Spread of a menace

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Spread of a menace

By Tracy E. Barnhart

Published: 01/26/2009

During the early 1980s, a violent civil war began in El Salvador. It lasted more than twelve years. Estimates say nearly 100,000 people were killed.

As a result, more than one million people fled from El Salvador to the United States, with most settling mainly in Southern California and Washington, D.C. Some had ties to La Mara, a violent El Salvadoran street gang.

Others had been members of paramilitary groups like the Farabundo Marti Nacional Liberation during the civil war in El Salvador. These FMNL members were peasants trained as guerilla fighters, and were adept at using explosives, firearms, knives and booby traps.

Still others had ties to a group known as Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13. Initially it was formed for protection, but quickly it developed into an extremely violent gang. Today, it continues to obtain recruits from groups like FMNL.

Since its creation in California and Washington, DC, MS-13 has expanded into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Canada, and Mexico. It maintains active ties with MS-13 members and other factions in El Salvador.

Gang members maintain contact between groups in the United States and El Salvador for several reasons. In El Salvador, a hand grenade sells for $1 to $2 and an M-16 rifle will sell for approximately $200. The alliance to El Salvador and groups like La Mara and FMNL allows MS-13 to access military-style munitions and establish a network to traffic illegal firearms into the United States.

The gang also is involved in exporting stolen U.S. cars to South America; an estimated 80 percent of the cars driven in El Salvador were stolen. The cars are often traded for drugs when dealing with cartels.

Its members have also been involved in burglaries, auto thefts, narcotic sales, home invasion robberies, weapons smuggling, car jacking, extortion, murder, rape, witness intimidation, illegal firearm sales, car theft and aggravated assaults.

Common drugs sold by the group include cocaine, marijuana, heroin, crack, and methamphetamine. MS-13 gang members have even placed a tax on prostitutes and non-gang member drug dealers working on its turf.

MS-13 gangs now include members from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, in addition to El Salvador, and it also has African-American members. Mara Salvatrucha identifies itself through tattoos such as the number 13 or “Trece” in Spanish.

Gang members also use the Spanish word “Sureno” (Southerner) to identify themselves. Sometimes Sureno is abbreviated to SUR, making reference to the fact that MS-13 gang members like to claim they are from Southern California as opposed to Northern California, and are rivals with Northern California gangs. Often, this rivalry is taken outside of California. Additionally, MS-13 maintains rivalries with the 18th Street gang and the Latin Kings.

Identifiers

Members will usually tattoo their particular clique on their body, which is also used in graffiti and personal writings. These have included pentagrams and other occult symbols, which can be confusing when found in conjunction with gang tattoos and can cause misconceptions of satanic involvement.

The most common hand sign used by MS-13 members is forming the letter “M” by using three fingers and pointing the hand downward. This hand sign can resemble the pitchfork sign used by Folk/People Nation gangs from the Midwest, and can be made with the fingers pointing up or down.

Identifying MS-13 gang members can be easy, though, because their tattoos are very large and self-explanatory. Some symbols include:

A tattoo above the shoulders represents the ultimate honor and is seen only on high- ranking members. Consistent with other gangs, MS-13 has cliques (also referred to as sets), which have names and are shortened by the letter of the first word.

For example, PVLS stands for “Park View Locos Salvatrucha,” PLS means “Pinos Locos Salvatrucha,” ULS means “United Locos Salvatrucha,” VLS stands for “Virginia Locos Salvatrucha,” and NLS means “Normadie Locos Salvatrucha.”

Other identifiers include Old English style of writing, block letters or Old English graffiti, a letter/number combination (i.e. MSX3, MS13, MSXIII) and using the number “13.”

Blue and white colors can be included as well as references to “Sur” or “Sureno” (Southern California).

Law enforcement and the courts deal with the MS-13 primarily in two ways - incarceration and deportation. Between April 1994 and August 1995, the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested and deported more than 100 gang members to El Salvador.

Many members live in the U.S. illegally. They are concerned about deportation because of the chance of them being targeted by the Sombra Negra (Black Shadow) death squad.

Sombra Negra and similar groups are legendary in Central America, and are believed to be comprised of rogue cops and military personnel who target criminals and gang members for vigilante "justice." While Central American governments deny the presence of these death squads, many MS-13 members in the U.S. believe they exist.

Honduran MS-13 gang members have the same fear. Sombra Negra has claimed responsibility for the deaths of several MS-13 gang members in El Salvador. These death squads, real or not, could also be a chief motivation for hardcore MS-13 gang members to flee to the United States.

MS-13 relies on metropolitan areas with highly concentrated populations of illegal aliens to boost its spreading membership, and it particularly well known in Los Angeles, Houston, New York and Washington, D.C., for excessive brutality. Chapters require initiates to perform random acts of violence, such as beatings and gang rapes, to gain acceptance. It is believed that new female gang members must undergo gang rape and male initiates are told to gang rape American women in order to join.

MS-13 is a defiant group that is not easily intimidated, especially when it comes to law enforcement. It has executed three federal agents and is responsible for numerous shootings of law enforcement officers across the country.

It has been known to booby-trap their drug stash houses with grenades on the assumption that these structures will be searched by law enforcement. As a result great caution must be used in dealing with this menace to our society.

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