Page 78 - History of War - Issue 29-16

BRIEFING

were funding anti-Sandinista rebels – had not A French-made Panhard
only embarrassed the Reagan administration AML armoured car used by
but undermined its vast project to defeat the Ejército de El Salvador
communism in Central America. When the
1992 Chapultepec Accords – signed in Mexico
City – ended the civil war, the Salvadoran
Diaspora, who had sought reprieve in the US,
was incubating a new threat to their homeland.
It was in Los Angeles where poor and
embattled Salvadoran families, somewhat
relieved to have escaped the death squads
and the guerrillas who recruited children, came
under attack from the Hispanic community. This
milieu, where Mexicans and other nationalities
abused the fresh off the bus (and boat)
Salvadorans, metastasised into the maras,
named after the army ant in Central America.
The maras were the children looking after
themselves in the mean streets of eastern
Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. The
MS-13 has no de nite point of origin, except
for its founder, Ernesto ‘Smokey’ Miranda, had
grown disillusioned with the organisation he
created upon reaching adulthood. Once he was
deported to El Salvador by the US government,
Miranda became an elder statesman for
the gang, and attempted to advocate for Civilians are evacuated to prevent
human rights and job opportunities to help them being caught in the cross re as
incarcerated MS-13 members. government forces sweep the area
But Miranda was gunned down, too, in 2006,
a sorry death similar to how MS-13 eliminated
its enemies; assassinated the way right-wing
death squads did it during the civil war.
To pinpoint the singular moment when MS-13
grew from a teenage gang to a crime syndicate
is rather dif cult. Maybe during the 1980s its
members invented a culture and a distinct set
of norms – attire, hand signals, iconography –
that set it on the warpath against its nemesis:
the Barrio 18.
It’s assumed that between the late 1990s
and the 2000s the in ux of Americanised
gang members in El Salvador allowed them
to ourish in their newfound underworld.
Facing rejection and discrimination from the
Salvadoran government, the maras – especially
MS-13 – rallied, recruited, and found lucrative
opportunities in kidnapping and other petty
criminal activities.
The scale of these enterprises, not to
mention the resulting high body count,
compelled the right-wing and pro-American
ARENA president, Francisco Flores, to
launch the Mano Dura in 2003. This was an
uncompromising purge of gang members from
the streets and into the prisons.
What Mano Dura achieved was to turn the
subculture of gangs into a counter-culture,
a vicious alternative to the societal decay
prevalent in ‘normal’ El Salvador. Crowded
into jails, and living in abysmal conditions, the
rites of gang membership assumed a false
sacredness. To be initiated meant joining in

2003 2009 2012 2013 2014
The mass deportation of With 71 homicides per Gang leaders of MS-13 and Barrio Even if the MS-13 and Barrio Former FMLN guerrilla commander,
Salvadoran gang members 100,000 people, El Salvador 18 broker a truce to de-escalate 18 truce leads to a drop in Salvador Sánchez Cerén, wins over
imported MS-13 to its homeland is the most violent country in their activities in homicides, crime gang members continue the ARENA candidate during the
and the maras’ numbers reach the Western Hemisphere. The kidnapping, and extortion. The murdering each other. The truce presidential elections. Statistics
thousands. President Francisco rivalry between MS-13 and agreement forged in an undisclosed collapses by the year’s end and gathered mid-year reveal 14
Flores launches the plan Mano Dura Barrio 18 has spilled over to maximum-security prison is the Salvadoran police continue homicides are committed per day
to crack down on gang activity. Honduras and Guatemala. guarded by hundreds of soldiers. suppressing gang activity. across El Salvador.

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