condemn themselves to a life of constant surveillance by their former gangs and a struggle to find a way forward.