Roberto George S.
ALL THE GANGS HERE
The gang problem in Central America has a long history shared with the United States. Many people fleeing the region's civil wars of the 1970’s and '80’s settled in cities such as Los Angeles, where they joined or formed street gangs. In the 1990s, the United States stepped up the deportation of Central American immigrants who were convicted of crimes. Now, repatriated deportees, disenfranchised but trained as quintessential thugs in urban US battlegrounds, threaten the quality of life in Central America. A young deportee named Anónimo, best sums it up, “You never know when you're going to be dead.” The following incident backs up his claim.
Dateline Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Assailants cut off the city bus filled with Christmas shoppers, then opened fire on the passengers in a suburb 125 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa. Several men boarded the bus and sprayed the riders with automatic weapon fire. The attackers left a primitive sign on the bus protesting Honduran and Salvadoran proposals to re-institute the death penalty. Violence is a form of revenge that gangs use against the very society that alienates them. The senseless incident represents an inclination trend on the rapid rise.
The day-before-Christmas-Eve murder of 28 out of the 53 bus passengers came with a warning message from gangs directed to Central America society at large. The massacre escalated Honduras' anti-crime campaign into an open war between street gangs and authorities, with a 1,000 soldiers patrolling the crime scene city with police aggressively searching slums for the killers.Anónimo, speaking English, provides insight into gang mentality, “That's how us gangstas are. If somebody disrespects our neighborhood we throw down, we fight." In deed they do fight - with society and also with rival gangs.
Honduran youth gangs, known as maras, claim thousands of members that control poor urban neighborhoods, where they are known for extorting protection money from residents, kidnap for ransom, and other crimes. The two most treacherous organizations began on the street of Los Angeles and spread to Honduras and El Salvador after members were deported back to those countries. Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan maras constitute the today’s most urgent problem in the historically troubled region. Whether the individual member incorporated into the gang as an immigrant in Los Angeles or directly from the squalor of Central America, he is likely a member of one of the two most prominent gangs. The particular gang responsible to the bus massacre is known internationally as MS. The gang’s name Salva-trucha evolves from the word combination of Salva – Salvador and truchas – slang for street-wise. Hence the name is Mara Salvatrucha or simply MS, or MS-13. The “13” denotes the gang’s southern California territorial origin. Territorial domains from American cities are transposed and defended in the deportee’s new turf. In other words, a grudge on the streets of LA may soon be a problem in Tegucigalpa or San Salvador.
The news story then goes on to say, “Nine members of the powerful criminal gang face homicide charges in connection with an attack on a public bus last week,” Honduran officials said on the Monday after Christmas 2004. The investigation of Wednesday's violence has focused on suspected Mara Salvatrucha gang member Anonimo Pandillero, 23, who was captured shortly after the attack driving a car with a bloodstained interior, carrying two assault rifles, two handguns and ammunition. Sadly, he is a recent deportee from the US penal system.
Stated in a message on the bus's windshield, the gunmen fictitiously claimed they were part of a historically known revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty. Capital punishment is one of the main campaign issues in this year's political campaign even though state sponsored executions stopped decades ago. While capital punishment is not the norm in Catholic Latin American countries, both Honduras and El Salvador are seriously considering revitalizing the death penalty in response to the recent wave of gang violence.
The aftermath of the bus massacre continues. President Maduro accused the ruthless street gang of having "planned the massacre to frighten my government, which has had success in fighting crime." (Maduro’s own son was kidnapped and slain by gangsters in 1997). When he took office in 2001 he declared war on street crime. Maduro continues, “This is a desperate act by the criminals in response to our struggle against them. These evil men seek to intimidate us and destabilize the country, but they will not be able to." Street gangs killed his son and now threaten the stability of his country!
Later, the Honduran president spoke to Freddy Reportero, Associated Press writer. In the December 28th interview, President Maduro blames the Salvatrucha gang for bus massacre. With the bus massacre, the gangs "have challenged me," Maduro said. "I accept the challenge with courage, will, determination, and sacrifice, and I will not back down...I promise my people that those responsible for the massacre will rot in jail and I will not let down my guard in the fight against criminals."
