OUT OF THE UNDERWORLD
Jan 5th 2006
Numerous, mysterious, and now spreading fast in the United States
IN THE back courtyard of a deserted wreck of a house on the outskirtsof San Salvador, El Salvador's capital, a group of young men isgathered. One sleeps on a couch without cushions, under a bare lightbulb, as his friends talk. Many are covered with tattoos from theirforearms to their faces, marking them to all eyes as gang members. Eachtattoo contains a code and tells a story. A trinity of three dots, forexample, means hospital, prison and the graveyard, the three possibleends for a gangster.
These young men belong to the largest criminal network in theAmericas, and one of the largest in the world. Besides an estimated25,000 members in El Salvador, there are comparable numbers inGuatemala, Honduras and the United States. The distinctive graffitifound scrawled in Central America are indistinguishable from those inthe BARRIOS of Los Angeles--and as far east, these days, as the suburbsof Washington, DC.
Where traditional organised crime, such as the Colombian or Mexicandrug "cartels", tends to be organised in small, elite groups, thisnetwork, based round gangs, is larger and more diffuse. Its business isextortion and drug-trafficking. In El Salvador, Guatemala and Hondurasit accounts for between 20% and 50% of all violent crime. In the UnitedStates, authorities believe members are responsible for much of thesmuggling of people and goods across the border with Mexico.
Two MARAS, or gangs, are involved, Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha.Though they are bitter rivals, their methods and interests are thesame. To some observers, their members are as much a threat to Americaas al-Qaeda. Indeed, links have been suspected, though there is noevidence for them. The FBI has struggled fruitlessly to convinceAmericans that one particular meeting between Adnan G. El Shukrijumah,an al-Qaeda lieutenant, and members of Mara Salvatrucha is pure myth.One recent Republican candidate for governor of Virginia made that"meeting" a cornerstone of his stump speech against crime.
More realistically, the MARAS are feared for their fast-growingnumbers, their reputation for unusual violence (in Central America,beheadings are not unheard of as a means of execution) and theirappearance in new, far-flung areas of the United States. California hasbeen dealing with the gangs for over 20 years, but as Chris Swecker,assistant director of the FBI, told a congressional hearing on theMARAS in 2005, MAREROS have now migrated and proliferated "in manysmaller, suburban and rural areas not accustomed to gang activity andrelated crimes." In 2003 Brenda Paz, a pregnant 17-year-old federalwitness, was found stabbed to death on the banks of the Shenandoahriver in deepest Virginia.
Yet the young men in the courtyard in San Salvador, members of Mara18, or the 18th Street Gang, do not look threatening at all. They seemabject and scared. Not only are they unemployable, but they can nolonger walk openly in the street outside their neighbourhood. A seriesof tough laws passed over the past few years has stiffened penaltieseven for belonging to a gang (although some provisions were struck downin court as unconstitutional), and police have adopted a get-toughpolicy which, even if it has not succeeded in reducing crime, has atleast frightened gang members. Their new tattoos are innot-very-noticeable places. "We have lost the right to exist," says19-year-old Oscar.
How dangerous is the phenomenon they are a part of? Neither Mara 18nor Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13) is well understood. Theorigins of both are shrouded in disagreement. Gang members themselvesdo not keep a history or, if they do, do not share it with outsiders.
Some police say the gangs were founded in El Salvador in the 1970s orearlier. Others say they sprang out of the Salvadoran immigrantcommunity in central Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Salvatrucha mayhave been founded by a group who had been kicked out of Mara 18, whichwas run at first by Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. Alternatively,Mara 18 was founded by a group of renegade Salvatruchas.
Some experts claim that both have developed command and controlstructures. Some say that their component "cliques", which range fromten to 100 gang members, function as franchises; others insist thatthey are not very organised at all. Certainly the movement of moneywithin the gangs seems mysterious. Both gangs extort from smallbusinesses, taxi drivers, homeowners--almost anyone passing throughtheir neighbourhoods. Both sell drugs. These are both highly lucrativeenterprises. But most members seem to be poor.
One American official in Guatemala estimates that in Villanueva, asuburb of Guatemala City, gangs pull in at least $100,000 a week. Heassumes that much of this money must be sent to the United States,since gang members in Guatemala, as in El Salvador, appear to be livingon the edge of subsistence. But Jody Weis, an agent with the FBI in LosAngeles, says that gang members there are poor, too, and suspects theyare sending money to Central America. Anyone who tries to "follow themoney" is soon lost. But it is likely that the MARAS are making muchless than the authorities believe.
