The Mara Salvatrucha Gang - Essay Example

Mara Salvatrucha/MS-13 [The of the appears here] [The of appears here] On the street it's known as MS-13. TheMara Salvatrucha is a Central American gang with the tradition of hacking its enemies with machetes. Street gangs are proliferating around the world. The United States has unwittingly spurred this phenomenon by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records each year. But that only partly explains how gangs went global. Credit also goes to the Internet, where gangs are staking out turf and spreading their culture online. Gang members may have never heard of globalization, but it is making them stronger. (Andrew V. Papachristos, 2005) Mara Salvatrucha began as a result of people fleeing El Salvador as a result of a civil war. Refugees fled to the United States and some had connections to La Mara, a street gang in El Salvador. Some of the immigrants had once belonged to groups such as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and were trained as guerilla fighters. These Salvadoran guerrillas were known as "Salvatruchas." Here in the United States, as a result of prejudice of Hispanic gangs, they formed the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) gang. They quickly achieved recognition for their violence and sophistication. The gang, commonly referred to as MS-13, enforces an extensive hierarchy. Each local gang is divided into "cliques," which are further divided into smaller groups. Members range from 12-year-olds to adults. MS now includes members from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Common identifiers include number "13," and also Sureno, a Spanish word meaning Southerner. Other marks include "M" or MS," or "Salvadorian Pride. Members often make the hand sign of the letter "M." The gang is active in Central America, the United States, Mexico and Canada. Since its inception in California and Washington, DC, Mara Salvatrucha members continues to plague many American cities. Many MS members continue to have close connections with El Salvador. Mara Salvatrucha gang members are known to be involved in all aspects of criminal activity. Because of their ties to their former homeland, they have access to sophisticated military weapons thus making firearms trafficking one of their main criminal enterprises. Other law enforcement agencies have reported MS members were exporting stolen cars to South America. As with nearly all-street gangs, the MS is also involved in drug sales, murder and other common gang crimes. http://www.knowgangs.com/gang_resources/ms/ms_001.htm Composed of mostly Salvadorans and other Central Americans many of them undocumented the gang has a uniquely international profile, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in 33 states in the United States (out of more than 700,000 gang members overall), and tens of thousands more in Central America. It's considered the fastest growing, most violent and least understood of the nation's street gangs in part because U.S. law enforcement has not been watching as closely as it might have. As authorities have focused their attention on the war against terrorism, MS-13 has proliferated. In the FBI's D.C. field office, the number of agents dedicated to gang investigations declined by 50 percent. "There was a definite shift in resources post-9/11 toward terrorism," says Michael Mason, assistant director in charge of that office. In recent weeks, authorities have made strides against MS-13: a gang leader accused of orchestrating a December bus bombing in Honduras that killed 28 people was arrested in Texas in February, and a recent seven-city sweep by ICE netted more than 100 reputed MS-13 members. But Robert Clifford, head of the new national task force, says, "no single law-enforcement action is really going to deal the type of blow" necessary to dismantle the gang. No one is more interested in busting up MS-13 than leaders of the Latino community, who live with the fear and fallout of the gang's savage actions. (Newsweek, 2005) Flush with new recruits from Central America, whether fleeing the law or accompanying parents seeking work along the immigrant trail, MS-13 members have set up cliques geographically defined subgroups in such remote redoubts as Boise, Idaho, and Omaha, Neb. In these new settings, gang culture often morphs. "Everything gets bastardized as it leaves the center," says Wes McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Association. While machete attacks might occur on the East Coast, they're rare on the West Coast. While car thefts and drug trafficking might be big in North Carolina, gang-on-gang violence predominates in Virginia. It's that decentralized nature of MS-13--with no clear hierarchy or structure that makes it so vexing to authorities. "Taking out the heart of the leadership is very hard if there is no definitive leadership," says one federal law-enforcement official. (Newsweek, 2005) But that could be changing. According to a 2004 report by the National Drug Intelligence Center, the gang "may be increasing its coordination with MS-13 chapters in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia, and New York City, possibly signaling an attempt to build a national command structure." One potential illustration of such an effort: on New York's Long Island last year, an MS-13 honcho arrived from the West Coast "to try to organize these various cliques or sets into a more formal structure," says Robert Hart, supervisory special agent with the FBI. "That's a significant step in the development of MS-13." And in northern Virginia, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty observes that "in some of the violent crimes, there seems to be a kind of approval process in some kind of hierarchy beyond the clique." (Newsweek, 