One of the first words I learned in my first language class in El Salvador was “pandillas”, or gangs.
I knew vaguely of the pandillas in El Salvador, having lived for three years in Washington, DC. MS-13 was reported to be proliferating in the region and often made the news. I knew that some of the gang members had roots in El Salvadoran. El Salvador was exporting gang activity to the U.S. That was my basic understanding.
Of course, like with most issues, the reality is actually more complicated. To speak in economic terms, what if I told you that the U.S. has actually been a net-exporter of gang activity rather than the contrary? But that would be too simple as well.
How the Pandillas Came to El Salvador
During El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, a flood of immigrants fled the violence to the United States. Many came to Los Angeles, arrived without a community or any economic opportunities, and found themselves sequestered in that city’s ghettos. Threatened themselves by violence, some children of the immigrants organized themselves into groups and made their way into the gangs.
The 18th Street gang (called “dieciocho” or “18”) is considered the largest in Los Angeles. In a perverse manifestation of an otherwise positive phenomenon, it was the first gang to break the racial barrier in the U.S., with members from all racial backgrounds. It is, however, a primarily Latin gang, and after initial battles the El Salvadorans made their way in alongside the Mexicans and members of other Central American heritages. 18 has upwards of 20,000 members in Los Angeles County alone. MS-13 (the 13th Street gang), which is the gang I recall was spreading in DC, is believed to be a splinter group of 18 and a bitter rival. Gang members can often be spotted by their tattoos.
Real subtle, dude
After the El Salvadoran Peace Accords in 1992, the U.S. government began deporting gang members of El Salvadoran origin back to their home country, and in 1996 passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which increased the rate of deportations. Over 30,000 alleged gang members were deported to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras between1998-2005. These individuals took their craft with them back to El Salvador, along with their rivalries. They had grown up in Los Angeles, in many cases spoke only halting Spanish, and often had no family but each other.
Today, the pandillas are a powerful and destructive force in El Salvador, with some 25,000 members in a country of about 6 million. They are largely responsible for the approximately 10 murders that occur in El Salvador per day. To put this in perspective, the same murder rate in the U.S. would translate into over 200,000 murders per year, compared to the 16,000 we currently suffer. The gangs have evolved and now re-export members to the States. They have moved from petty crime to sophisticated drug trafficking operations and mass extortion.
For example, the gangs extort money from bus drivers across El Salvador. Since those who refused to pay at first were killed, it is believed that the vast majority of drivers are now paying off the gangs. Also, if a retail business is seen to be doing really well for itself but has no customer base El Salvadorans tend to believe it is just a front for money laundering. In the malls, for instance, there are scores of expensive electronics outlets that you’ll rarely if ever see a customer step foot it. It does seem odd.
I have not personally experienced or witnessed any gang activity during my ten weeks in San Salvador, but this is not to say that their presence is not felt everywhere. Three of my classmates have been on buses where gang members have mounted and taken up a “voluntary” collection to pay for the funeral of one of their fallen brothers (though interestingly they, the foreigners, were not asked to give). In a country where most commercial transactions are done in quarters, people pulled out dollars.
Most of the activity is localized in neighborhoods of San Salvador such as Apopa and Soyapango, but the gangs’ reach stretches throughout the country.
So why don’t the government and the police do something?
As you know, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but this is where the situation gets even more complicated. During over fifteen years of one-party rule which extended from the Peace Accords in 1992 until earlier this year, the government adopted theoretically popular but ineffective set of policies to curb gang violence including “Mano Dura” and “Super Mana Dura” (Super Iron Fist). Unfortunately, the policies were often used to crack down on civil liberties and opposition voices rather than to reign in the gangs. And the gangs were seen as useful agents for the government when opposition figures caused trouble.
Super Duper Mano Duro?
There is a widespread belief – and some would say fact – of connections between the gangs, the police, and high levels of government. Most people of means are protected by private security forces and therefore don’t have the political will to compel the government and police to change. And those security firms are owned by both the country’s most powerful political figures and individuals who give a lot of money to political campaigns. The firms make a lot of money when there is insecurity, and so political figures benefit from the insecurity.
This may be why there are more private security personnel than police in the country (some people have told me the ratio is 3:1, but from some brief online research the figures I found said 22,000 private security personnel compared to 16,000 policemen and women). Everywhere you walk in San Salvador there are security contractors guarding homes and business, in uniform with large guns strapped over their shoulders. It’s an interesting question. Are there so many private security forces because of the violence, or is the violence perpetuated as a result of a reliance on private security? I imagine there is a symbiosis between the two.
You talking to me? I need a license for this gun?
That the now-opposition Arena party is now railing against the new FMLN government’s inability to stop gang violence is simply a sign of the continuing political potency of the gang issue. There are few issues, if any, that concern El Salvadorans more.
Who is a gang member?
For some it is clear – tattoos. It is illegal to be a gang member, yet gang members often sport tattoos announcing their allegiance. Thus, the Arena government used to arrest and detain individuals on the basis of their tattoos. However, most were eventually released without charge due to lack of evidence of any actual wrongdoing.
For others, there are no clear physical signs of membership. What is clear is that there are so many gang members that have imbedded themselves into the fabric of the society that extracting them is a Sisyphean task. How a community fights this phenomenon without tearing itself apart, I don’t know.
To add to the violence and confusion, there are other people who actually pretend to be gang members to benefit from the culture of fear. A person extorting you for money sounds a like scarier when they say they are a member of “18”. Would you ask for ID?
NRA’s Dream World
Charleston Heston would have loved El Salvador. Guns are really easy to get, as are licenses. Don’t have a license? No problem! Of the private security firms I mentioned above, one-third have unlicensed weapons. The U.N. has estimated there are over 450,000 firearms in El Salvador, 60% of them illegal. Security firms, gang members, and average citizens all have pretty easy access to weapons, I am told. The new government is trying to crack down, but I don’t have any sense of how successful they have been thus far.
La Vida Loca
About a month into my stay in El Salvador, the country was gripped by the news of the assassination of famed French documentary filmmaker Christian Poveda. Here is his obituary in the UK Guardian.
Poveda had spent years living among and researching the 18 Gang and its heavily tattooed members. His goal was to try and help viewers understand "… why a child of 12 or 13 joins a gang, and gives his life for it." The week before the release of his film in France and days before his death, Poveda expressed concern to his friends and family that some gang members and the police weren’t happy with the film, pirated copies of which were already floating around the country. He was shot in the head by a gang member on September 2nd. Said a Salvadoran photographer, quoted in the obituary above, “Christian is just one of the 10 who will die today... If you look long enough down the throat of the lion, he will eat you."
I highly encourage everyone to Netflix La Vida Loca. It is raw, and while violent is not overly graphic. It is a sobering window into the gang culture of El Salvador, and leaves the viewer with a sense of - conspiracy theories aside - just how terribly difficult this issue will be to overcome.
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