My friend Mariano runs a fruit and vegetable stand on a busy street in Tegucigalpa, not far from the United States embassy. One after­noon in 2011, I stopped by to find that Mariano’s watermelon knife had been stolen by an unkempt pedestrian, who was standing in the middle of a traffic jam threatening motorists with it.

Eventually, all was resolved with the help of a metal baton hidden in a pile of papayas. Assessing the situation afterward, Mariano reasoned that the man was simply under the influence of paint thinner and that there had been no real danger. This was the very same reaction he had had to a recent incident when, sleeping under his stand to deter potential nighttime thefts, he was shot at multiple times by a passerby with mercifully poor aim.

I often wondered if Mariano’s “don’t worry, it’s only paint thinner” attitude was just a defense mechanism for living in the homicide capital of the world, or if specific instances of violence really do feel insignificant in the context of mass disorder.