Mara Salvatrucha Research Articles

The origin and development of gangs in El Salvador

For more than four decades, violence has characterized the political and social dynamics in El Salvador, beginning with the armed conflict of 1980 and the formation of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). This conflict, part of the Cold War, lasted almost twelve years and left deep social scars, especially in areas of overcrowding, poverty and unemployment. Subsequently, the deportation of gang members from the United States transformed the local gangs, giving them a more complex structure and organization. Since the 1990s, street gangs, known as "maras", became a significant cultural-generational phenomenon. Despite the Peace Accords, violence became socially sedimented. Gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Barrio 18 consolidated in El Salvador, exacerbated by the deportation of experienced gang members from the United States. These deportees, upon their return, found themselves in marginalized conditions that favored the expansion of the gang phenomenon. The paper explores how gangs developed in a context of accelerated urbanization, economic crisis and a culture of post-conflict violence. It also examines the influence of government policies such as the emergency regime implemented by Nayib Bukele in 2022, which has reduced the gangs' capacity for territorial control and recruitment, albeit with criticism for human rights violations. The evolution of gangs in El Salvador is the result of multiple historical, social and economic factors, reflecting a complex interaction between internal and external influences that have perpetuated violence and social exclusion.

The Nature and Structure of MS-13 in Los Angeles County

Recent descriptions of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) by senior U.S. government officials suggest that the gang is highly organized, has significant transnational capacity, and is heavily involved in violence. Arguably, these depictions have created moral panic among the public and have fed xenophobic attitudes toward Latin American immigrants. However, little is known from empirical research about the nature and structure of MS-13 in the United States. In this article, we draw on data from interviews with incarcerated MS-13 members in Los Angeles County, the birthplace of MS-13. We examine three key aspects of MS-13: its organizational characteristics, its transnational capacity, and its involvement in criminal behavior, including violence. Our findings provide a useful descriptive summary of MS-13 in Los Angeles County, where the gang originated. Our findings also suggest that while there are good reasons to take MS-13 seriously as a threat to public safety, much of the public discourse on the gang is based on inaccurate assumptions.

Ganged Up On: How the US immigration system penalises and fails to protect Central American minors who are trafficked for criminal activity by gangs

This article addresses the failures of the United States immigration system to protect Central American minors who were trafficked for exploitation in criminal activities by gangs. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which the US immigration system denies humanitarian protection to Central American minors who were forced to participate in criminal activity by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street gangs, and instead detains them. The article will examine this trend in the context of a larger proclivity to criminalise immigration in the US, particularly minors fleeing violence in Central America. We draw upon our experience representing Central American minors in their applications for humanitarian immigration relief to highlight how the US immigration system fails to protect this vulnerable population and penalises these children for their own victimisation.

Street corner decisions: an empirical investigation of extortionist choices in El Salvador

ABSTRACT This paper identifies offender choice patterns associated with extortion subtypes in El Salvador, Central America. Previous research attributes the rise of extortion in the country to the evolution and propagation of Los Angeles-born street gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Data from a unique business victimisation survey is used to analyse 53 decisions in 869 reported cases. The study borrows a multidimensional scaling method used in criminal profiling research to identify offender choice patterns. Cases are classified into extortion subtypes based on identified choice groupings. Key offender choices and location features are compared across extortion subtypes. Offender choice patterns identified in the study are consistent with systemic and opportunistic extortion described in previous literature. About a third of the cases are designated as hybrid extortions due to the blend of choice structuring properties they exhibit, which combines aspects of both systemic and opportunistic extortion.

