| | The World's Most Dangerous Gang Growing up in Los Angeles, it's hard not to notice the graffiti that covers the sides of buildings, walls, fences and trucks in many parts of the city. It looks like meaningless scribble, but it's used to mark territory. Though it is home to Hollywood and the entertainment industry, large swaths of the city are also claimed by violent street gangs. If you're a gangster and walk into territory claimed by a rival gang, you could be shot to death without question.
Although there are over 100 known gangs in L.A., my encounters with gangsters had been pretty limited. I thought I could identify them by their shaved heads, baggy pants and tattoos, but then "gangsta" style became cool and it became impossible to single out individuals as bonafide "bangers." A gang called "White Fence" controlled the area where I was working in the '90s. I'd also known about the gangs plaguing the L.A. streets, particularly the big ones like the "Bloods," "Crips" and "18th Street." I recall hearing about a small Salvadoran gang with a really long name - Mara Salvatrucha - that was considered somewhat insignificant relative to the bigger more established gangs. For those reasons, law enforcement paid little attention to it and focused their efforts at suppressing other gangs. Big Mistake.
In a very short period of time, Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has arguably become the biggest and most dangerous gang in the world. In the 1980's a law was enacted that would deport non-U.S. citizens convicted of serious crimes back to their home countries after serving their sentences. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of criminal offenders, including thousands of gang members, being returned to countries that had never encountered gang problems - such has been the case with El Salvador. Rather than return to the U.S., many gang members stayed in their home countries and brought gangbanging culture with them.
Law enforcement officials (who've served as journalistic sources for me in the past) have kept me up to date on the issues keeping them the busiest. Over the last couple of years, several of my gang detective colleagues urged me to take a deeper look into MS-13 because members were starting to show up in many different parts of the U.S. and other countries. They were also beginning to perpetrate heinous acts of violence in areas that had never experienced such things before. The gang started to grow so fast that a federal task force was created to deal specifically with MS - a big deal considering that it started as a small L.A. street gang.
My first foray into the world of MS came through a 20-year-old active member whom I call "Jester" in the show. He was jumped in (members viciously pound and kick the individual for 13 seconds, for the purposes of initiation) when he was only eight years old. Just a year later, at age nine, Jester was sent to "attack the enemy" - to walk up to a group of six rival gangsters and open fire. He was so scared he closed his eyes. After the shots went off, he saw that one guy had fallen-whether he survived is unknown. Jester says it's the only time he ever felt sad or scared. He's shot nearly twenty others since then.
According to Jester, it's either "him or me." If he doesn't shoot the enemy, the enemy will shoot him. I found out that several weeks after my interview with him, he and his homie were arrested for murder. When I got the call from a law enforcement officer, I felt sick. I had gotten to know Jester and he took me into his world, and now he was locked up and facing murder charges. He and his friends told me many stories of having to "do what they had to do," in order to protect themselves and their neighborhoods. At the time I couldn't distinguish between big talk and their reality. I guess it was their reality.
Gangs operate as businesses in the criminal world. What's disturbing is how young the recruits are and how vulnerable they are to indoctrination. The young boys are made to prove themselves through violence, and the faster one becomes a killer, the faster he or she will move up the ranks. Gangs are families who raise their kids to kill. With a presence in 33 U.S. states and more than five other countries, right now the MS-13 family is the biggest of gang operations. Law enforcement is reigning in on their operations, but as soon as MS is weakened, there will be others anxious to fill the void.
Lisa - Emails from the ground in El Salvador - Thursday, August 25, 2005:
I'd been on the ground in El Salvador for less than 20 minutes when we got the news. By 8:30 p.m., we had arrived from Los Angeles, picked up our bags and were headed to the hotel when our fixer got a call saying there was a shooting in the middle of town. Immediately upon arrival we see a dead body lying in a pool of his own blood riddled with M-16 bullets. It was a gruesome sight. As soon as they picked up the body to load into the truck, we noticed something shocking. Tattooed across his chest was "Hollywood Locos." The deceased seemed to have been part of a local Los Angeles clique of Mara Salvatrucha. We started our day in L.A. that morning and by night, we had experienced L.A.-style gang-banging in another country. As we were about to head to the hotel, our fixer got another call - another MS-related shooting a few blocks away. We stayed a couple more hours to learn more information. Then a red-truck carrying the forensic investigators pulled up to the scene. In the back was a black trash bag with two legs sticking out of the bag. There were four MS homicides the night of our arrival. It set the tone for the rest of our trip.
Friday, August 26, 2005:
This place is utterly wild. Our second day here we were on our way to an alleged MS controlled prison when our producer got a call saying some guards overheard the inmates plotting a scheme to kidnap us! Eleven guys had escaped the week before. We had to abort that visit. Instead, we went to a "drop out" prison where all 900 inmates are former MS members, who have been greenlit (put on hit lists for murder by other MS members) for trying to leave the gang. We interviewed two MS drop-outs deported from LA who told us on camera that "MS operates at a whole other level here: they chop you up in front of your family." This was no exaggeration: the warden of the drop-out prison was assassinated five days prior. He had been on the job for just two weeks. We interviewed a minister who said that MS members drove to his house in a black Mercedes and put an "X" on his garage. They were trying to prove a point: MS is on to you. On a random prison cell search, the minister's wife's name was found on a hit list in a prison. I was awed by the courage of the officials in El Salvador, they and their families are constantly under threat - they really deserve the utmost respect.
