This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha

by Samuel Logan

  Brenda told him that long before the gang grew to the strength and stature it enjoyed in 2002, it had struggled for survival on the streets of Los Angeles. In the early 1980s, the Mara Salvatrucha was a group of Salvadoran males looking for a social space where they could express their own culture and manner of speaking in a world where many Latino cultures were forced to live in close proximity. They initially called themselves the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, wore long hair, listened to heavy metal, and wore Ozzy Osbourne T-shirts. These were little-known facts. Greg realized that the gang had come a long way from sitting around and head banging, moving on to extortion, fencing, stealing cars, and even killing people.

  As the MS gained numbers, Brenda explained, its presence in Los Angeles pushed against other local cliques in the Pico Union area of Los Angeles. Sometimes there were street fights, Brenda had heard. Members used bats and chains against their neighborhood rivals. They would beat them into submission, stripping their rivals of their shirt as trophies. But when a Mara Salvatrucha founder named Black Sabbath died in the mid-1980s, the nature of the gang changed. This was a turning point for the gang: what could have been a peaceful group of friends turned into something much more sinister.

  Black Sabbath’s death might have been forgiven. But then another member, Rockie, was killed with a shotgun after a woman had lured him into an ambush. His attackers left him to bleed out on the street. The Mara Salvatrucha Stoners declared war. They asked some of the other men in the Salvadoran community for help. These men were war veterans who considered gangbanging to be child’s play. But the murders of their countrymen represented a level of disrespect that was far beyond street fighting and stealing T-shirts for trophies. It was a knock against their pride in their country in a world where pride was one of the few things they had.

  They were the ones who brought the machete to the streets. As Brenda explained to Greg, in Central America, the machete was a tool of daily life used to harvest fruit, cut weeds, or maintain paths that snaked through the jungle. It was common to see men playing dominos with their machetes leaning against one leg. Greg surmised that the men who had joined the MS Stoners to avenge the death of Black Sabbath and Rockie had learned to use machetes to kill their enemies in El Salvador. A little research confirmed that they didn’t think twice about using their machetes to kill their enemies on the streets of Los Angeles.

  The war veterans’ violent tactics helped the Mara Salvatrucha capture turf in the area of Los Angeles near MacArthur Park and Pico Union, where many Salvadorans lived. Brenda told Greg how some of these communities were literally carved out with pure violence within miles of downtown Los Angeles and the palm tree–lined boulevards of Hollywood.

  But well-established Latino gangs in the same area were not about to be pushed around by the Salvadorans. Greg talked to cops about the early days of the Mara Salvatrucha and learned that in the mid-1980s, a call went out among all the allied Latino gangs in Los Angeles to target and kill anyone in the Mara Salvatrucha. It was an order, Greg considered, that extended beyond gang members and deep into the Salvadoran community.

  Gangs had to represent. Latino machismo and pride bred violence, and natural gang rivalries were born. The early members of the Mara Salvatrucha were more violent and willing to deal more death. Their low-technology brutality could not be matched. Turf controlled by rival Latino gangs eroded under the Mara Salvatrucha’s widening footprint. They showed no mercy, and after too many lives were lost, an older, more established gang sought to bring about peace.

  Greg already knew about the Mexican Mafia, a Mexican gang formed in California prisons in the 1950s. But he didn’t realize that it was at the top of the Latino gang pyramid in southern California. For decades, the Mexican Mafia had carved out a niche in the California prison system by treating its members with love and respect and its enemies with gruesome and unabashed death. By the late 1980s, the gang wielded unparalleled authority on the streets because it completely controlled the prisons in southern California. Like many prison gangs around the country, the leadership of the Mexican Mafia influenced activity outside the prison walls; any Latino gangster locked up in southern California had to answer to the Mexican Mafia once in prison.