Conceptual and empirical obstacles in defining MS‐13

Research SummaryPast and present gang scholarship is marked by debate as to the appropriate criteria for defining gangs and gang membership. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS‐13, highlights some obstacles in conceptualizing gangs and operationalizing gang membership. Although MS‐13 has generated attention in recent years, little systematic criminological research exists on the gang. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and surveys of law‐enforcement gang experts, we link long‐standing issues of gang definition and measurement to MS‐13 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Policy ImplicationsGang and immigration enforcement are inextricably linked in the case of MS‐13. The ambiguous, contested, and varied means by which gangs are defined and labeled may result in the overpolicing and overcriminalization of young immigrants of color and youth of color in general. Beyond unsubstantiated police stops, arrests, convictions, and gang enhancements, such labeling practices may lead to collateral immigration consequences including deportation and permanent bars to reentry into the United States.

Importancia de los rituales de iniciación y de los tatuajes en las maras y pandillas centroamericanas

The main purpose of the paper is to analyse the phenomenon of the identity of some criminal gangs in Central America (maras y pandillas). It shows mechanisms and symbolic aspects of their activities in this region, especially in Guatemala, Salvador and Honduras, exemplified by a group called la Mara Salvatrucha. The article presents the cultural and social background of these criminal communities involved in many illegal activities and the multidimensional problem of violence. The paper is focussed on the identity of the members of the criminal gangs analysed as the subcultures of violence and as a kind of contemporary urban tribes. It shows the most important symbolic aspects of their identity: rites of passage, the tattoo meanings, the importance of the image etc. The article refers to the factors of popularity of these criminal groups among many young, poor and marginalised people in Central America.

Accounting for extortion

This study analyzes how accounting participates in the business of extortion. Using a combination of archival, interview and participant observation data, we consider the extortion activities of two criminal organizations—the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18—that operate in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Starting from the assumption that the repetitive extortion activities of street gangs require organizational devices that coordinate activities and facilitate decisionmaking, we examine how street gangs use accounting. We also analyze how business targets react to receiving extortion demands. The analysis illustrates that both street gangsters and their extortion targets have a pre-existing existential relationship to accounting that influences how street gangsters use accounting as well as how business targets respond.

La noción de comunidad aplicada a las pandillas transnacionales

<p align="justify">El presente artículo analiza, a través de la tensión entre hospitalidad interna y hostilidad con el exterior, las relaciones al interior de las pandillas transnacionales de El Salvador. El testimonio brindado por miembros de la Pandilla 18 y la Mara Salvatrucha 13 son las fuentes para pensar estas agrupaciones más allá de la asimilación al crimen organizado. A través de la noción lazo-de-deuda se observa cómo la hostilidad exterior impone una forma de hospitalidad de corte comunitario, en un sentido cercano al propuesto por el filósofo italiano Roberto Esposito, es decir, como una violencia hacia la sociedad como formación política. De esta manera, no se niega la proclividad de las pandillas hacia la violencia, sino que se busca comprender cómo esta violencia tiene una potencia creadora y no sólo destructiva.</p>

Home in Honduras

Home in Honduras

Tiempo y muerte en las pandillas transnacionales de El Salvador

<p>El presente artículo presenta la visión de pandilleros salvadoreños sobre la muerte y cómo la estrecha relación que tienen con lo mortífero les lleva a una vivencia del tiempo en clave de presente casi perpetuo. Su posibilidad diacrónica sólo es posible por marcadores como el hospital, la cárcel y el cementerio. Se busca dejar oír la palabra de pandilleros salvadoreños de la Pandilla 18, tanto activos dentro del grupo como de aquellos denominados calmados. Aparece también la voz de un pandillero calmado de la Mara Salvatrucha. Es importante esta distinción en cuanto deja ver cómo la muerte se enseñorea en la vida cotidiana de estos jóvenes y adultos miembros de agrupaciones complejas simplificadas por las políticas de criminalización.</p>

Sketches Toward an Ontology of Non-Dwelling: Mara Salvatrucha 13, Radical Homelessness, and Postglobality

