by Ioan Grillo
CHAPTER 29
Many criminal organizations can be compared to diseases, but the analogy is used especially often for the Mara Salvatrucha. Police, academics, and even gang members themselves talk about how it is a “virus,” how it is “contagious,” and how it “mutates.” Its biggest contagion was from Los Angeles into the Northern Triangle.
As L.A. gang deaths rocketed, police realized the Maras were a real problem and looked for ways to get rid of them. This became easier from 1992 when the FMLN guerrillas and the Salvadoran government made a peace deal, which they signed in Mexico. The guerrillas and death squad leaders agreed they would put down their guns and fight via the ballot box. U.S. police and prison authorities were delighted. Now it wouldn’t be like they were deporting poor young men to a war zone; they were shipping them home to build a peaceful and prosperous nation. Planes left California for Salvador packed with Maras covered in jailhouse tattoos and buff from lifting weights in penitentiary gyms. It appeared to have an immediate impact on violence, with homicides dropping in L.A. from 1993 onwards.1 A reform of U.S. immigration laws in 1996 then made it even easier to get rid gang members, allowing deportation of foreigners who had committed minor offenses.
The Maras arrived in a shattered country. The economy was in pieces, infrastructure bombed to shreds, and many children were orphaned and half-starved, living in slums on the edge of San Salvador. Furthermore, the peace deal gutted the old repressive security services and replaced them with a new civilian police force that had to start from scratch. Amid this chaos, the planeloads of gang deportees often arrived with no details of their criminal activities and went straight onto the street. They attracted a following.
“The streets were full of children, orphans, directing traffic for coins,” says the anthropologist Martinez. “To this place, so poor, so depressed, without education, without health, without money, without anything, came these guys, bulging with muscles and these splendid tattoos, saying ‘Hollywood Crazies’ or ‘Fulton Loco Salvatruchas,’ with tattoos on their faces and in their eyes, with Dickies and Ben Davies pants, baseball caps and sneakers. Here many kids hadn’t even seen sneakers or baseball caps. And these guys came from Los Angeles, which seemed like the best place in the universe. Kids queued up to join them.”
The deported gang members with their facial tattoos and Spanglish had little chance of finding jobs. Many couldn’t even find their families or homes. Instead, they protected themselves by recruiting armies of scraggly orphans to their side. Martinez describes a gang member who arrived aged thirty to sleep on the street and set up his own clique with fourteen homeless teenagers. They begged money and turned abandoned buildings into flophouses, or casas locas. The begging would gradually turn into extortion and they would become the power in the neighborhoods.
They also attracted more hardened members. Many soldiers and guerrillas who had been demobilized took to the streets to rob. The politicians no longer needed these shock troops from the slums. Instead, the Maras provided them with an organization where they could bring their murdering and torturing skills. In return, they taught the Maras battle tactics, such as ambushing and sabotaging. These war veterans became the bosses of many Mara cliques.
Some older Salvadoran gangs, which were really just corner crews, stood in the way of the new Maras. The Maras responded by annihilating them, wiping most off the map by the mid-nineties. The MS13 and Barrio 18 then turned on each other, bringing their L.A. war to the Salvadoran slums.
Viruses can produce different symptoms in different people. If the person is strong and healthy, he can resist the virus more than if he is malnourished and weak. Likewise, the Maras would have a more virulent effect in Central America than they had in L.A. In the robust United States, gangs were largely contained in ghetto areas and the death toll was limited. But in weakened Central America, they rapidly overwhelmed police. As they found they could get away with murder in Salvador, the Maras mutated their violence. They began to make new members commit a murder to join up. Those who left were given death sentences. And homicide rates rocketed.
The Salvadoran government sent police out with shoot-to-kill policies to the most gang-ridden neighborhoods. But gangsters simply moved, spreading the disease to all corners of the country. Some went into depressed rural areas, creating village gang chapters, a phenomenon rarely seen in the United States.