Police officials heavily reinforced security around the Honduran President based on intelligence reports that drug cartel groups, in conjunction with the gangs, were planning to assassinate both Maduro and Security Minister Alvarez. Recent gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala smacks of all out warfare not dissimilar to the scourge brought by right wing death squads two decades earlier. "We will not rest until we eliminate the gang members from Honduras, because the public is angry and indignant," Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said, standing by Maduro as he announced an increase in the number of army troops assigned to patrol the nation's streets. Alvarez also suggested the Mara
Salvatrucha, aka MS, committed the bus attack as a kind of one-upmanship with its main rival, the Mara 18. The “18” represents the rival gang’s origin on 18th Street in Los Angeles. Alvarez cites the incident where M-18 gangsters recently staged a bloody attack to spring one of its leaders from a Tegucigalpa hospital, killing two security guards in the process. Minister Alvarez theorizes, “the MS did it in order to outshine the terrorist acts of its rival, the Mara 18, which freed one its leaders from a hospital" where he was receiving care while under detention. "That raised the gang's criminal standing, and the MS had to go them one better."
This phenomenon is not readily explained in rational terms. In deed the government also has a hand in the one-upmanship. Escalation in gang violence corresponds to prevailing Central American anti-gang campaigns known throughout the region as Mano Dura or Firm Hand. Mano Dura includes the provision for arrest of anyone in Honduras or in El Salvador suspected of gang affiliation. Gang affiliation is assumed of wearers of tattoos. Tattooing is universal in the American prison system so virtually all deportees arrive to their destinations decked out in ink. Honduran Congress approved Mano Dura as part of a law in August 2003 that set 12-year prison sentences for gang members. El Salvador, desperately struggling to fight gang activity, followed Honduras' example. A tattooed suspect can receive a lengthy incarceration for simple suspicion of gang affiliation. Gangs reacting to the drastic new laws declared war on the respective governments. The life of the Honduran President was seriously threatened twice in response to the Mano Dura.
Dateline Tegucigalpa, Honduras: A Nicaraguan man was arrested this January in Honduras with a grenade launcher and assault rifle. He is under investigation in connection with a plot to assassinate President Ricardo Maduro and other high-ranking government authorities said Sunday. The 40-year-old Nicaraguan was carrying 7,500 USD in cash when arrested. Honduras' crackdown on violent youth gangs has come to resemble an open war in recent months. The Mara Salvatrucha and rival Mara 18 gangs, comprising about 150,000 members all together, control poor neighborhoods in Central America’s principal cities using violence, threats and extortion as fundraisers. This time the gangs were contracting a professional hit on the president. The financing for the hit was fronted by narco-traffickers. An even more recent presidential death threat was found with the body of a decapitated dancer found on January 19th in that country's capital, Tegucigalpa. "Happy New Year to President Maduro,” said the message found with the body. "The next victims will be police and two journalists." Messages directed against Maduro also were found near three other bodies late last year. The threats are not to be taken lightly. Gang violence perpetuates a Central American stage for morbid showmanship as seen in the next summarized news account.
Dateline Guatemala City, Guatemala: Gang members in Guatemala City killed and beheaded a man and left the body with a note addressed to the newly elected president. Imitating the tactics of gang members in Honduras, the note protested against the repressive measures Central American governments have implemented to combat gangs and promised more violence. The message advised Guatemalan President Oscar Berger: "If you keep persecuting the gangs, people will keep dying." A paramedic said the message was signed, "Mara Salvatrucha," “Round-em up and lock-em up” strategy facilitated by hard handed prosecution of gang related crime results in gross over filling of antiquated Central American detention facilities. Conditions in Latin American prisons are beyond the comprehension of most North Americans. Consider the next news story description.