Yesterday was a trip. We went to the funeral of the guy who was shot the first night of our arrival. The family and friends sat in front of the coffin and 30 gangsters stood behind the minister. It was a sight to behold. Then, the minister, while delivering his sermon, turns around and points to the crowd of gangsters and says, "It’s never too late to turn to God!" It gives me chills just thinking about it.
Then at the end of the day, while on patrol with local police, we get called to another double MS homicide. I wonder how many dead bodies we'll see before we leave here.
It's an eerie place my friend. This gang is ruthless... ruthless.
Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 5 AM
The root of this problem is social inequity. There need to be other options for children who grow up in these barrios, under the influence of gangsters who command both respect and fear. As for the spread of gangsterism, it is based on nothing but pure crime and murder. Gangs espouse no revolutionary ideals nor do they seek to benefit anyone but themselves. They murder without conscience, extort hard-working members of their community and have no respect for authority or the rule of law. They thrive on terrorizing. And most tragically, they view incarceration as a badge of honor-how does a society administer punishment in this light?
Some have compared the indoctrination of young gangsters to that of suicide bombers or drug traffickers. But I disagree. For suicide bombers, there's to some degree a higher religious or political mission. Gangs don't have any of this. Gangs have no moral or social values, nor do they espouse any. Extorting one's own people and killing one's own people, is the ultimate form of barbarianism and manipulation. I understand the brotherhood that evolves and I get that gangs often fill a void that parents don't, but they have no redeeming social value, nor do they seek to provide any to younger generations.
The globalization of trash culture run amok has piqued an appetite for the same kinds of material excess. And all anyone cares about is the fastest way to achieve it... criminal activity notwithstanding. Gangsterism has always been around, but the ability for it to globalize through our plethora of ways to communicate has made it so much easier.
Having said all of the above, I felt God last night. We went hesitatingly to a church service filled with former gang members. It was incredible - a miracle actually. I know what you're thinking... church? Working on this story has been very emotional. I had felt such a lack of hope from the second we arrived. But meeting these gangsters who had killed people and then risked their own lives to leave the gang and turn their lives around gave me a little bit of hope and faith in the human spirit. None of us on the filming crew are religious, but we stayed for three hours and were all so moved. I have never felt the presence of a higher spirit more than last night. To watch these former killers in such anguish over the path that they had previously chosen, and emotion that spouted from their hearts was nothing short of... amazing.
I think I understand faith a little better now.
Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 5 PM
So we went back to the prison where the inmates were allegedly planning to abduct us. The prison officials told us that they didn't have a problem with us going in, but that we'd have to negotiate with the inmates and convince them to not only let us come in, but also to let us go out. I've reported from a number of correctional facilities throughout my career, but I've never had to confer with the prisoners before being allowed to work. Admittedly, we were scared s***less upon arrival. We sat in a room with five English speaking MS prisoners, all of whom had gang-banged in the U.S. There were guys from L.A., Texas and Nebraska. We spent about an hour with them trying to explain what we were trying to do. They told me that they were proud of how big and strong MS has become. They finally acquiesced to our entering their "home away from home." Was I scared? Yes, but I also knew that they appreciated our treating them respectfully and that more than anything they just wanted to be heard.
They showed us around and we discussed life in prison. They said that this prison is much less violent than others because there are no enemies, only MS members housed there. Toward the end of our visit, one of the inmates told me secretly that the leaders of the gang have been talking about how the situation has gotten out of control. "The young ones," he told me, "are getting too crazy." Though subtle, it seems that the church phenomenon is backlash to globalization. As far as these gang/killers are concerned, my feeling is: whatever works. I must say this is one of the most fascinating stories, from a sociological and psychological standpoint, that I've worked on in a very long time.
Sunday August 28 2005 - 11:00 PM - Los Angeles
We just got in. We started at 6:30 this morning. Can you believe this gangster wanted us to meet him for an interview at 7 a.m. on a Sunday? It seemed so ungangster of him. We spent the entire day in MS neighborhoods. I walked away feeling really sad. So many of them are orphans or from very broken families. The gang took them in and raised them like foster parents. Hence, these orphaned youngsters are willing to fight and die for the gang, like you and I would die for our families. When I asked them if they ever dreamed of becoming anything else, they said that in the barrios it's a near impossible dream. When the gangsters are the biggest and the baddest and they control the economy and the neighborhoods, it's not so hard to understand why people join. After much negotiation we got approval to hang out in a hard core MS neighborhood. It was exactly like you would have imagined. We rolled up and heard Snoop Doggy Dogg and "Gangster's Paradise," blaring from inside. The homies were so young, but so hard... and amazingly cool looking. They were decked out in L.A.-style gangster wear (and these were new styles and real designer labels). They were the kinds of guys I wanted to date when I was in my bad boy phase... they just looked bad ass. They admitted-point blank- to trafficking drugs and robbing from the rich. When there are an unprecedented number of millionaires in the U.S. and around the world, if you could find a way to make fast cash and feel brotherhood, how do you convince them otherwise? When Tyco and Enron executives try to subvert the law to make their pockets fatter, how does one argue against MS doing the same?
All I can say is... only God knows. | |