2005) If MS-13 is seeking to create a national command in the United States, it would be emulating its model in El Salvador. There, says Oscar Bonilla, director of the National Council for Public Security, the gang is "highly organized and disciplined... with semi-clandestine structures and vertical commands." As a result, its criminal operations are all the more efficient and pervasive. The administration of President Tony Saca has responded with a super mano dura ("super hard hand") policy, reforming the penal code to facilitate gang prosecutions. (Newsweek, 2005) In the United States, Clifford's new national task force, which will be housed at FBI headquarters, is preparing a hard hand of its own. Serving as a national repository for MS-13 intelligence, it will help discern trends, prioritize targets and diagram whatever leadership structure might exist. There's an international dimension, too: U.S. investigators will be exchanging information such as a gang member's movements and associates with their counterparts in Central America. FBI agents sitting in regional U.S. embassies will serve as liaisons with local authorities, and Salvadoran advisers will come to the United States to share their MS-13 expertise. All of which amounts to "a comprehensive international attack against MS-13," says Clifford. (Newsweek, 2005) As the gang problem with which Central American countries have been dealing during the past couple of years appears now to have become an international war on gangs with the entry of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and at least a dozen US police forces into the discourse. The US forces met with their Central American counterparts and politicians at the Primera Conferencia Internacional del Combate a las Pandillas in San Salvador. The two-day meeting was called to order by El Salvador's President Antonio Saca, who won election with a platform plank calling for the harshest of measures against gang-affiliated youth, who now number about 10,000 in this, the smallest of the region's nations. The gang problem with which Central American countries have been dealing during the past couple of years appears now to have become an international war on gangs with the entry of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and at least a dozen US police forces into the discourse. The US forces met with their Central American counterparts and politicians at the Primera Conferencia Internacional del Combate a las Pandillas in San Salvador. The two-day meeting was called to order by El Salvador's President Antonio Saca, who won election with a platform plank calling for the harshest of measures against gang-affiliated youth, who now number about 10,000 in this, the smallest of the region's nations. Saca sketched the broad outlines of the situation in his opening remarks, telling his audience, "The problem of the gangs does not belong only to El Salvador. I consider that the phenomenon has become a regional problem, coming from the United States, Mexico, and Central America." (Jerry Seper, 2005) Police statistics put the number of youths in these organizations at about 60,000 regionwide, with Salvadoran gangs Mara 18 (M-18) and Salvatrucha (MS-13) as the main organizations. Saca tried to tie the gangs to the wider, and better funded, war on terrorism, but that argument has fallen from favor for lack of convincing evidence. The idea was first floated in Honduras when the government said an al-Qaeda affiliate was seen in an Internet cafe and overheard planning a trip to the US with gang complicity, but no corroboration ever turned up (NotiCen, 2004-10-14). Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez now says the tip was baseless. He continues to warn against a terror link, however, and politicians continue to repeat the allegation, albeit with qualifying circumlocutions. Saca's attempt read, "The gangs are allied with organized crime, contract killings, and I wouldn't be surprised and cannot dismiss that they are [allied with] international terrorism also." (Jerry Seper, 2005) One who might be surprised and does dismiss such an alliance is Kevin Kozak, assistant special agent for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Said Kozak, "I'm not aware of any confirmed ties to terrorism." Not only have US and Central American investigators denied these links, but gang members also call it far-fetched. Admitting to other crimes, and to gang membership, Los Angeles-born El Salvadoran Mike Figueroa told the meeting, "There's never been anything like that." He asked those assembled, "Why would they mess up their gang like that" His answer was that officials fabricated these links "to wash their hands of the problem." (Deborah Stearns, 2004) Former Salvatrucha member Freddy Monterosas, who now works with the gangs, said the maras are tight-knit and suspicious of outsiders, making them unlikely to help international terrorists. The two insiders were backed up both by locals and by high-level investigators. Taxi driver Salvador Quintanilla, familiar with gang neighborhoods, told reporters, "That's just politics, pure propaganda. They want to intimidate the gangs, and gang members are already afraid to leave their homes." (The Washington Times, 2005). Harlan Ullman, senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) International Security Program, said language and cultural barriers between terrorists and gangs make cooperation unlikely. He said it was even less likely that terrorists would need or trust gangs. "Al-Qaeda works with people they already know." Also working against the notion, many gang members are deeply Christian. Figueroa has tattooed across his forehead, "In God I trust." (The Washington Times, 2005) The concerns that drew the FBI to the conference in San Salvador were not