Dateline La Ceiba, Honduras: Central America's street gang brutality was also on display Saturday April 5, 2003, during a prison riot that killed 86 people others on Honduras' Caribbean coast. This time the Salvatruchas’ were the big losers at the hands of their archrival gang. Authorities say that about 100 members of the Mara 18 gang tried to take control of the El Porvenir Prison in La Ceiba, attacking inmates who were not loyal to their gang with knives and guns. Hundreds of regular prisoners grabbed their own weapons and fought back, tossing smuggled-in grenades and starting fires that engulfed part of the prison. Of the 86 people burned, stabbed, shot, or beaten to death, 70 were inmates who were gang members. One was a guard, twelve were regular prisoners, and three were women visitors when the riot erupted. This is not an isolated incident.
The recent surge of gang prominence in Central American is nowhere more acute than in the tiny country of El Salvador. United States deportations exacerbate the problem. Although gangs in El Salvador date back to the early 1970s, returning refugees, in the person of deportees introduce a new style of gang violence into one of Latin America's most violent countries. Strangers in their own country, they are received by locals with fear, suspicion and discrimination. With limited access to training and guidance, and few opportunities to better their lives, they survive the only way they know how. Today, gang involvement is on the rise. Police reports estimate that 20,000 young people (out of a population of 6.4 million) are San Salvador City gang members. This figure is dated. Other sources estimate that there are more, many more. Gang violence accounts for a high percentage of homicides in a country with one of the world's highest homicide rates. Current newspaper information on El Salvador gang violence abounds. This proliferation is partly due to the Salvadoran origin of the maras in Latino barrios of Los Angeles during the civil war of the 1980’s. There were simply more Salvadoran political refugees in these neighborhoods during the gang’s seminal period. When criminal deportees return to El Salvador and join forces with the Salvadoran child soldiers from the previous war, the grouping is particularly violent. Deportation creates a kind of transnational chaos in which United States prison mentality collides with the Central American post-civil war mentality. The results are every bit as deadly as fundamentalist terrorism. Forced repatriation by deportation fosters the ongoing criminalization of “double immigrants” that originally hail from Central America. Traditional research areas like urban poverty and racial segregation now ought to consider, in my opinion, the United States deportation policy in terms of the phenomenon as an unwanted consequence of globalization. Our penal system exports angry young men at such a rate that the ultimate consequences just may come back to trouble the United States in the form of smuggled drugs and illegal re-immigration.
As anti-immigrant sentiments boiled in the mid-1990s, Congress broadened the range of criminal acts that could result in deportation with the enactment of the 1996 Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Thus began the surge in deportations to El Salvador, Honduras, and other Central American countries. For the moment let us concentrate on El Salvador. Salvadoran jails are overflowing, and as a consequence local authorities have to give the deportados a fresh chance once they return home, since they have no criminal record in El Salvador. They were mere children when the originally left for the United States. Speaking little proper Spanish and without employment, the deportees quickly slip into a culture of drugs and gangs similar to the one they left behind in the States. Moreover, the fresh deportee often arrives in San Salvador without a trace of Salvadoran identity, having lived more of his life in cities such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, and New York. His destiny is pre-decided. He is likely to kill only to later be killed.
There are prevailing rumors that right wing vigilantes in name of La Sombra Negra regulate El Salvador from newly arrived deportees. Although governments officially deny the existence of the legendary squads, deportees believe in their lethality to the extent of high tailing back to US territory. Communiqués in patriotic language issued in conjunction with Salvadoran gang assassinations are not uncommon. The anonymous grupos de exterminio claim to take upon themselves a new social cleansing reminiscent of a few decades earlier. The following paragraphs, starting with another news summary, attempt to explain more about the overall Salvadoran gang phenomenon.
Dateline San Salvador, El Salvador: La Esperanza, largest prison in the country fell under full siege as gangs rioted in the August 2004, causing 31 deaths. Most torsos were scalped, mutilated, or burned beyond recognition. The riot was Central America's fourth major prison uprising in 20 months. In these a total of 216 inmates died violently. This is more evidence in support of the claim that street gangs are overwhelming the poor countries of the region. Locking members away does not end the chain of violence. "People are scared. It's having a big impact on society," said Wilfredo Avelena, a Salvadoran police spokesperson. The use of crack cocaine can also blamed for driving up the level of violence. New Salvadoran President Tony Saca deployed more than 1,000 heavily armed soldiers, under Mano Dura on to the streets to aid the national police in arresting gang leaders, most of whom come from the two main groups, Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha. In 2003, the United States deported nearly 2,000 criminals to El Salvador. El Salvador's prison population has doubled in the past five years to 12,000. “The violence of the gangs never ends, not even when you lock them up,” said one astute commentator.