Not every gang member coming back from the United States wanted to stay in La Vida Loca, or gang life. But it was a struggle to get out of it.
Crazy Belly Luis came back in 1992. He wasn’t actually deported, but he wanted to see his mother after twelve years away. He found his old Barrio 18 comrades massing in a square called Plaza Libertad while nearby Morazan Square became an MS13 stronghold. As they spread into the neighborhoods, Luis had to watch where he moved in case gang members held him up and found a tattoo they could use as an excuse to kill him. He didn’t want to play these gang games anymore but was getting pulled back in. He got together with others like him in a group called Homies Unidos—reformed gang members trying to survive.
“When you get older, people realize, ‘I didn’t die in the gangs, now I want to live more. I want to go back to school. I want to get a job. I want to look after my children. I want to get calmado [to calm down].’ But a lot of people don’t want to give us a second chance.”
As the Salvadoran public became increasingly hostile to gangs, the government launched a crackdown it called Mano Dura (Hard Hand), in which it jailed thousands. But meeting in penitentiaries, Maras from round Salvador only better coordinated their network. And as they consolidated their forces, they pushed over the border into neighboring Honduras.
CHAPTER 30
When I ask Honduran gangbangers when their gangs turned crazy, they all point to a movie they call Vatos Locos. This was the Spanish title of a 1993 American film called Blood In, Blood Out, a very realistic take on Latino gangsters in Los Angeles. Before the movie came to Honduras, they tell me, the gangbangers used to look like characters from Michael Jackson videos. Literally. They actually modeled themselves on the Bad promo. After Vatos Locos came out, Honduran gangsters started dressing and acting like L.A. cholos.
I am suspicious of how much impact movies can really have. But every gang member I talk to in Honduras seems to know the film by heart. One of the first major street gangs even called itself Vatos Locos after the movie; it still controls chunks of territory in San Pedro Sula.
I find this depressing. Blood In, Blood Out is a finely made film that does its best not to glamorize gangs, but shows their brutality, their capacity to destroy lives, and the rape their members suffer in prison. Its protagonist ends up crippled and facing decades behind bars. But somehow this movie inspired Honduran youth. While fiction about gangsters is based on reality, fantasy can also shape what happens on the ground.
However, I know this movie doesn’t explain everything. The Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 causing terror in Honduras have direct links with the cliques in Salvador and Los Angeles. To find out how they were established, I need to talk to the older Honduran Mara leaders. Most are in prison.
I go through the official channels in Honduras trying to get access to the prisons. But people don’t return calls, and I almost give up. Finally, the crime journalist Orlin shows me how it is done. I was approaching it the wrong way, he explains. I don’t need the government to authorize me to go into the jails. I need permission from the prisoners, the real authority there.
Working with prisoner leaders, we get into two penitentiaries, one in San Pedro and another in the city of Progreso. I had been in prisons in several Latin American countries. But I was still astounded by what I saw. Honduran jails suffer from claustrophobic overcrowding, stinking sewage, and filthy drinking water. But the most surprising thing was how much freedom the prisoners have.
In the San Pedro jail, once you go through the defensive layers of police and soldiers, it is like entering a prisoner-run ghetto. Inmates wan
der round freely without guards in sight, cooking their own food and running their own shops. Wives and girlfriends pass the whole day among them, some scantily dressed. The prisoners have walkie-talkies and smart phones with sporadic web connections.
The inmates also have dogs. I was amazed when I saw the first prisoner with a mutt on a lead. But there are a dozen in the San Pedro penitentiary. Most are fighting dogs like pit bulls. I watch a prisoner grabbing a young pit bull’s jaw and making him snarl and bite hard. Another fully grown pit bull barks at me. I hear they put them into dogfights. I ask what they are called and smile when they tell me. One is named Crimen, or Crime, another Sicaria, or Assassin, another Gringo.