  A quick call to a police contact in Los Angeles confirmed for Greg that most Latino gangs in southern California were aligned with the Mexican Mafia. It was a system that primarily prevented infighting among Latino gangs. It also allowed for smooth business transactions, mostly drug smuggling and wholesale drug dealing, between Mexican organized crime operating south of the border, and the Latino street gangs that operated in southern California.

  From Veto, Brenda had heard that the men who ran the Mexican Mafia in the late 1980s decided the rivalry between the Latino gangs and the Mara Salvatrucha was bad for business. They sought to force a truce by offering the Mara Salvatrucha membership within the Mexican Mafia’s street gang network. It would afford members of the MS more protection in prison and on the streets and create space for a truce with other Latino gangs. But the Mara Salvatrucha had to provide a regular tribute of cash or some sort of other valuable commodity to maintain membership. It was the same deal the Mexican Mafia offered every street gang that operated under its fiefdom. The leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha were not willing to pay the price.

  The Mexican Mafia knew it was better off with the MS as an ally, so the leaders made another offer. It was an offer focused on killing, something the members of the Mara Salvatrucha did better than most other gangs in the city. The MS could join the Mexican Mafia if they were willing to share their best hit men when the Mexican Mafia needed someone killed on the streets.

  Wrapping up her story, Brenda revealed that when the Mara Salvatrucha leaders agreed, the MS became a sureño gang, part of the southern California alliance. It became La Mara Salvatrucha Trece, or MS-13. The number 13 was the position of the letter m in the alphabet, and was added to show respect for the Mexican Mafia, often referred to as simply The M, or La Eme in Spanish. That makes sense, Greg thought. He had always wondered where the number 13 had come from.

  For a short while, the truce between the Mara Salvatrucha and the other Latino street gangs held, but old rivalries flared up, especially with a gang called the 18th Street. The bloodshed never reached previous levels, so the Mexican Mafia was content to let the rivalry continue with little oversight. Brenda said that so many MS members had been killed by 18th Street members, who in turn died at the hands of vengeful MS members, that a cycle of violence had become ingrained within the Mara Salvatrucha. Its violent posture toward any rival gang members in black, white, or Asian gangs extended to any rival MS members who were crossed. Chavalas, or members of rival gangs, were always ridiculed, beaten up if possible, or killed if necessary.

  Unilateral aggression created cycles of hate that kept gangbanging violence alive as new generations of recruits learned to hate any rival, providing members with a well-founded and socially acceptable reason for what most would see as senseless violence.

  As a sureño street gang, the MS-13 could rely on a solid foundation of authority and remain relatively safe within Los Angeles. From that foundation point the gang spread its influence throughout the United States, which is why Brenda first encountered the Mara Salvatrucha in Texas. By the time she met Greg, the Mara Salvatrucha counted over ten thousand members across the United States, with a presence in over forty states. Beyond the cities, the MS penetrated deep into rural towns and those one-blinking-light communities where local cops rarely patrolled in pairs and none spoke Spanish. The gang was as fluid as the labor market that attracted Latino immigrants. Wherever there was a Latino community, the MS burrowed in and thrived.

  “One day,” Brenda often said, “the Mara Salvatrucha will take over the United States.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Full of confidence, Brenda was happy about being the center of such attention. It was a position that thoroughly satisfied her extroverted nature. And her vast knowledge of the gang nev
er ceased to amaze Greg or anyone listening to her. She had told Ignacio he was the target of an MS plot to kill two policemen in Virginia. The other targeted cop had a physical description that matched Rick Rodriguez. That cop was in the most danger. And Brenda saved his life.

  When Rodriguez had helped his colleagues figure out what Denis was saying to Brenda soon after their arrest, he already knew MS members planned on killing two cops, but he didn’t know which ones. If Rodriguez had seen Denis that day when he listened to the tapes, Denis might have recognized him. Denis knew the MS wanted Ignacio dead, but he didn’t know the other cop’s name, only a physical description. Word had spread out among the MS that Ignacio and another cop, a bald guy who looked like a gringo but spoke Spanish, needed to die. That physical description could only fit one man: Detective Rick Rodriguez.

