This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha

by Samuel Logan

  Hundreds of Salvadoran immigrants fled the civil war that raged across their country in the 1980s, settling in Culmore, a six-block area near Bailey’s Crossroads in Fairfax County: Culmore had become a hub for the refugees, where Spanish was the first language, housing costs were low, and groups of day laborers could almost always find work.

  Pioneering immigrants served as anchors in the United States for a long line of relatives and friends who would follow them there, seeking a better life. It was a simple pattern: Once established, the pioneers sent word that they had arrived and where they were situated; others followed. Soon the lack of space in small apartments became a problem.

  If someone was not already sleeping on the balcony, it was used as outdoor storage space. Couches and tables were exiled from the living room to make room for more beds. Hot cots, they called them. The sleeping rotation was so tight, the beds never had enough time to dissipate heat. Adults had priority for mattresses, and the kids fought over any that remained. The middle was a coveted spot. Those who didn’t have a bed slept on the floor wherever there was space—in the bathroom or on the linoleum under the kitchen table. There were so many inhabitants in these one-bedroom apartments that they slept in shifts and ate meals on the run.

  For new arrivals, life was about keeping a low profile and earning as much money as possible to send home. Fathers left behind their families. Married couples left their children with grandparents. The parents always left home with a promise: we will send for you when the time is right.

  Years might pass, sometimes ten or more. More children were born in the United States. When reunion was finally possible, the older children who traveled to the United States experienced the severe culture shock of their new home, their parents’ new reality, and a biting truth: American-born children were always placed above the others. They were U.S. citizens. They could speak English and they had a future. In many cases, the children born in Central America were an afterthought, little more than a fulfilled promise made during a desperate time.

  The displaced kids, by the nature of their situation, triggered a crisis for each family. The parents were unable to devote much time to work through their family problems. Mom and Dad each worked two jobs. Earning money was paramount. The American-born siblings resented the newly arrived foreign siblings they had never met. The new arrivals didn’t even speak English and found further humiliation at school, where they were often held back a grade.

  When Denis was four or five, his parents left him and his sister with their grandparents and didn’t return for years. Denis had little contact with his parents, just the occasional phone call or letter. When his parents finally did send for him, the new home life he found in the United States was not a happy affair. He shared the house with two younger brothers. To him, they were strangers who also called his mother Mamá. Both were born in the United States, which gave them an unspoken level of status above him and his sister.

  There was also a whole new set of rules. English was the language at school and a constant source of frustration. Denis was in class with black and white kids, adding to the novelty of his experience. It was stressful. Culture shock and difficulty with the language was enough to keep Denis quiet for years.

  Denis was a decent kid who came from a troubled family. There were many kids from his community in the same situation. Some of them were punks and bullies. Others were quiet and didn’t bother to interact with anyone. Like Denis, they were all the result of dysfunctional family situations, one born by the breakup and reunification process many immigrant families endured. But most didn’t turn into killers.

  Once Denis joined the Mara Salvatrucha, he was in a world where he could speak Spanish and be understood. He was surrounded by respect, and as he grew older and did work for the gang, he gathered power. His power and rank in the gang also won him Brenda’s attention and loyalty.

  CHAPTER 15

  On a hazy summer day in mid-June, only days after Denis had shared his story of Joaquin’s murder with Brenda, they roamed the streets of Alexandria on the lookout for a car to steal.

  “I want a black Honda Accord,” Brenda told Denis.

  Hondas were Denis’s specialty and one of the MS’s favorite cars to steal—they had a number of compartments to hide guns. Lucky for Brenda, Denis had Honda master lock keys, obtained through another MS member. With one key he could get into any door, and with the other, he could start up just about any model. Stealing a Honda for him was as easy as walking up to his own car, getting in, and driving off.

  He had to be careful. Denis was wanted in Virginia for a number of different crimes, and there was talk on the streets that he was a prime suspect in the Joaquin Diaz murder. MS leaders thought Denis was too valuable to be arrested for driving a stolen car, but he didn’t care. Stealing a Honda was too easy.