To stop a bloodbath, authorities divide the prisoners in San Pedro into four main wings. One is for the Mara Salvatrucha, another for the Barrio 18, another for non-gang criminals, who they call paisas, and another for corrupt police.1 The paisas are the largest faction with more than two thousand in their wing, and include plenty of paid assassins, drug traffickers, rapists, and kidnappers of their own.
A paid assassin called Chepe used to run the paisa wing and was regarded as a strong boss. Back in 2011, a rival paisa prisoner challenged Chepe’s rule so he chopped his head off, walked through the yard holding it up, and tossed it over the wall to the guards. However, some months before I visit, Chepe was released and killed on the street, reportedly by Maras.
This murder has caused bitter tension between the paisas and the Maras who are in the neighboring section. When I go into the jail, this tension is reaching boiling point. The paisa prisoners are painting a huge mural of Chepe, with a saintly gaze. Meanwhile they are on red alert for a fight with the Maras. Many of them crowd by the main gate, keeping watch in case the Maras storm across the yard and besiege their section. And they have guns at the ready.
The firearms are of course the craziest, most surreal thing of all. I long knew that Latin American prisons are full of guns because of all the shooting deaths that occur. But it was still bizarre to see them. The prisoners have pistols, submachine guns, and even grenades. I see two prisoners wearing Uzis on the front of their chests, half hidden by knapsacks. Fights can turn to massacres.
I ask Orlin what is the best thing to do if inmates fire at each other while we are inside. He recommends hiding under a bed.
Prisoners don’t kick off during the Friday we are there. But twelve days later, they riot and fire their guns, killing three and injuring forty, including five guards who survive bullet wounds. Police storm cells and seize assault rifles, pistols, tear gas canisters, and bags of bullets. They leave the dogs.2
Over in the Progreso jail, I find a former Mara boss who was one of the first MS13 in Honduras. At thirty-five years old he is considered an elder, a Honduran OG. He goes by the name Lagrima, meaning “Tear,” and has teardrops tattooed on his face. When I ask him how he got this name, he smiles. “I used to cry a lot.”
Lagrima also has gaping Mara Salvatrucha tattoos on his chest and back, and the devil’s horn on his right shoulder. He is slim but wiry, in shape from lifting concrete weights in prison. Lagrima is He Who Holds the Word.
In a crowded jail patio, Lagrima explains how the Mara Salvatrucha spread into Honduras from neighboring Salvador. He himself was jumped into the Mara in Salvadoran territory.
Lagrima is from the Choluteca region, home to Honduras’s southernmost tip. He grew up in rural poverty, his father working on plantations and scraping to feed his six children.
“There was hunger all the time. That is what I remember from being a kid. It was hard to concentrate at school with pain in my belly. The only hope I had was going to the United States. From when I can remember I dreamed of heading there. Finally, when I got to thirteen I made my move. I left without saying anything to my family and headed to El Norte.”
Hondurans emigrated to the United States later than Salvadorans, who themselves emigrated later than Mexicans. But since the 1990s, Hondurans have headed north in huge numbers. Honduras now relies on money that migrants send back for about 20 percent of its gross domestic product—compared to 3 percent in Mexico. It is a huge pulling force, drawing thousands of teenagers northward; migration is a coming of manhood for many youths.
Still, Lagrima’s trip was ambitious. He was just thirteen and left with nothing but the clothes on his back. The quickest way north was through Salvador. He trekked and begged his way to the Honduran border, crossed over and arrived at a Salvadoran town called San Miguel. That was as far north as he got. It was 1992, the year that the planes of deportees arrived.
“I was walking through San Miguel and begging change for food. I was hungry but I had known hunger all my life. Then I saw this group of guys on the corner. They had tattoos on their faces and looked really crazy. They called me over. I was scared at first. But they told me not to worry and gave me Coca-Cola and chicken and I was really happy. So I stayed with them. They had a house they slept in so I could stay off the street.”
The Maras who Lagrima found were in a clique called the Coronado Little Cycos. Their leaders had been in the United States, and their English phrases, clothes, and stories of Los Angeles neighborhoods all impressed him. Soon he was talking about Coronado, Hollywood, and Leeward like he knew the places. He hung on to their words, and they enjoyed his attention.
