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August 2007  |  Issue #1  |  Mari Beltran

In 1997, the President of Honduras, Ricardo Maduro found his son's dismembered body with a note attached: "More people will die...the next victims will be police and journalists." In 2002, members of the gang Mara Salvatrucha boarded a public bus in Honduras and killed 28 people, including 7 small children. The gang members left a message on the bus that dared government officials to act.
La Mara Salvatrucha, also called MS-13, is a gang known for its extreme acts of violence. This includes situations using machetes and involvement in drug and human trafficking across the Mexico-U.S. border. Most of MS-13's members are from El Salvador, however many have immigrated into the United States. This has allowed them to slowly grow larger, more powerful, and more dangerous here. As issues of illegal immigration and minority gang violence grow, South and Central America are usually blamed. In contrast to this notion, history proves that the United States is to blame for many gang-related issues. Now, the U.S. needs to take a greater stand in resolving issues with an impartial, less myopic perspective.

In the 1980's, the United States supported a right-wing military regime and fought the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador's civil war. The right-wing military regime suppressed the working class; FMLN was a leftist guerilla army. As both the FMLN and the military grew larger in size, the war grew bloodier, and many ordinary Salvadoran civilians fled their homes in search of refuge.

Most civilians that fled El Salvador made their way to the United States. In particular, migrants sought refuge in the Los Angeles, Pico-Union area, yet it was far from a safe haven. Since the United States supported the Salvadoran government and financed its war, it could not take in political refugees who were fleeing that war. If the United States government did recognize such refugees, then it acknowledged that the El Salvadoran government was doing wrong. This isolated the El Salvadorans from all other Latino migrant groups, such as Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans, in the United States.

El Salvadorans were unsafe in their own country and unprotected in the United States. For instance, one U.S. court case involved a 16-year-old girl who sought political asylum in America. Members of the right-wing army had raped her. She recognized them and turned them in. However, now she feared they would kill her as soon as she returned to El Salvador. The court decided that her situation was not serious enough to grant her asylum; she was deported back to El Salvador.
This situation was not rare. Yet, the supposedly lucky El Salvadorans, who could move to Los Angeles did not escape violence. Other minority groups especially Mexican and Black street gangs picked fights with the El Salvadoran outcasts; and they responded in the form of MS-13.

The gang Mara Salvatrucha created its name from the words "mara," which is a type of deadly ant (and is slang for "gang") and "salvatrucha," which was a term used to signify members of the FMLN. "Trucha," the Spanish word for "trout," is also slang for "a shrewd person". The Maras soon became known for their extreme violence, rumored to surpass that of other gangs due to their extensive training in guerilla warfare. In response to the growing gang warfare in Los Angeles, the U.S. government deported many of the Maras back to El Salvador.

Once in El Salvador, the gang members recruited new members from the prisons and the street. In a country that is still trying to recover from the gravity of civil war, often times youth see no other alternative to gang life. Mara Salvatrucha offers protection and identity to many young men in El Salvador and throughout Central America. Thus, the gang spread rapidly to Central America and now back to the United States as members begin to return.

Mara Salvatrucha has become notorious for terrorizing small neighborhoods and businesses. A student, who lives in the Crenshaw-Pico area, says that the gang taxes the taco truck on his street. It demands a sum of money from the taco truck, and in turn promises protection for the business from other gangs. If the truck does not pay, MS-13 does not take responsibility for the damage that it, or any other gang, causes. In Los Angeles, the Maras inhibit similar small businesses; businesses that are a key source of jobs and social mobility for immigrants and working class people. Not only this, but there are also reports of homicides with machetes both in the U.S. and Central America.

With drug and human trafficking on the rise, the gang and its violence are now transnational. As they spread into Mexico and across the United States border into such states as Texas and Florida, they are slowly becoming more well-known and feared. Many people in the United States blame El Salvador for this fairly recent and growing Mara Salvatrucha gang issue. Yet, had the United States not been involved in the politics of El Salvador, El Salvadorans would not have migrated to the United States and MS-13 would not have grown to a transnational level.

In attempts to manage the power of MS-13, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has taken steps to reach out to the Salvadoran government. In El Salvador and Honduras one approach called "Mano Duro" ("Strict Hand") is in effect. This tactic throws anyone who is or who looks like a gang member into jail. In some cases, one could be sentenced for 12 years in prison for having tattoos. Fear of this tactic has led many Maras in Central America to migrate to the United States. They would rather deal with the U.S. prison system than "Mano Duro." However, the United States only deports them back to Central America, continuing the cycle.

Villaraigosa calls for a three step approach that is very different from "Mano Duro": suppression, prevention, and intervention. This tactic seeks ways to rehabilitate gang members, to fund social programs for kids, and to decrease gang recruitment. This approach is somewhat successful in California, and it can only become more successful with more time and funding. Yet, Villaraigosa seems to stand alone in his approach. The United States government has created a special task force of the CIA to fight gang crime and is even trying to implement a school in Central America to train members of the military in fighting gang crime. These methods do nothing to rehabilitate and prevent gang crime in the U.S. and Central America. Mara Salvatrucha is no longer solely a problem of the United States, nor solely a problem of Central America. Yet, there is no solidarity against it. These countries are intertwined through the connections that Mara Salvatrucha makes every day, and there does not seem to be a way to cut the cord any time soon.

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