  Near downtown Alexandria, Brenda spotted her new Honda, and the two quickly moved to break in and drive away. But when she looked inside, Brenda said to Denis, “No, not this one.” It had a baby seat in the back, and Brenda didn’t want to steal from a family. Denis shrugged and continued on. They would find another Honda soon.

  Denis started up the next Honda Accord they found with no problem, but the joy ride in the stolen car didn’t last long. As they rounded a corner in Arlington, not miles from where they had stolen the car in the first place, local police pulled them over for rolling through a stop sign. Arrest was not an option. Before the cop even got out of her car to ask for license and registration, Brenda and Denis jumped out and began running.

  The cop and her partner immediately ran after the two, shouting at them to stop. With the police in hot pursuit, Brenda and Denis dove into a building to hide in a janitor’s closet until the cops ran by. The cops, however, saw them enter the building and decided to wait.

  Brenda and Denis crept out of the building a short while later, sure of their escape, when the police, with guns drawn, shouted for the two to get on the ground. Swiftly, Denis and Brenda found themselves arrested, cuffed, and seated together in the back of an Arlington County cruiser. On the short trip to the station, Denis told Brenda in hushed tones, “Do what you have to do to take care of yourself.” He made a quick glance to make sure that the cops didn’t hear. “With my rap, I know I’m fucked, but you’ve still got a chance to get out,” he whispered.

  At the station, the cops separated Brenda and Denis to interview them. Then they were seated together again in the same room and were able to speak to each other. Denis quickly indicated that they should speak only in Spanish. He’d caught on that the officers couldn’t work out what they were saying.

  When they had fingerprinted Denis and scanned his sheet, not only had they confirmed that he was an MS leader, they had also discovered that he was wanted for a number of car thefts, a long list of misdemeanors, and a malicious-wounding charge, and that he was a key suspect in the Joaquin Diaz murder. The officers were worried that Denis was conveying important information to Brenda, information that they’d simply miss because they didn’t speak Spanish. They were forced to call in a Spanish-speaking officer, Detective Rick Rodriguez, to help them gather intelligence from Denis’s conversation with Brenda.

  Detective Rodriguez was Puerto Rican. He had seen many gangsters come and go over his extended beat as a street gang investigator. He had earned a reputation for tackling some of the toughest police work in Arlington County and had worked hard to earn the trust of the Latino community most afflicted by the MS and other gangs in his jurisdiction.

  Rodriguez’s tall stature, light-colored skin, and Anglo-American looks belied his Latino roots and closeness with the local Latino community. His charisma and hard-nosed approach to detective work perplexed and maddened gang members in the area, who had often dealt with his straight-shooter style of questioning and dry sense of humor. One minute he would bully suspects with his fast-forward personality and get them laughing with him the next, just before slapping on the cuffs. His squinty blue eyes missed nothing.
Through his diligent work, Rodriguez had arrested a number of MS members, enough to place him on their radar.

  When Rodriguez arrived, he listened carefully to the officers’ problem. In the interrogation room, Denis and Brenda kept saying “Simon,” like the name Simon, but not quite. It sounded more like something said in Jamaica, as in “Ya-mon.” The officers couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  As Rodriguez listened to the tapes, he began laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” one of the officers asked.

  “There is no ‘Simon.’ They’re saying ‘Si-món,’” Rodriguez revealed.

  “Yeah, but isn’t ‘Si-món’ the name Simon?” one of the officers asked, still confused.

  “Yes, but in the context of this conversation ‘Si-món’ is like you and I in police jargon saying ‘Ten-four’ or ‘Yes, I agree, I got it.’ So if I say to you, you know, ‘You want to go and have dinner at McDonald’s?’ you reply, ‘Si-món,’ it means yes. There is no one named Simon,” Rodriguez concluded with a chuckle.

  “Damn it, we wasted hours trying to figure that out.”