In 1988, the California state legislature passed the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP), which allowed courts to “enhance” the sentences of offenders who have been proven to "promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members." It bundled together criminality, policing, and incarceration in ways that drew upon the fears of the black/latino Others that were imminent in panics surrounding the “crack epidemic” and inner-city crime. Jumping to April 2016, the Salvadoran government has passed strikingly similar legislation, which centers on reclassifying gang-associated crimes as terroristic; in essence under their new laws gang affiliation is a terrorist. This, too, has been enacted in the midst of panic about gang violence and low-level warfare between gangs and the Salvadoran state. The adoption of US-style anti-gang approaches by the Salvadoran government is not new. In 2003, the right-wing government passed mano dura [“iron fist”] policies that sought to address increases in gang associate crime with zero-tolerance, tough-on-crime measures. Law enforcement received expanded leeway to target and arrest gang members, especially those from Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Despite the lack of sustained reductions in violent crime, the mano durapolicies have remained and will only be exacerbated by the new legislation.

Gangs in the DRC and El Salvador: towards a third generation of gang violence interventions?

The phenomenon of gangs in El Salvador and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has already been researched, but a comparative study of gangs and gang policies is lacking. In this paper we discuss several gang violence prevention initiatives regarding the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 in El Salvador, and the kuluna and bashege in Kinshasa, DRC. In order to analyze the different gang interventions, we implement the typology of first and second gang violence prevention initiatives (Rodgers et al. 2009), and propose the evolution towards a third generation of gang violence prevention interventions. While first generation initiatives are security and law-enforcement driven, and second generation initiatives socio-preventive driven, third generation initiatives are more politically driven. The latter indicates a shift towards a vision of dialogue and negotiations to deal with gang violence. However, the different generations are not predefined within time and third generation initiatives can also be followed up by first generation initiatives, which was for example the case in the gang truce in El Salvador. Also, comparative gang research includes challenges, especially when the gang phenomenon in one country is better researched and documented than in other countries. As such, we were unable to identify politically-driven initiatives in the DRC to compare with the ones in El Salvador. Further research is thus required. With this paper we not only aim to contribute to the literature on gang violence prevention and reduction initiatives, we also want to push researchers, practitioners and policymakers to look beyond the borders when setting up gang (violence) prevention and rehabilitation projects, and to learn from other regions where similar initiatives have been implemented to deal with comparable issues of gang violence.

Parallel Citizenship: Southern Californian Latino Gangs and their Concept of Citizenship

For Salvadorans who relocated to the United States, the marginalization imposed by American society, the victimization enacted by Mexican gangs, and their negative experience with El Salvador’s practice of citizenship brought them to create the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and modify 18th Street gangs in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Living on the fringes of society, they were kept from attaining the social, civil, and economic benefits of a liberal democratic model of citizenship. This paper claims that, in order to survive, they took it upon themselves to create a parallel model of citizenship, combining anarchism with “citizenship as agency” under the gang structure. Following Philip Oxhorn’s analysis of models of citizenship, this study examines how Salvadoran refugees came to create such alternative citizenship in the framework of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. Analysis asserts that the structure and development of membership in the gangs is not a coincidence, but rather a response to their marginalization, negative experience of state citizenship, and their participation in public arenas modeled as an extension of social contracts. Understanding the views of these, now transnational, gangs in terms of citizenship can aid policymakers and Central American governments as they approach these groups, eliminating violence and promoting development.

Violencia simbólica y significación de los cuerpos: Tatuajes en jóvenes

ResumenLa intención de este texto es discutir el concepto de violencia en tanto problemática compleja que se expresa a través de distintos rostros. La violencia simbólica ejercida es muy visible en contra de ciertas acciones sociales y manifestaciones culturales de algunos jóvenes (por ejemplo, en la significación del cuerpo). Por esto, interesa situar la práctica del tatuaje, a partir del cual se construyen procesos de identidades duras en adscripciones juveniles como la de los "Cholos"1y "la Mara Salvatrucha MS13"2.