al-Qaeda. Robert Clifford, director of the agency's anti-gang task force, ruled that out. "The FBI, in concert with the US intelligence community and government of several Central American republics, has determined that there is no basis in fact to support this allegation of al-Qaeda or even radical Islamic ties to MS-13," said Clifford. The FBI is more concerned with gang activity in the US. The US Department of Justice says these gangs have spread to 31 states, with the membership in Salvatrucha alone estimated in the 8,000 to 10,000 range. (The Washington Times, 2005) Still, the overwhelming testimony of investigators has not stemmed the repetition of the spurious connection for political purposes. The ploy has worked in El Salvador, where the issue helped gain Saca the presidency, and in the US, where just last month Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-TX) insisted, "We know from El Salvadoran law enforcement that al-Qaeda is meeting with violent gang leaders in El Salvador. We have also had reports that Middle Easterners have been sighted on the banks of the Rio Grande." (The Washington Times, 2005) The more serious problem for El Salvador, the one buried under the political haymaking, is that one of the major ways the US responds to its own problem with El Salvadoran criminals is by deporting them back to El Salvador, lately at the rate of about 250 a month by air, and, say Salvadoran authorities, another 2,000 making their way back overland. With no hope of integrating themselves into the fragile economy, they expand the Central American problem exponentially. The US strategy, with the FBI at the forefront, is to ensure that the deportees do not find their way back north by providing Salvadoran authorities with a list of charges against them, with the hope they will be prosecuted and packed into the country's teeming prisons. Clifford told The Christian Science Monitor that high on his agenda is greater information sharing, specifically with El Salvador, but with the rest of Central America and Mexico as well. There is also discussion of bringing Salvadoran police to the US to aid in the effort and to provide El Salvador with anti-gang training and equipment. One possible advantage for Saca, were he to somehow make the terror-gang link stick, would be loosening the strictures imposed by judicial procedure, his Constitution, and human rights law and institutions. The US has been partially successful in withholding these guarantees to individuals' accused of terrorism, suggesting a possible approach for El Salvador. As things now stand for Saca, despite the popularity of his Super Mano Dura strategy, he has attracted resistance both domestically and internationally for his treatment of gang members. (Daily News, 2005) Gang members have been moved to a maximum-security facility in at least one case, in apparent violation of the law. The case is still pending, but preliminary hearings have so far revealed that authorities really do not know what to do with the large numbers of people incarcerated under questionable circumstances once they have them in custody. They are not considered sufficiently dangerous to warrant exceptional treatment but cannot be put in general population, say penal authorities, because of antagonisms with other criminals. "We cannot bring them to Mariona [the appropriate prison] because of what has occurred between common prisoners and members of gangs nor to nearer prisons since there are members of rival gangs in them," said David Acosta, lawyer for the Direccion de Centros Penales. (The Washington Times, 2005) The government's gang strategy is also under pressure from the Organization of American States (OAS) and UNICEF for its repressive policies. These organizations have been scrutinizing these practices not only in El Salvador, but also in Guatemala and Honduras. A joint mission to the region late last year found human rights concerns in abundance. Following the mission's visit to El Salvador, Procuradora de Derechos Humanos Beatrice de Carrillo petitioned the government to suspend Plan Super Mano Dura, basing the request on the mission's recommendation, which was to suspend the plan and concentrate on social reinsertion. "It is important to pay attention to a weighty international clamor," she said. The government dismissed de Carrillo with a statement from Minister of Government Rene Figueroa, who said, "She is in a free country and can take whatever initiatives she likes. If she makes a constructive criticism, it will be taken into account." In late February 2005, the Consejo Centroamericano de Procuradores y Defensores de Derechos Humanos, meeting in Guatemala, found, said the organization's president Jose Manuel Echandi of Costa Rica, "What the governments are doing is an act of extermination of minor offenders. There are no programs for their reinsertion nor do they help them, and therefore the prosecutors have had confrontations with the governments." (Daily News, 2005) Reference: Andrew V. Papachristos (2005). Gang World Magazine article; Foreign Policy, No. 147, March-April Daily News (2005). GANG BUSTING WIDENS NATIONAL ATTACK AIMED AT L.A.-BASED MS-13. (News)(Statistical Data Included); Los Angeles, CA Deborah Stearns (2004). CAIRing for Detained Immigrants; Corrections Today, Vol. 66 Jerry Seper (2005). ICE lists gangster on 'Most Wanted'; MS-13 member deemed violent. (NATION) Byline: THE WASHINGTON TIMES Newsweek (2005). The Most Dangerous Gang in America; They're a violent force in 33 states and counting. Inside the battle to police Mara Salvatrucha. (MS-13 is a gang growing in strength in the United States) The Washington Times (2005). Gang Follows Illegal Aliens; MS-13 Spreads to Small Towns Newspaper article; May 5 http://www.knowgangs.com/gang_resources/ms/ms_001.htm Read More