Social Causes and Consequences of Maras in Central America

The subject that I have chosen for my essay is: ‘Maras in Central America. Analyse its social causes and consequences’ – a gang that operates on territories of Central and Latin America. During writing my essay I want to analyse the phenomenon of how a not that big community of Salvadoran young immigrants has been transformed into one of the most dangerous and the largest gang groups in the United States and Northern Central America in about 30 years. Also I would like to analyse and present social causes and consequences of Las Maras. The past 20 years has been an escalation of crime in Central America. Surprisingly not in Colombia but in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are one of the most dangerous countries in the world. According to

data from years 1998-2008 the homicide rates have rising tendency of homicides in Central America.

That high homicide rate in Central America is directly related to the fact that on the territories of the countries in Central America spend about seventy thousands members of Las Maras or Barrio 18.

These criminal organizations are now one of the biggest challenges not only to the security of Central American countries, but also the United States.
Gangs of Maras are characterized by unusual cruelty, whose members are recruited mainly among very young people. The youngest members are in age range 9-20 years old and the belong to one of the three groups that gangs are divided in.

The name of the gang is Mara Salvatrucha or shortly MS, Mara or MS-13. The etymology of the name is not clear but according to Urban Dictionary ‘the word "Mara" refers to the Spanish word for "gang", and "Salvatrucha" (which is Spanish slang) for "Salvadoran army ant". Alternatively, it is suggested that "Salvatrucha" refers to the Salvadoran peasant guerrillas, the source of much of the gang's early manpower’. The number 13 that appears in the name of the gang has been added to show respect for the Mexican mafia La Eme and also for an alliance with the gang. Number 13 also because the letter ‘M’ is the 13th letter on the Alphabet.
The origins of the MS should be look in 1980s in Los Angeles but the majority of the gang members were from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. As a result of internal conflicts and political instability thousands of residents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were forced to emigrate to north through Mexico to the United States. Most of them were settled in poor, marginalized, minority areas with a high rate of criminality. The neighbourhoods were full of gangs, crime and gangs so the only way to survive and protect themselves was to adapt to existing lifestyle. Among them were many young people who took an active part in the tearing their countries civil wars. For example Civil War in El Salvador in 1980s or a Civil conflict in Guatemala ended by signing Peace Accords in 1996. Due to the lack of education, they had no hope of finding work in the United States. A large group of refugees found shelter in Los Angeles - the city that later played a huge role in the creation of MS-13. Los Angeles has already existed criminal world and one of the things that immigrants had, was the ability to use weapons and their war experience. In the absence of opportunities to get a job, joining a criminal organization was for many of them an obvious step. Ernesto Miranda, one of the founders of MS, said about his experience: ‘In this country (in El Salvador) taught us to kill our countrymen, even regardless of relationship. If your father was your enemy, you had to kill him. The training that we received during the war, helped us to In order to create one of the most violent gangs in the United States’.
Among the immigrants they were also young people without any parental care and they had to cope with difficult life conditions.

Bringing up on the streets of big cities, young Latin Americans were joining to existing gangs or creating their own. Some of them, mainly Salvadorians joined The 18th Street Gang and other groups, recruited mainly from among Chicanos (Americans of Mexican origin) and Mexicans. However, with the development of the Salvadoran community in the United States there was a need to create an entirely new group, that would give young people a sense of national identity. The first was the Mara Salvatrucha gang which initially focused only Salvadorans and later also people from other countries of Central America. In the meantime in Central American countries first Maras started appearing. Weakened by internal conflicts in Guatemala and El Salvador, many people lived in very bad life conditions, being practically excluded from the society. Maras in these countries were created mostly by groups of young people that shared power between themselves in various districts and parts of the country. In 1992 in Los Angeles, there were many blood riots which drew the attention of American police to the significant increase in activity of street gangs. Anti-gang policy in the United States tightened. In 1994 created the Law "Three Strikes and You're Out" as a result of which people convicted of three or more offenses receive much higher sentences. The next step in the fight against Latin American gangs was the adoption by the US Congress in 1996 the new anti-immigration law. People without citizenship of the United States who have been convicted at least one year of imprisonment were deported to their countries of origin. Interestingly, even US citizens who had Latin roots could be deprived of their citizenship rights and treated in the same way as immigrants. At the same time the list of crimes for which threatened deportation became increasingly longer. As a

result thousands of young criminals whose families immigrated to the United States in the 1980s had to return to the countries they were practically strangers to. These people often didn’t even know Spanish language, which further hampered their assimilation in a new environment. They had no prospects and had only contacts in gangster underworld and education in a specific culture of violence and lack of respect for the law. Due to social alienation, compounded by the fact that their families usually were left in the United States, these people were happy to join the already existing criminal organizations. They brought with them characteristic of their native gangs customs, symbols, tattoos, style of dress and language code. From their broken Spanish with English and emerging new slang called Spanglish.
Authorities of republics in Central America initially did not react to this suspicious wave of deportations. Moreover, under the new immigration law, North American officials could not share information about their criminal past newcomers. Meanwhile, in the countries of Central America they formed the so-called. maras clones, kind subsidiary that took over the name of their North American counterparts. This way, in El Salvador appeared Mara Salvatrucha and The 18th Street Gang. Over time, these smaller groups have started to be called cliques (Spanish. clicas) and gradually integrated into a larger, transnational structure of the criminal organization. For example, MS-13 has 20,000 members in the United States, 4,000 in Canada and a significant force in Mexico. But it is hard for a reliable number because hard to determine who and on what basis belongs to the maras.