UNEQUAL SHARES
According to Oscar, the MARERO in San Salvador, the MARA is like afamily. Members take care of each other and retaliate if attacked, butnothing more. According to Salvadoran police officials, any MARERO withtattoos must have murdered someone in an initiation rite. Oscar and hisfriends clearly live on the margins of society; but they do not lookmuch like murderers.
Nonetheless, a lot of murders happen. The murder rate in 2004 was 46per 100,000 people in Honduras; in El Salvador it was 41, in Guatemala35. In the United States, by contrast, it was 5.7, with the Mexicanrate roughly double that. El Salvador and Guatemala are both stillrecovering from the legacy of decades-long civil war--one possibleexplanation for the high rate of violence. Honduras, the country worstaffected, suffered a "dirty war" in the 1980s. But Nicaragua, whichalso suffered a long civil war, does not have comparable gang problems.
MARAS are not widespread in Belize, in Costa Rica, or in Panama. Why ElSalvador, Guatemala and Honduras have tens of thousands of MAREROS, andtheir neighbours almost none, is a mystery that no one can answer.
The only consensus among the authorities is that things are gettingworse, and that this deterioration has been particularly pronouncedover the past four to five years. Jose Miguel Cruz of the University ofCentral America, in San Salvador, ascribes this to the get-toughpolicies of the government. MAREROS clapped in jail have had nothing todo but organise, and so the gangs have became stronger and moreviolent. The first 11 months of 2005 saw 23% more murders in ElSalvador than in all of 2004. Comparable increases have been seen inHonduras and Guatemala. Mr Cruz also points out, anecdotally, that of20 gang members he enrolled in a long-term study in 1996, only five arestill alive.
This rise in violence is having a serious impact on Central Americaneconomies. According to a study by the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP), the cost of violence to El Salvador in 2003 was $1.7billion, equivalent to 11.5% of GDP. The Inter-American DevelopmentBank is even more pessimistic, estimating that the per capita GDP ofthe region would be 25% higher if the rates of violence were no worsethan the world average. Furthermore, because the rich have privatesecurity--an economic cost in itself--extortion, which can be as littleas a few dollars per person per week, most affects those who can leastafford it, stunting economic growth and reinforcing persistentinequality. Guatemala has one of the widest gaps between rich and poorin the world.
Of the countries with large numbers of MAREROS, the best equipped todeal with the problem is the United States. But although there is acertain amount of co-operation, particularly with El Salvador, Americanpolicy tends to make the problem worse for its neighbours.
According to Kevin Kozak of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) agency, 30% of gang members picked up by his agency in Americaare arrested and criminal charges are placed against them. But theother 70% are deported. There is no alternative; they are in the United
States illegally, but evidence does not exist to prosecute them for anyspecific crime. Each week, therefore, dozens of gangsters are flown outby the American government on private jets and released on to thestreets of Central America.
To some extent, this process is now co-ordinated with Central Americangovernments. But it is awkward. Officials in El Salvador say theycannot ask the United States to stop the deportations, but nor can theycope with them on any large scale. If even a self-admitted gang membergets off a plane in San Salvador or Tegucigalpa, but there is noevidence to try him for a crime, he has to be allowed to walk free.
The relatively new anti-gang laws in El Salvador and Honduras do notinclude versions of America's witness-protection programme or itsanti-racketeering laws, which allow suspects to be charged withconspiracy to commit a criminal act, rather than the act itself. Inmost cases, therefore, the MARERO freshly deported from Los Angeles isfree to organise on his home turf--with all the prestige, preparednessand sophistication he has picked up in the United States.
In the United States itself, says Mr Weis of the FBI, law-enforcementauthorities are now trying to use techniques developed against theSicilian Mafia to fight the MARAS. However, to get an indictment,evidence is needed. And even with a witness-protection programme inplace, it is very difficult to find informants. Typically, the FBImanages to recruit as informants roughly one in three of the people itapproaches. With the Salvatruchas, says Mr Weis, the number is closerto one in 20.
OFF THE STREET, ON THE WEB
The gangs he encounters are also organised and sophisticated. They usethrowaway mobile phones, which are essentially untraceable, and keep intouch on the internet. (Mara 18 maintains a website at Salvatrucha's website has been offline recently.)Frank Flores, head of the Hollywood sector of the anti-gang task-forceof the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), points out that the MARASnow rarely deal drugs on the street in Los Angeles. They give thatdirty work to immigrants whom they have brought to the countryillegally, men who are ignorant both of the gang's structure and of its members' identities, and use them much like indentured servants. Ifthey are caught, the gang is not compromised; if they are not, therevenue continues to come in.
