EL SALVADOR:
Gangs Recruiting Younger
and Younger Members
By Eric Lemus
SAN SALVADOR (IPS)
- Youth gangs in El
Salvador are changing
their recruitment
methods, targeting ever
younger potential
members in the slum
neighbourhoods of the
capital, authorities
report.
The "maras" (gangs)
Salvatrucha and 18 have
modified their strategy
in order to survive
police raids and
maintain control over
the neighbourhoods where
they operate.
The police reported that
more than 7,000
suspected gang members
were arrested in 2007
alone, as part of the
Antonio Saca
administration’s "súper
mano dura" or super
hard-line policy against
crime
Both gangs have done
away with their
traditional initiation
rite, known as a "jump
in", which in the case
of the Mara Salvatrucha
required putting up with
blows and kicks from
gang members without
resisting for 13
seconds, and in the case
of Mara 18 involved 18
seconds of such
treatment, aimed at
showing an ability to
tolerate pain.
The two maras also ban
new members from using
tattoos on their torsos,
forearms or faces, in
what would appear to be
a strategy designed to
avoid intimidating
children and younger
adolescents, and to
prevent them from being
easily identifiable as
gang members.
"The entry age into
gangs has gone down in
the last few months," a
Mara Salvatrucha "calmada"
told IPS.
In gang jargon, a "calmado"
or "calmada" refers to a
member who is basically
retired but who has not
left the gang, because
"you only leave the mara
when you’re dead," said
the young woman, who did
not give her real name
and merely referred to
herself as "Fénix", for
safety reasons.
Fénix now works for a
government institution,
after nearly four years
in the Mara Salvatrucha.
"I asked for permission
to become a ‘calmada’
because I was pregnant
and had joined an
evangelical church, but
I waited for them to
give me permission;
otherwise I wouldn't
have been able to get
out," she said.
Fénix has undergone
tattoo removal, but has
done so in secret,
"because if the members
of my clique find out,
they would take it as an
insult and kill me."
The National Public
Security Council (CNSP),
the government agency in
charge of violence
prevention, says the
typical age of entry has
gone down from 14 to 12.
And a U.S. State
Department report
presented to the
Inter-American
Commission on Human
Rights says the maras
recruit children as
young as nine years of
age.
According to Óscar
Bonilla, president of
the CNSP, the cliques,
which control specific
areas within
neighbourhoods, offer
"brand-name shoes and
clothes, money and
anything else that is
attractive to kids."
In his view, the
strategy is two-pronged:
to rebuild the strength
of the gangs, many of
whose members are in
prison, and to recruit
members who are too
young to face legal
charges.
"Under the legal system
that emerged from the
peace agreement, minors
cannot be tried, even
when they commit serious
crimes like homicide,"
Bonilla told IPS.
He was referring to the
peace deal that put an
end to El Salvador’s
12-year civil war in
1992.
The law on juvenile
delinquents, which has
been in effect for 15
years, is aimed at
educating and
rehabilitating young
offenders under the age
of 18. Under that law,
they can only be
sentenced to juvenile
detention centres, by
juvenile courts.
But the police argue
that the law is overly
lenient.
With 49 homicides per
100,000 population, El
Salvador had the highest
murder rate in the
region last year,
according to the Central
American Observatory on
Violence.
The forensic medicine
institute reported that
the average daily number
of murders was 9.3 in
2007.
But the participation of
gang members was only
proven in less then 12
percent of all murder
cases that made it to
court in 2006.
So far this year, 39
minors accused of
extorting protection
money from bus drivers
were arrested in
Soyapango, a poor
neighbourhood on the
outskirts of San
Salvador, said police
chief Oscar Aguilar.
Aguilar said that both
the Mara Salvatrucha and
the Mara 18 use minors
to collect protection
money from bus drivers
and businesses in
outlying slum districts.
The head of the CNSP
said the gangs also
employ minors as
lookouts during arms and
drug dealing operations,
"because no one suspects
a kid."
But Salesian priest Pepe
Morataya, who heads a
rehabilitation programme
for former gang members
in Soyapango, said "the
maras have grown because
they have taken
advantage of society’s
inability to tackle the
problem in an integral
manner."
Soyapango is the most
populous municipality in
the country after San
Salvador, and the
second-most violent.
Morataya, the head of
the Don Bosco industrial
training skills centre,
told IPS that in El
Salvador "approaches
towards resolving the
gang problem have been
party-based or religious
in nature," which he
described as "badly
applied medicine."
Marcela Smutt,
coordinator of the
Democratic Governance
programme in the United
Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), said
that "as it has evolved,
the gang problem has
become more and more
complex."
"Some researchers
actually have the
impression that the gang
phenomenon has aged over
the years. But we have
no reliable data
enabling us to say that
the number of younger
members joining up has
grown or shrunk," said
Smutt.
Although it is true that
some gang members are
now as old as 30 or 40,
most older active gang
members are dead or in
prison.
Young boys and girls in
poor neighbourhoods in
the capital live
alongside the gangs in
their day-to-day lives.
Eight-year-old Adonai,
who lives in Soyapango,
told IPS that gang
members shot one of his
friends "when he was
playing piscucha," the
name given to kites in
El Salvador, because he
did not want to help the
gang.
"The ‘mareros’ (gang
members) sometimes give
me 'coras' (quarter - 25
cents of a dollar) for
carrying messages," he
said.
For five years, the CNSP
had been carrying out a
pilot project to improve
the situation in the
neighbourhood. But the
shortage of funds and
the arrival of new gang
members doomed the
project to failure.
Research shows that the
root causes of gang
culture are economic and
social in nature, such
as marginalisation and
unemployment.
According to the Economy
Ministry, around 43
percent of the
population lives below
the poverty line and 19
percent is extremely
poor.
The Mara Salvatrucha and
Mara 18 originated in
California in the 1980s,
when nearly one million
Salvadorans fled to the
United States during El
Salvador's civil war and
settled in impoverished
neighbourhoods in Los
Angeles, California
where gang violence was
rife.
The maras began to
spread to Central
America in the 1990s,
when most of their
leaders were deported
from the United States.
They are now also active
in Honduras, Guatemala
and southern Mexico.
The United States
considers them
"transnational
organisations" and the
Salvadoran police say
they are organised crime
groups involved in the
trafficking of drugs,
arms and persons. |