“They treated me like a pet. They would have fun shaving my head and dressing me up in their style. They would send me off to buy drinks or get their food. I was happy, because I ate better than I did at home. And I was with these people that were almost American. I thought I was going somewhere.”
The missions soon got heavier than going to the shops. The clique told Lagrima that to become a member he would have to kill. They gave him a pistol and ordered him to go into a neighborhood controlled by the Barrio 18. It was a tough test that could easily end in death.
“I was scared but I wanted to be part of the crew. I hid the gun and walked in and there was an Eighteen on the street talking to someone. He had his gang name tattooed right on his face. I was just thirteen years old and still skinny and scruffy and he thought I was just some street kid so I got close. Then I pulled out the gun and shot him point blank, like four times. After I fired, I ran for my life. I ran like I was never going to stop. And when I got back the homies were pleased with me and jumped me in.”
As the Mara Salvatrucha mutated in Central America, its initiation beatings also got harder. As well as kicking and punching during the count of thirteen, they would beat initiates with sticks. Some would suffer injuries or even be killed before they began gang life. Once the beating finished, Lagrima was reborn, with his new name and new people.
“You leave your old family behind. The Mara became my family.”
Lagrima came of age with the clique, growing older and more murderous as they gained power. He forgot about his dream of going to the United States as he made his life in this Salvadoran city, able to live from shakedown money. His parents never heard from him. When he reached twenty, he was an accomplished killer and extortionist. And he graduated. His boss sent him back to Honduras to set up his own clique. He would become He Who Holds the Word in Choluteca. It was 1999.
Lagrima describes this move into Honduras as a deliberate tactic by the Salvadoran Maras. Around the same time, he says, a Salvadoran gangster called Maldito, or Wicked, also set up cliques in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. The Salvadorans saw the neighboring country as fresh territory that they could sweep into. Scattered cliques of Maras may have emerged in Honduras before this. Gangs of the Vatos Locos, inspired by the movie, were also around. But the Maras really rose in numbers in Honduras from the turn of the millennium.
Both Lagrima and Maldito were from the Coronado Little Cycos, so this has become one of the most common factions (or what they call programas) of the Mara Salvatrucha in Honduras. Other Mara factions there include the Normandy and Hollywood Locos.
The basic organization of the Maras is easy to see. The gang is formed by c
liques with some thirty to 150 fully fledged members controlling a particular territory—a neighborhood or small town. These core players are referred to as activos, or active members. Around them are people who work for the Maras or just hang around with them, whom they call “sympathizers.” There are normally hundreds of sympathizers around each clique. They might do lower-level jobs such as spying or delivering drugs or even carrying out murders, but they have not been jumped into the gang. Each clique has its leader, He Who Holds the Word, and his Mano Derecha, or Right Hand.
“It is like the president and vice president,” Lagrima explains. “If He Who Holds the Word is out of action for some reason, the Right Hand takes over.”
It is more complicated to make sense of how the Mara operates at a national and international level. Lagrima describes how he would meet with other clique leaders in Honduras to decide certain issues by majority decision. But he tells me how he would always have a boss he reported to.
In some aspects, it works like a multilevel marketing scheme. A Mara forms a clique and recruits his operatives. When he lets one of those operatives form his own clique, they are still loyal to him. This generates warlords with their own pyramids inside the greater structure.
Yet there are other factors at play. Members can challenge and dethrone clique leaders. Some Mara bosses become regional leaders, overseeing a number of cliques in cities and states. Most of the veteran leaders are in prisons, and each prison has its own leader, He Who Holds the Word, among Mara inmates. The Mara leaders in the biggest prisons become the most powerful Maras in their countries. However, who holds power between Maras in different countries is murky.
Lagrima recruited about seventy active members into his clique, or seventy “locos” (madmen), as he described them, along with hundreds of hangers-on. I ask him how you control a clique.