Violencia cotidiana, marginación, limpieza social y pandillas en Guatemala

El artículo analiza la relación entre las pandillas, la violencia cotidiana y la marginación en Guatemala. Esta propuesta considera que las pandillas son un ejemplo excepcional del empleo de la violencia, y repara en la orientación de estos grupos, hacia las actividades de trasgresión de la legalidad como herramienta de afirmación y empoderamiento. En el documento se describe que el impacto de la desigual distribución de la violencia a nivel social, se acentúa en los barrios depauperados y adquiere un carácter crónico. Finalmente, el artículo menciona la limpieza social dirigida hacia el Barrio 18 y la Mara Salvatrucha porque este fenómeno es una manifestación de la profundización de las agresiones comunitarias. La violencia es protagonizada por diversos actores sociales, las pandillas son un caso más de la realidad necropolítica en Guatemala. Abstract:The article analyzes the relationship between the gangs, the daily violence, and the marginalization in Guatemala. This proposal considers that gangs are an exceptional example of the use of violence, repairs in the orientation of these groups towards the activities of transgression of law and considers the use of the body as a tool of affirmation and empowerment. The paper describes the impact of the unequal distribution of violence at the social level, it is accentuated in impoverished neighborhoods and acquired a chronic character. Finally, the article mentions social cleansing directed at the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha because this phenomenon is a manifestation of the deepening of community aggressions. The violence is used by diverse social actors, the gangs are one more case of the necropolitics reality in Guatemala.

Consolidar el control estatal en territorio de la Mara Salvatrucha: Lecciones del trabajo comunitario en comunidades de alto riesgo

Este artículo presenta la segunda parte de una investigación más amplia sobre la colonia San José del Pino y la comunidad San Rafael, del Municipio de Santa Tecla, una zona de alto riesgo que por varios años estuvo bajo control de la Mara Salvatrucha. El establecimiento en 2012 de un puesto de Policía comunitaria en la colonia, sentó la base para un proceso de pacificación. Esto último aunado a varios beneficios adicionales en materia de seguridad, de servicios públicos y de programas de desarrollo y reinserción para la población local, que incluyó a jóvenes en riesgo y miembros de pandilla. El Estado ha podido recuperar el control social y territorial en la zona. Sin embargo, cambios de estrategias de seguridad pública y de dinámicas entre los distintos actores en el territorio, durante el contexto de las elecciones presidenciales en 2014 y municipales en 2015, generaron otros impactos en los esfuerzos de recuperación del territorio por parte del Estado. Existen indicios de nuevas expresiones de violencia pandilleril y, a pesar de la presencia permanente de la Policía en la colonia, se ha podido constatar que la pandilla todavía mantiene su propio sistema de control territorial. Déficits en la seguridad pública, en los servicios públicos y en la legitimidad del Estado, favorecen también el control social de dicha estructura en la zona.

Disappeared persons and homicide in El Salvador

During 2012–2013, the homicide rate in El Salvador came down from 69.9 to 42.2 per 100,000 population following a government brokered truce between the leaders of the two major gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. But despite the apparent successes of the truce, it was speculated that the drop in murders could have been due to the killers simply hid the bodies of their victims. This paper aims at determining whether gangs effectively disappeared their victims to cut down the official counts of murders, or they committed these crimes for other reasons. The results from this study suggest that Salvadoran gangs had been using disappearance as a method to gain sustained social control among residents of already gang-dominated areas, that together with homicide, disappearance is part of a process of territorial spread and strategic strengthening by which these groups are enhancing their capabilities to interfere in the alliances of Mexican drug trafficking organizations with Central American criminal organizations specializing in the trans-shipment of drugs and in providing access to local markets to distribute and sell drugs. Our findings show that the risk for disappearance has been large even before the truce was in place and that actually, it continues as such and going through a process of geographic expansion.

Gang truce for violence prevention, El Salvador.