  As his amusement at the ease of his little translating job wore off, Rodriguez reflected on what the officers had stumbled upon here. When he had heard that Denis Rivera had been arrested, he immediately knew it was a lucky capture for all of them. The detective was familiar with various strategies and ideas to break up the MS in Arlington. One of the most useful, placing an informant inside the gang, was also extremely difficult. Rick was determined to take advantage of this arrest. It was an opportunity to flip Denis, convince him the weight of the law was on his shoulders, and gain that informant. Denis would have to cooperate or face many years behind bars. The only problem was that Denis was a hard-core killer. It would take more than a couple of hours in an interrogation room and a line of hard questions to soften up Denis Rivera—even harder to get him to the point where he would consider becoming an informant. But Rodriguez had to try. With this in mind, he made a call to Victor Ignacio, the one detective who had known Denis since he was a kid.

  Detective Ignacio looked every part of his name. Dark-skinned, with a well-trimmed moustache and a determined disposition, he was from the Dominican Republic, bilingual, a workaholic, and an excellent policeman. He volunteered to work undercover straight out of the police academy. Throughout a decade of investigative police work, Detective Ignacio had seen many kids come and go. A stoic expression was his default setting, broken up on rare occasion by a broad grin that never stayed long. Like Rodriguez, Detective Ignacio was a street gang expert and known among the MS as trouble, not someone to cross.

  In fact, Ignacio had worked with the National Park police for months to solve the Joaquin Diaz murder on Daingerfield Island. The nature of the murder and the evidence that had been found led investigators to believe it was a gang hit, so the Park police asked for Ignacio’s assistance with the investigation. With his help, the lead investigator had pinpointed Denis Rivera as a primary suspect.

  When Ignacio took Rodriguez’s call, as soon as he heard that Denis Rivera was in custody, he made arrangements for a special interview. Back at the Arlington Police Department, Rodriguez received a page from Ignacio, telling him he was in place. Rodriguez then walked over to the holding cell, signed Denis out, and took him to an interrogation room. Ignacio was waiting in the hall. Denis’s mother and aunt waited in a sitting room in another part of the building. When he rounded the corner, Denis took one look at Ignacio. He remembered the cop from years ago, knocking on his door as a rookie, coming to ask his mom some questions when his older sister ran away.

  How times have changed, mused Ignacio as he watched Rodriguez lead Denis down the hall in handcuffs. When Denis was in middle school, Ignacio had been called in to investigate a fight. Denis had been threatening kids with a machete. Ignacio couldn’t believe it at the time. He suspected Denis had developed a powerful need for attention. With both parents working, it hadn’t taken long for Denis and his sister to start acting out. Denis had started getting into fights and was caught trespassing on private property. Worse, he went after people who talked to the cops, people who got him into trouble. This type of vendetta separated Denis from the rest of the kids, thought Ignacio. As young as fourteen, Denis would start fights with just about anyone. He dared people to take him on simply out of spite or just because someone looked at him for too long. He had quickly become a very angry kid. His street name was Conejo, the Spanish word for rabbit. Small and compact, Denis was quick and could take a beating. At fifteen, he had all the toughness of any gang member. Though not in the MS at the time, he had all the makings.

  Ignacio had seen all the signs of a kid headed for gang life. As the boy grew and Ignacio kept his thumb on local issues, the one thing that remained true about Denis was his strong love for his mother. Yet there was simply not enough love and attention to go around. A combination of different factors created a growing gap between Denis and his family. And the wider the gap grew, the more he sought to fill the emptiness in his heart and his life with something outside the home. Like so many kids who had chosen to join street gangs, Denis decided to look for acceptance somewhere on the street. Ignacio thought that he had been a good kid to begin with, but things had changed. Denis was a changed man, wanted for murder, no longer just an angry boy. Denis was a gangster, no longer scared of him or any other cop. Ignacio wanted to try using Denis’s mother and aunt to soften him up and make the right decision to talk. That approach might have worked on the boy. He wasn’t sure it was going to work on the man.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rodriguez sat Denis in the interrogation room and left him to await Ignacio’s arrival. The room was a tight space with a metal table bolted to the floor, flush against a wall. One side had a handcuff chained to the table and a small metal stool affixed to the floor. An identical stool stood opposite the first.