  Like Detective Ignacio, Rodriguez had worked gang-related crimes for years. He was the first detective in Arlington County to focus on gangs, and for many years he was the only detective in the county’s gang unit. Rodriguez made gangs and gang members, especially the Mara Salvatrucha, a priority.

  Rodriguez was a gang expert. In the summer of 2002, his fellow officers considered Rodriguez a walking dictionary of gang information. But there was a time when he didn’t know so much.

  In the early 1990s, Rodriguez was a young police officer working a normal beat in northern Virginia. Because he was a native Spanish speaker, he gravitated toward the Latinos who lived in the immigrant communities in Arlington County near Columbia Heights West. He sometimes worked in Latino communities in neighboring Fairfax County—the heart of the Salvadoran population in northern Virginia.

  Rodriguez dealt with the crimes that festered in these communities. There was little gang activity when he first started, not nearly enough to warrant any special attention to street gangs over any other type of crime, such as spousal abuse, robbery, or traffic violations. But by the early 1990s, reunified Salvadoran families became common in Culmore. The ostracized children reached out to anyone who accepted them, showed them love, and allowed them to love in return.

  Rodriguez knew that in El Salvador, the word mara didn’t always have a gang connotation. It meant a bunch of friends. In the United States, the Salvadoran kids looked for other young people in their same situation. Misery loved company. Cliques were formed. These groups were not violent street gangs. They were a crew of friends. They were maras in the original sense of the word. The informal cliques were a source of love and a place to be accepted, not judged. Invariably, however, some of these groups grew violent.

  Street gangs in immigrant populations were, of course, nothing new in the United States. Dating back to the Irish street gangs in New York’s Five Points area, gangs have formed where there has been a need for acceptance and a large enough group of like-minded people. The Culmore area of Fairfax County was no exception. And with such a large Latino immigrant community, it was a place where groups of friends could easily evolve into street gangs where the combination of teenage recklessness and rebellious desires clashed with the laws of the land.

  Rodriguez remembered the old days, when it started with simple tagging. The maras in Culmore evolved into two memorable groups, the Mara Queens and the Mara Locos Intocables, or “untouchable crazies.” Members of these groups spray-painted clumsy symbols of their gang, usually just the first letters of their gang’s name, in random public spaces. They vandalized public walls, lampposts, and the large green Dumpsters near where they lived, went to school, or worked. Tagging was normal activity for these kids, nothing more sinister than meeting up at the park to drink beer or hang out on a street corner just to stay out of the house and away from their parents, the primary source of frustration in their new lives in the United States.

  At times there were fights. Rodriguez could understand the motives of the early maras. No one liked to constantly look over his shoulder or worry about safety when hanging out near home or school. There was a sense of turf and protecting that turf, but this sense of needing protection had little to do with controlling an area used for criminal enterprise, as it did in Los Angeles. The formation of Virginia’s street gangs was more about making sure everyone was safe in a part of town known to be dangerous.

  Culmore was a focal point for crime. Poverty and unemployment fed armed robberies and sometimes murder. It was necessary for clique members to look out for one another. Knives added a level of enforcement, but they were rarely used. To combat rising crime levels, the police departments from Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria initiated community-policing programs and placed patrol officers on walking beats in direct contact with the communities that needed the most attention. Members of the immigrant communities slowly grew to trust the cops they always saw walking around, talking with shop owners, garage mechanics, people at the bus stop, just about anyone. It was an added level of protection that, for a short time, prevented any serious street gang activity from taking root in Fairfax County.

  Then Snoopy arrived. Rodriguez had chuckled when he’d heard the street name. He quickly learned it was no laughing matter.

  Snoopy was an old-school MS-13 member from Los Angeles. He was the first of a wave of MS members who targeted the second-largest Salvadoran community in the United States.