America's campaign against these gangs is less organised than onemight suppose. The various agencies involved--the FBI, ICE and localpolice departments--co-operate to some degree. An operation calledCommunity Shield, led by ICE and enforced by the LAPD and the New York
Police Department, led to the arrest of 103 Salvatruchas in Februaryand March 2005 and another 582 gang members last August. However,information-sharing leaves much to be desired.
Mr Flores is proud of Calgangs, a database which uses digitalphotographs and other information to track gang members; but nationallaw-enforcement officers have no access to it. Calgangs stores thedetails of 928 Salvatruchas, a tiny fraction of the estimated size ofthe gang; and more information sits, unread, on file-cards in cabinetsin Mr Flores's office. He lacks the staff to sort through it. Moreover,of the four detectives in the anti-gang task-force, only two speakSpanish. Of the 12 uniformed officers, only one does.
This is in Los Angeles--a city where the MARAS arguably originated, andwhich has a large Latino population. Local police elsewhere in theUnited States are even less prepared to deal with the MARAS, says MrFlores, who has been teaching police in other jurisdictions about thegangs. The Washington, DC area, which has the second-largestconcentration of MARAS in the country, is approximately where LosAngeles was ten years ago, says Mr Flores. Everywhere, the statisticson gang-related crime are not remotely reliable. The same fear thatmakes it difficult to recruit informants means that most gang crimegoes unreported.
At least, in the United States, the arrests that are made may make somesmall difference. The gangs continue to organise in prison, butjailhouse murders are relatively rare, and the state retains somecontrol over the penal system. In Central America, that is not thecase. In 2005, says Douglas Omar Garcia Funes, subdirector ofinvestigations for the Salvadorean national police, an average of twoto three MAREROS were killed in jail each day. In October 16 escaped, atypical number. The gangs, says Mr Funes, dominate the jails.
The warden of Tonacatepeque, a youth prison (with inmates aged 13 to24), agrees with him. Although the prison is surrounded by an imposing20-foot fence, and the warden claims his methods are more or lesseffective, he admits that the gang structure exists unchanged insidethe prison. When he wants to search the cells, all the inmates are ledout to a field in their underwear in the early morning, as he would notrisk a search with inmates present for fear of losing control. BeatRohr of the UNDP puts it more plainly: "The jails are nothing more thanschools of crime."
Indeed, across the affected Central American countries, the prisonsare often segregated between the two rival MARAS, as authorities havebeen unable to keep control when members of both gangs are under thesame roof. In August 2005, a long-standing truce between theSalvatruchas and Mara 18 in Guatemala--holding even though the two werestill at odds in El Salvador and Honduras--was broken when at least 35Mara 18 members were killed by Salvatruchas in a co-ordinated effortacross several Guatemalan jails.
"We cannot", says Paul Vernon of the LAPD, "arrest ourselves out of thegang problem." This is something that the Guatemalan and Salvadoreangovernments have yet to realise. The victory of Manuel Zelaya inNovember's elections in Honduras is a good sign; Mr Zelaya was lessprone to get-tough rhetoric than his opponent. Honduras has had perhapsboth the worst attacks by MARAS and the heaviest-handed anti-MARASefforts. In December 2004 a bus was attacked, and all 28 people on itmurdered; the assault was thought to be, at least in part, payback fora mysterious prison fire earlier in the year in which over 100Salvatruchas burned to death.
A BETTER LIFE
Gang violence in Central America is unlikely to wane in the nearfuture. Police resources are stretched or non-existent. Rehabilitationprogrammes are tiny and, according to one Salvadoran official involvedin the small pilot programmes, have at best a 30% success rate. Jailsare stuffed to almost twice their capacity in El Salvador, and willprobably remain so. Despite good intentions on all sides, effectiveco-operation among law-enforcement agencies--the sharing of databases,for instance--is not on the horizon. No country even has acomprehensive database of who is who among the gangsters. As policedither, the gangs also grow stronger up and down the United States.
The only real hope is that economic growth will eventually lift ElSalvador, Guatemala and Honduras out of their poverty and so reduce theincentives for joining gangs. Oscar, the Salvadorean MARERO, says hewould prefer to get a regular job rather than be in a criminal gang anymore. But with gang violence itself acting as a brake on his country'sgrowth, the prospect seems dim.