An estimated 150,000 gang members or mareros run the streets of Central America, at times outgunning local police in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. These gangs are violent and their crimes cold-blooded. Salvadoran officials say gangs are responsible for eighty percent of the homicides in the country. El Salvador is mobilized. In his explanation of the militarization, outgoing President Flores blamed the disintegration of the Salvadoran Army in 1992, and the influx of deportees from the United States.One result of the army dissolution is that thousands of extra, unemployed young men trained in violence are now on the street. Police forces are beefed up to compensate for the absence of the military. Complicating the violence is the abundance of leftover grenades and M-16 automatic rifles from the civil war.
This report is meant to highlight the American contribution to the Central American gang problem. The following is meant to pinpoint the actual process. Spending time in California's penal colony, an eminent deportee, many of whom have achieved permanent resident status, can opt for "voluntary departure" and for example, be deported to EI Salvador. The volunteer is processed with relative immediacy after serving his sentence and thus avoids an extra year or more in custody while waiting for an immigration hearing. The deportee arrives to his country knowing that he was born there but he is not from there. Thus the violent life continues its cycle; from the child’s birth in El Salvador during a time when his family was under the threat of the death squads that ruled the land, then forced exodus to LA, and there the violent defense of his honor by the code of the street, and later the brutalizing time in California's prison gulag and finally deportation back to his original shanty and a street war. Prison time in the United States followed by deportation back to Central America is like a Major League farm system for gangsters. Stateside prisoners are embittered while serving their time. Upon completing their sentence they get deported while possessing super-criminal mentalities. They arrive in their new countries with big league criminal outlooks. Often they inspire local imitators. The most prestigious crime degree conferred is by the US penal system. Upon release the convict’s tendency is to act out on his refined “anti-social” skills. Would not most caged humans display the same post-traumatic behavior?
The gangster farm system is fed by a United States law allowing the deportation of immigrants convicted of crimes carrying sentences of a year or more. The system has resulted in some 500,000 immigrants being deported to their home countries since 1996, with 80% of them repatriated to Mexico and Central America. As a result, there are now tens of thousands of hardcore MS-13 and M18 members in Central America. The following testimony by Michael J. Garcia Assistant Secretary, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on March 17, 2004, reveals the hard numbers of the deportation mill: “Good morning Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. It is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss the President’s Fiscal-Year-2005 budget request for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In fiscal year 2003, ICE removed more than 140,000 individuals including 76,000 criminal aliens. ICE is also committed to aggressively tracking, apprehending, and removing fugitive aliens, those who have violated U.S. immigration law, been ordered deported by an immigration judge.” Zero-tolerance abatement strategies combined with changes in immigration law as a result of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Individual Responsibility Act of 1996 have resulted in the deportation to El Salvador of thousands of Salvadoran immigrant gang youth-including permanent residents and some for nonviolent offenses.
The BBC reports that street gangs have multiplied across El Salvador and Guatemala into the thousands, and “entrance into these associations increasingly fosters homicide, " Violence is one of the most crucial problems in El Salvador. It affects the daily life and welfare of Salvadorans carrying negative consequences from health to economics. The largest gangs in Central America - Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 (M-18) originated in Los Angeles and spread to El Salvador with the deportation of gang members from the United States. The Mara Salvatrucha is the most prominent of a number of Los Angeles-style youth gangs that sprang up in Central America after their members were deported from the United States in the 1990s. The founders of the gangs were typically Central American youth whose families had fled to the US to escape civil war. After peace accords were signed, they were sent back to their countries and took on the street-gang culture with them. The deportation phenomenon comes back to haunt America in the form of illegal re-entry and smuggling.
