If you don't know, you better find out

Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13). Over 100,000 members in six countries and 33 American states, including Minnesota. MS 13 is called the world's most dangerous gang, and rightly so. MS 13 is a very organized and hierarchical gang. They gain control through violence and maintain power by instilling fear in all who cross their path.


La Mara Salvatrucha (Mara meaning gang and Salvatrucha Salvadoran slang for army ants) got its start as many gangs do, out of necessity for protection. In 1979, civil war broke out in El Salvador. Thousands fled their war torn country and sought refuge in the United States. Where they ended up wasn't much different. There were still sounds of gun shots, bullet sprayed homes, police and governmental corruption, and poverty. It wasn't San Salvador, it was the mean streets of Los Angeles, California.

Black and Mexican gangs terrorized the new refugees. What started out as a way for young men to protect themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods soon spiraled out of control. Today, in Los Angeles alone MS 13 contributes to the more than 5,000 gang related crimes committed each year. That is just under 14 per day, one every two hours.

MS 13 is made up of hundreds of cliques. Each clique is responsible for defending their turf, to the death. Every block they control brings in money for the gang. They tax trucks for parking on their streets, tax street vendors half of what they make for the 'privilege' of selling food on 'their' streets, they even tax drug dealers hundreds of thousands of dollars for drugs they don't even have to touch.


So what to do about this fast growing problem? Try to stop them? Put them in jail? Expel them from the inner city? Deport them? Local and federal law enforcement has tried all those options, the only thing it did was make Mara Salvatrucha more vicious, and stronger in numbers. Increased interaction with police has just inspired hatred and allowed them to adapt in ways that make it harder to find them and put them to justice. Prison isn't punishment for these gangsters, its more like special training. The knowledge they gain from experienced and hardened criminals is more like finishing school. By pushing MS 13 members out of the city merely transfers the problem to the country. Deportation just spreads the problem. Deported gangsters establish new cliques all over Mexico and Central America, they recruit and train a whole new bunch of young men, and increasingly more young women.

While its terrible what they do to their enemies: shooting them point blank in the face for tresspassing, hacking off fingers of those who refuse to join with machetes, severing genitals and feeding them to their dogs, and decapitating them, it is even more disgusting what they are doing to their members.

By recruiting young members, they are destroying lives of countless boys and girls, depriving them of any chance at a normal future. Not only the mental effects of being beaten, forced to kill, made to defend territory that will never actually belong to them, sending them to do life sentences in prison, but also physically marking their bodies and faces ensures no one will ever hire them, they will always be harrassed by police and will never be able to shake their past. Recruitment is a vital part of MS 13. Jester, a 20 year old member of MS 13 joined the gang when he was only eight years old. At age nine he shot and killed a rival gang member. In 11 years with the gang he has shot more than 20 people.

Brenda Paz, driven by guilt committed the cardinal sin of any gang, she turned rat. She became an informant and gave the FBI invaluable information about La Mara Salvatrucha, secrets guarded by silence. At 17, and pregnant with her first child, she got what she knew was coming. She was stabbed more than 12 times by her friends, the people gang leaders chose to execute her sentence.

MS 13 goes to elementary schools, junior highs and juvenile detention centers to recruit members. By the time these children are in high school and affiliated with the gang, they go through the initiation and become full fledged killers. That is, if they make it out alive. The initiation: no less than 13 seconds of beating by at least 6 members where the prospective gangster is not allowed to defend himself or herself. Not surprisingly, the body of seven or eight year old is not capable of such trauma, and some don't make it out alive.

Depressed yet? I am. As we walk to class, worry about homework and tests, what classes to take next semester, thousands of people are caught up in this game. It is a game, really. If you walk on my sidewalk, I kill you; if you look at me the wrong way, I kill you; if you don't pay me half of your hard earned money, I kill you; if you don't shoot me first, I shoot you; if you don't join me, I kill you. Except in this game, there are no extra lives, no reset buttons.

There has to be a better way. There has to be something more inticing for these kids than to get caught up in this game. A better escape from bad neighborhoods, discrimination, the general disadvantage that young Latinos face in this society.

Someone needs to step in and show these children that there is power in knowledge, not killing; honor in work, not hustling; dignity in serving their community, not destroying it.

That someone is me. That someone is you, too. We can't say it's not our problem, because it is.