Masked
members of the 18th Street gang give a press conference inside the San
Pedro Sula prison in Honduras, Tuesday, May 28, 2013. Honduras' largest
and most dangerous street gangs have declared a truce, offering the
government peace in exchange for rehabilitation and jobs. A Mara
Salvatrucha spokesman says the gang and a rival known as 18th Street
will commit to zero violence and zero crime in the streets as first step
show of good faith. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
Gang
violence, fueled by the drug traffic in Latin America, Central America,
and the Caribbean, is having a serious effect on people’s lives and
threatens to alter the social fabric of the countries in the region.
Central American gangs, also called maras, named after the voracious
ants known as marabuntas, are involved in a wide range of criminal
activities, such as arms and drug trafficking, kidnapping, human
trafficking, human smuggling, and illegal immigration.
One of the
best-known Central American gangs, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has an
estimated 70,000 members who are active in urban and suburban areas. It
originated in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts
of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. The gang’s
activities have caught the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, which have conducted raids and arrested
hundreds of gang members. The FBI called MS-13 “America’s most violent
gang.”
MS-13 has been particularly active in Los Angeles County,
the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Long Island, New York
City, and the Boston area. Their code of conduct includes fierce revenge
and cruel retribution. Members of this gang were originally recruited
by the Sinaloa in their battle against the Los Zetas Mexican cartels in
their ongoing drug war south of the U.S. border.
Many gang members
living in the U.S. have been deported back to El Salvador, Honduras,
and Guatemala, adding to the already serious social problems in those
countries. They brought with them crack cocaine and predictably,
drug-related crimes were soon on a steep increase. Those gang members
deported from the United States enlarged the local groups and found easy
recruits among the local disenfranchised youth. Today, most of the
members are in their 20s, while their leaders are in the late 30s and
40s.
The gangs’ battles with the police for control of
working-class neighborhoods were met in each case with strong-arm
tactics by the police. They also proved unproductive, since they
unleashed more random violence and terror. As a result of each
government’s efforts to eliminate them, many gang members returned to
the United States, where they continued their involvement in criminal
activities. Today, the gangs have expanded into southern Mexico,
Colombia, and Brazil, which has generated calls for a more organized
effort to combat them.
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