Says gang member Anónimo II, upon arrival in San Salvador; “It was like they were sending me to Mars or something. I haven't been in the country for twenty something… twenty-two years. And then I come back and I'm completely lost, man.” He embodies a forced trans-nationality, beamed down from Los Angeles's immigrant barrios to post-civil war El Salvador. With a speech-mixture of street English, Chicano gang Spanglish, and the caliche of Salvadoran colloquial, he is marked as an outsider in both Salvador and the United States. Even if a gangster wants out, nonviolence is not just a simple choice or lifestyle change. For one thing, the tattoos mark him. Gang membership is oftentimes forever. Generational and transnational gang vendettas are a matter of course. If gang life in Central America does not suit a deportee and if he is determined to leave he is likely to find his way back to the United States border.
Anónimo II is an example of the revolving door recidivism: He was arrested, tried and sentenced. After finishing his sentence, he was deported to El Salvador, where he joined a gang after holding out for a few months. But it was too violent even for him. He returned to Southern California and was arrested by immigration authorities. Deportees with criminal records are barred from re-entering the United States and get charged with a felony if they do. He was sentenced to two years for re-entry and expects to be deported back to El Salvador again. The revolving door phenomenon compels futureless deportees to migrate back and forth. A deportee can reach the Mexico-US Border for four hundred dollars or less. El Salvador, incidentally, uses the US Dollar for its currency. After gaining re-entry the deportee inhabits the extreme fringe of American society. An explanation of this occurrence appears below in the recapitulated news item.
Dateline Washington DC: The deportee travels full circle. During the past decade gangs with origins in El Salvador have established a major criminal threat in the United States. MS and M-18 gangs established “regional offices” in New York, Chicago, and Washington DC. Hampstead New York reports that just about all the murders there are mara related. This refers to deportee refugees from Central America. These gangs are enormously violent and often favor trademark machetes as their weapon of choice. According to the Washington Post, the maras are involved in bringing immigrants, drugs, and weapons into the United States. Several media sources now contend that al Qaeda sympathizers contract with Honduran gangs for the purpose of smuggling operative into the United States.[18] In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns the gang may be smuggling fundamentalist terrorists into the country. More certain, however, is that law enforcement officials have long believed that MS-13 controls alien smuggling routes along Mexico.
"The killings will continue, the gangs will continue," one Salvatrucha said. "In El Salvador, poor people and people who are not of high rank do not matter much in the world.” Central American community boundaries are now redefined by the export of United States inner-city lawlessness through deportation. The California prison thus becomes a crucial site for the formation of territorial identities and in turn the deportation mill redistributes crime. Some deported immigrant gang youth move back and forth between "home" and "abroad," where both home and abroad are unstable locations. At the same time, Central Americans who have never been to the United States construct their identities around "imagined" gang controlled barrios from Los Angeles. Attempts by Central American governments to replicate gang abatement tactics tried in the United States are not effective because the infrastructures of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala do not favorably compare. Police are often outgunned and outwitted. Gang banishment delivers a boomerang fix. The wholesale deportations are going to come back around to bite US immigration authorities in the ass. Since the step-up in deportations terror on the streets of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala is unprecedented. In the end, it’s the same old thing - poor people killing other poor people. The question that remains, having identified the cause and effect, is: what can be done to remedy the situation? Do society’s castoffs have a chance for reintegration into society anywhere in the Americas?
Why not offer selected deportation candidates the option of a three-year stint in the Army or Marines? I remember judge’s giving petty robbery suspects the choice between the “joint” and service in Vietnam in the late 1960’s. Why not let foreign-born convicts redeem themselves with the law, gain citizenship, and break out of the recidivistic cycle? Comprenden, warmongers? Recruiting is down drastically. At least offer the poor soles an opportunity, albeit a dubious one, to redeem themselves and to stay in the country where they grew up.
*Names of persons who are not government officials have been changed.
**Since this article bus massacre suspected masterminds were apprehended in Texas after fleeing Honduras. No suprise that the men have criminal histories in the States.
