The signs of the influence of the United States on Central America are everywhere: McDonald’s and KFC, movies and sportswear. Less easy to spot is one export that has a devastating effect on the region: gang culture.
Six years ago the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (Iirira) was introduced in the US, which allowed the ”expedited removal” of immigrants who had committed crimes.
This has led to the deportation to Central America of thousands of gang members, mainly from the Los Angeles region, who arrived in the US as children with their parents. Back in Central America they are retaining their organisational structures. Gang ”franchises” have taken hold in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
The influence of US gang culture is evident in poor neighbourhoods, or barrios, across Central America.
There are local variations on a dress code of baggy clothes, baseball caps and chains; a defined taste in music (much of it Latino rap and hip-hop); a semiology in tattoos, graffiti and hand signs, and a slang peppered with imported words like broderes (brothers) and ”homies”. Most damaging is a fashion for extreme violence that has found an easy home in countries with violent histories.
In El Salvador, with a population of six million, a survey put gang membership at 20 000. Gang members are thought to be responsible for 10% of El Salvador’s annual murder rate of 120 killings per 100 000 people. The economic impact is huge: a study commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank found that 12% of gross national product is spent on dealing with violence and its consequences.
In Guatemala, with a population of 13-million, the police calculate that there are more than 300 gangs with a total membership of 200 000. In Honduras, with a population of six million, there are said to be 60 000 gang members.
The two major international ”franchises” are the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) and the Mara 18a (also known as MS-18 and Calle 18). Local branches of these gangs are involved in major crime, from smuggling drugs and weapons to kidnapping and hijacking.
The spread of the gangs has its origins in the conflicts that have racked Central America for the past 25 years. In the early 1980s more than a million refugees fled to the US during El Salvador’s civil war, which killed 75 000 people.
Some had ties with La Mara, a street gang from the capital, San Salvador. Others had been members of groups like the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation front (FMLN). Many settled in Los Angeles and found themselves in conflict with local Latino gangs.
Al Valdez, a district attorney investigator for Orange County in California specialising in gangs, said that initially the gangs were formed for self-protection, but ”quickly developed a reputation for being organised and extremely violent”. According to Valdez, MS has expanded across the US, Canada and Mexico.
”MS is unique in that, unlike traditional US street gangs, it maintains activities with MS members and factions in El Salvador. Mara Salvatrucha is truly an international gang.”
Deportations to El Salvador began after the Iirira was passed, and now about 300 arrive from the US every month.
Miguel Cruz, a Salvadorean academic and author, said: ”Only a few of the deportees are criminals, but they have a significant influence on the local gang members. They quickly become leaders and role models for the youngest.”
Increased sophistication is one thing the deportees bring. Oscar Alavarez, Honduras Minister of Security, said a police raid on one gang last week uncovered a book that detailed all their transactions, from the costs of transport to ammunition. ”They communicate on the Internet. They run the gangs like a business.”
Jorge Hernandez, Honduras Minister of the Interior, said the influence of the gangs now permeated the country’s entire way of life. The government is spending $30-million a year on projects to take people out of the gangs, but resources are limited and the gangs are growing.
The official response in Central America has been a mix of repression and attempts to open a dialogue with gangs and young people: about a third of the region’s population are under 10, half under 20. In Nicaragua, the police set up ”prevention committees” and began visiting gang members and their families.
The hope is to prevent MS and Mara 18 taking hold there. The organisation Ceprev has worked with more than 3 000 pandilleros (gang members) over the past six years in one district of Managua with the aim of improving their relations with their families. Director Monica Zalaquette says: ”The problem is not economic poverty, it is the poverty of our family culture — that’s what we have to change.”
Bruce Harris of Casa Alianza, which works with at-risk young people in Central America, said: ”For years, the authorities have left young people without hope, without access to school or jobs, and the only governmental response to youth dissent has been repression.
”We have forced the kids to the extremes of society, and they have responded with violence. Gangs can no longer be ignored, especially if we want to live in peace.” — Â