When we hear the term “criminal gangs”, it’s common to imagine perfectly organized mafias that seek to amass money through violence. When anthropologist Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson spent a year inside an MS-13 gang in Latin America, he realized that the reality couldn’t be more different.
He decided to join the gang as part of research he was doing for his dissertation paper. He considered that his classmates treated the topic from a perspective that was really far from the subject it was studying. Martínez was sure that the best way of analyzing any social issue was to become a part of it and get to know its customs and behavior without intervening directly in the lives of the people he was studying. This was the only way to arrive to an unbiased and steady conclusion. What he didn’t know was that not even that open-mindedness would prepare him for everything he was about to witness.
Before he could even attempt to look for “los Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha”, he had to get in touch with the priest in charge of the youth center located in the neighborhood controlled by the gang. That man found Martinez’s intentions hard to believe. No one in their right mind would ever dare —and wish so much— to live with the gang members. The priest could only ask him if he wanted to stay alive. There were a set of rules he would have to understand and follow if he wanted to be safe. The most important were:
–
Never walk alone. If you are stranger walking alone, everyone could mistake you for someone from an enemy gang and kill you in that very moment.
–
Never wear anything with the number 18 on it. Hostilities between the MS 13 and the 18th Street Gang went back many years. That’s why this number can attract your death like a magnet.
“They look at you from head to toe and get back to business without even saying hello.” –As told by Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson when he recalled the first time he walked into the neighborhood controlled by the MS 13.
When he finally managed to look into the lives of these people, he realized how wrong society was about the gang. People usually think that they are the culprit of every act of violence that takes place on the streets, and that these incidents are linked to monetary interests. People tend to mistake the MS 13 with mafias or cartels.
Martinez has tried to explain the difference between a gang, a mafia, and a cartel. A mafia may resort to violence in order to get even and as a warning about they can do to their enemies. Meanwhile, gangs like the MS 13 use violence as a method for survival. Due to their constant war with the 18th Street Gang, aggressions are meant to mark their territory and show rival gangs what may happen to them if they dare cross that line.
“Nowadays, the gangs are getting more and more money. But it would be wrong to say that they do this because they want to get rich. If that were the case, it would be easier to control them and violence-prevention programs would succeed in taking members out of the group by offering them a job.”
Although most members are under the age of 20, the way they organize the gangs is worth of admiration. There is no linear order of succession. When one leader fails, new candidates rise immediately to compete for that spot. Being a gang leader does not only consist on guiding a group. If you are the leader, it means you are to control your personal feelings and emotions and focus on the priorities of the members. After living with them a whole year, Martinez realized they weren’t children anymore. They were born with a man’s mentality and grew up being already dead.
Women have a very important role inside the gang. Apart from being mothers and wives, they also are entrusted with the mission of “hunting” enemies down by leading them to strategic places under false pretenses —that usually involve sex—, and the moment they arrive to the appointed place, they disappear and let the other gang members do their thing. That’s the reason why they don’t wear any tattoos (and if they do, they are not visible).
Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson is not the first one to make his research on the MS13, but his work is considered the best, since he doesn’t take a moral stand on what he saw and lived during his year with the gang, but rather gives an objective perspective of what the lives of these people are like.
–
In the end, all young men that become part of the gang don’t do it out of free will. They have been cornered by the social injustices and poor education system of their country, El Salvador. The system just tries to blame them for the wrong decisions it has made since the eighties, the same decade in which the gang was set up.
*
Sources:
BBC
Letras Libres
El Confidencial
*
Translated by Andrea Valle