ObjectiveTo estimate the effects on homicide rates of the gang truce that was brokered in El Salvador in 2012.MethodsMathematical models based on municipal-level census, crime and gang-intelligence data were used to estimate the effect of the truce on homicide rates. One model estimated the overall effect after accounting for the linear trend and seasonality in the homicide rate. In a moderated-effect model, we investigated the relationship between the truce effect and the numbers of MS13 (Mara Salvatrucha 13) and Eighteenth-Street gang members imprisoned per 100 000 population. We then ran each of these two models with additional control variables. We compared values before the truce – 1 January 2010 to 29 February 2012 – with those after the truce – 1 March 2012 to 31 December 2013.FindingsThe overall-effect models with and without additional control variables indicated a homicide rate after the truce that was significantly lower than the value before the truce, giving rate ratios of 0.55 (95% confidence interval, CI: 0.49–0.63) and 0.61 (95% CI: 0.54–0.69), respectively. For any given municipality, the effectiveness of the truce appeared to increase as the number of MS13 gang members imprisoned per 100 000 population increased. We did not observe the same significant relationship for imprisoned Eighteenth-Street gang members.ConclusionIn the 22 months following the establishment of a national gang truce, the homicide rate was about 40% lower than in the preceding 26 months. The truce’s impact appeared particularly strong in municipalities with relatively high numbers of imprisoned MS13 gang members per 100 000 population.

Hiding violence to deal with the state

In 2012, the two major street gangs in El Salvador, Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Barrio 18, struck a truce credited with reducing homicide rates by more than 50% in one year. Although the gang truce held for only 18 months, the significant reduction in homicides puzzled observers that believed youth gangs were unable to coordinate violence, especially considering that previous and similar efforts aimed at striking agreements did not achieve similar results. This article addresses a question posed by the puzzle of the Salvadoran truce’s success: under what conditions do negotiations between or with criminal organizations effectively reduce criminal violence? By comparing truces and criminal pacts in El Salvador and in Medellin, Colombia, we argue that criminal pacts can reduce homicides when (a) they directly involve the state as an administrator of incentives to reduce violence and (b) criminal organizations have achieved organizational cohesion and leadership that facilitate territorial control and strategic dependability. These conditions allow organizations to regulate violence. Our argument highlights the importance of how violence is performed and, more importantly, its visibility, to fully understand criminal behavior within pacts. It also points to potential lessons for countries seeking alternatives to reduce criminal and political violence in Latin America and elsewhere.

Recuperar el control estatal en territorio de la Mara Salvatrucha: un análisis a partir del acuerdo “Santa Tecla Municipio Libre de Violencia”

Este artículo presenta la primera parte de una investigación más amplia sobre el control social y territorial de la Mara Salvatrucha en la colonia San José del Pino y la comunidad San Rafael, ambas del municipio de Santa Tecla. En un estudio de caso en el marco de una Maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos en la Universidad de Ámsterdam, se han mapeado los efectos de las políticas preventivas de seguridad pública en la zona, con énfasis en la estrategia “Santa Tecla Municipio Libre de Violencia” (MLV). El artículo analiza los efectos del proceso de pacificación, generado a partir de 2012 con la implementación de la filosofía de policía comunitaria y la estrategia MLV, para el tejido social y el sostenimiento local en las comunidades mencionadas. También se evalúa la recuperación de la gobernanza local después de décadas de ausencia estatal en la zona. Como resultado de las nuevas políticas de seguridad pública, los índices de delincuencia han bajado, el temor ha disminuido, el sostenimiento local ha mejorado, y valores y redes sociales están reestablecidas. Sin embargo, es necesario crear una política de seguridad pública que le dé sostenimiento a mediano y largo plazo a las demandas y necesidades del sector, independientemente de quién gobierne el municipio; este esfuerzo no puede detenerse si se quieren resultados positivos.Revista Policía y Seguridad Pública 5(1) 2015: 179-246