  The Salvadorans and other Latinos who immigrated to northern Virginia were a gold mine of opportunity for MS-13 members who dealt with a level of law enforcement in California they wanted to avoid. Virginia police in the early 1990s had little idea what the MS-13 was all about. When Snoopy arrived, he was very open about being a Mara Salvatrucha. He was proud and handed out business cards printed with his phone number and street name, and some of the most common symbols used by the MS in Los Angeles, like MSX3, another way to spell out MS-13, replacing the one with a Roman numeral. A gangster who handed out business cards had mystified Rodriguez and his colleagues. This simply was not normal.

  The pioneering gangster quickly set out recruiting new MS members. He offered the backing of a much larger, national-level gang. Compared to the Mara Queens or the Mara Locos Intocables, the Mara Salvatrucha was a serious and organized street gang. Snoopy’s arrival in 1993 signified the beginning of a higher level of gangbanging in the Culmore area. The established maras in the area, however, were not about to let the MS just come in and disrespect them.

  Snoopy had his work cut out for him. For many months, his fledgling MS group was a punching bag for the other, better-established gangs in the area. But their numbers quickly grew. Dozens of MS members were let out of California prisons in 1995 and 1996. Many members who were not deported decided to leave Los Angeles, where they were marked and well known by the cops. Many left for Texas and Nashville, but a significant number decided to travel to Virginia. Some MS cliques from LA took root in Virginia. The Normandie Locos, Brenda’s clique, was among them. The Centrales Locos was another prominent MS clique that had originated in Los Angeles.

  The native maras learned quickly that Snoopy brought from Los Angeles a new level of competition. Rodriguez realized that this was a street gang culture that thrived on violence, the strict enforcement of turf, and the use of fear to control victims and earn money from a number of illegal business practices. Snoopy recruited Virginia’s new MS members into an organization that was willing to kill with knives and machetes to make a point. Discipline within the gang was strict. New recruits quickly learned that the MS was the real deal from LA. If you broke the rules as an MS member, they didn’t kick you out. You were severely beaten, maimed, stabbed, or killed.

  Not surprisingly, Virginia’s street gangs became a serious problem by 1996, only three years after Snoopy first arrived in Fairfax County. It was a banner year. President Clinton pointed to Fairfax County as a model for how other counties in the country should work to absorb divergent cultures. But a deeper look revealed colorful gang graffiti spray-painted on walls, buildings, lampposts, trash cans, and just about anyplace gang members could get their message out loud and clear.
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br />   What started in the early 1990s as tagging became spray-painted warnings from one gang to another. The message was simple: This is our turf. Stay out or face the consequences. The MS had established enemies from LA, and it knew how to deal with chavalas.

  Virginia’s other maras didn’t adopt this type of proactive aggression and violence until the MS arrived. But once the violence started, it didn’t stop. One act of disrespect had to be answered by a show of strength. That show of strength was another act of disrespect. This cycle of violence continued until one gang became dominant. Supremacy was always the goal of the MS in Virginia. They were against everyone. And it didn’t take them long to establish control. As the cops in the region struggled to react, the MS cut through the local gangs, forcing them to bend to their will and be absorbed or disband.

  The Mara Salvatrucha’s growing presence in northern Virginia caused a spike in violence during the summer months of 1996. The worst case occurred when a sixteen-year-old was stabbed in front of a middle school in Alexandria, just down the road from Culmore. Months later, in the Columbia Heights West section of Arlington, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into one family’s living room.

  Assigned as one of the community cops at the time, Rick Rodriguez responded to the call. He was sure it was gang-related, but the parents, who had a mattress propped against their living room window to prevent further damage to their apartment, denied their child was involved in a gang.

  Rodriguez left the apartment and drove to a nearby corner popular with young MS members and found the kid he was looking for. Their child, while at home, acted appropriately and wore clothes that suggested good study habits and a well-mannered lifestyle. Once he was out on the street, gangland clothes came out of the backpack and the attitude changed. Mom and Dad never knew.