Global Gangs: Street Violence across the World

6. Maras and the Politics of Violence in El Salvador

123 6 Maras and the Politics of Violence in El Salvador José Miguel Cruz Where does Mara Salvatrucha come from? How did the U.S.-­ born Eighteenth Street Gang become a powerhouse of the Salvadoran streets? The Mara Salvatrucha, also known as the MS-­ 13, and the Eighteenth Street Gang, branded also as Barrio 18, are the two major youth gangs in El Salvador and Central America. According to different sources (Aguilar and Miranda 2006; USAID 2006), between 2002 and 2006, both gangs comprised more than 87 percent of gang membership in El Salvador. These gangs are known not only because of their control of Salvadoran neighborhoods and most of the prisons nowadays but also because they have evolved to become powerful criminal groups with the capacity of setting extensive extortion networks across the region. These organizations form a network of street gangs dwelling in every country of the North American hemisphere from Canada to Honduras. Yet the common answer to the question as to why MS-­ 13 and the Eighteenth Street Gang are the major gangs in El Salvador and Central America is usually narrowed to the backward-­ and-­ forward migration of Salvadorans to the United States. The evidence points to a more intricate response. Migration and deportation policies in the United States have indeed played an important role in boosting the phenomenon of street gangs in El Salvador, but it is an overstatement to say that the dominance of MS-­ 13 and the Eighteenth Street Gang in Central America and their seemingly growing transnational character are essentially the result 124    josé miguel cruz of the circular Salvadoran migration to the United States. Should we accept this argument alone, we would find it difficult to explain why the Eighteenth Street Gang, a gang originally formed by Chicanos and Mexican immigrants during the late 1960s, has not put down roots in Mexican soil as it has done in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras or why the Belizean Crips and Bloods have not developed in the same way as the Salvadoran gangs. Gangs are the outcome of different factors. Marginalization, migration , street cross-­ culturalization, and—­ what I shall call—­ the politics of violence being key to explaining the rise and predominance of the youth gangs in El Salvador, also locally known as maras. This chapter draws substantial theoretical insight from the work of Vigil (2002) on multiple marginalization, Hagedorn (2008) on gang institutionalization, and Decker on the dynamics of gang violence (Decker 1996; Decker, Bynum, and Weisel 1998; Decker and Van Winkle 1996) and is based on the research program on gangs developed by the University of Central America in San Salvador (Aguilar 2007; Carranza 2005; Cruz and Portillo Peña 1998; ERIC et al. 2001; Santacruz-­Giralt and Ranum 2010; Santacruz and Concha-­ Eastman 2001). It argues that the main reason as to why Salvadoran gangs have ended being the powerful criminal organizations they were by the early 2010s is a direct yet unintended result of the mano dura (firm hand) policies that were developed in El Salvador—­ and in Central America in general—­ during 2003–­ 6 as well as the violence generated by extralegal violent actors stemming from state institutions and civil society. The fundamental argument is that Salvadoran gangs transformed into more hierarchical and organized groups, capable of setting complex extortion rackets on the population , as a result of their need to face consequences of government crackdowns. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section quickly addresses the factors that lie behind the emergence of gangs as a major social issue in El Salvador, then the second reviews the path of gang strengthening, paying special attention to the unintended contribution of the mano dura policies in the transformation of street gangs in El Salvador and the internal processes through which they became street powerhouses not only in El Salvador but also in the region. Finally, the chapter explores the link between gangs and violence in a country considered one of the most violent nations in the western hemisphere (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2007). maras and the politics of violence in el salvador    125 The Emergence of Salvadoran Maras Reports place the emergence of urban youth gangs in El Salvador in the 1960s following the processes of increasing urbanization and industrialization that the country began to experience in the 1950s (Savenije and van der Borgh 2006; Smutt and Miranda 1998). However, youth...