  Ignacio entered the room with the National Park police investigator and got straight to the point. He told Denis he was looking at many years in prison, and the best thing he could do was cooperate. Ignacio was angling for information on the Daingerfield Island murder. He needed Denis to open up and tell them about what happened, but it was a long shot. Denis didn’t say a word. He was determined to hold out.

  Rodriguez detected silence and peeked through the small window in the door. He rapped his knucles on the glass and motioned for Ignacio to come out. Rodriguez was getting antsy and frustrated with Denis.

  He wanted to have a go at Denis but needed to run it by his colleague first. Denis had known Ignacio for a long time, so Rodriguez thought he could use that to their advantage. The plan sounded almost too simple, standard good cop, bad cop, but Rodriguez had found in his many years of investigating that a gang member’s anger was usually his number one weakness. He intended to tap into that anger full force.

  As the plan went, once Denis was good and fed up with Rodriguez, Rodriguez would leave the room and allow Denis to tell Ignacio whatever he wanted to say. Denis didn’t like Ignacio, but he knew him. The two had a long history, and a plausible foundation for trust. Rodriguez was counting on this.

  After hearing Rodriguez’s plan, Ignacio argued to hold off a little longer. He still had his own angle, with Denis’s mom and aunt waiting in another room. Ignacio was still betting on them. Both women were determined to talk to Denis, convinced they could get through to him as family, as blood. Ignacio was willing to give it a shot.

  First, Denis’s mother entered the room, her expression pained. She sat on the stool facing her son leaning forward, but she dared not reach out to caress his face. This was not the time or place to be soft. Denis would resent any physical act of emotion, she thought. Still, Denis’s mom looked at her son longingly, willing him to come clean—to become the young man she always wanted him to be.

  “Talk to the police,” she pleaded. “Tell them what you know.”

  Denis only stared forward. His silence pushed her further. It was a mother’s last chance to
save her child from the possibility of life behind bars.

  “Don’t take the blame for things that you’re not to be blamed for. Please, my son, help yourself,” she begged in a terse whisper.

  Still, Denis didn’t bat an eyelash. They sat in silence for a long moment before his mother heaved a sigh and looked at the ceiling, trying not to cry. She rose to leave, realizing with resignation that she had gotten nowhere. As she stood, Denis also rose and reached out to give her a hug, as if acknowledging that it would be his last opportunity.

  As Denis’s mom left, deflated, Ignacio ushered his aunt into the cramped interview room. She was tough and direct.

  “If you don’t talk to the police, they’re going to mess you up,” she said. Her voice was like a taut wire, high-strung but strong. “You’re gonna be put in prison. They’re gonna put everything on you and you’re going to pay the price,” she warned. Nothing she said fazed Denis. He knew the stakes. He wasn’t going to talk for anyone, not for his mom, not for his aunt, or for anyone else. This was child’s play.

  Rodriguez, watching through the glass, turned to Ignacio.

  “Why don’t I go in there,” Rodriguez offered. “Let me get under his skin so maybe he feels it’s better off for him to speak to you or somebody else,” he said.

  Ignacio finally agreed. Rodriguez pushed the door open and entered the interview room looking directly at Denis. He sat on the metal stool and stretched out his long legs, crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall. He was relaxed on the outside, but inside he was ready to rip into this kid.

  Rodriguez started slowly. After a few easy questions, he folded his legs under the stool and shifted his weight to the front of his seat, so he was just a foot away from Denis’s face. Rodriguez got louder with each question, closer to Denis’s personal space, until they were nearly nose to nose. He wanted to know names, places, dates, plans, everything, and was using all the verbal force he had to squeeze information out of Denis.