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Anne W. Patterson discusses anti-gang efforts and U.S. deportation policy with Anchor, Daljit Dhaliwal.
Watch the video
or read the transcript.
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In the mid 1990s, thousands of Salvadoran nationals living illegally in the U.S. were deported to their homeland. Some of the returnees brought L.A. gang culture back with them. By recruiting thousands of local teenagers, gangs ignited brutal turf wars and expanded further into El Salvador. Will the Salvadoran government develop a policy to eradicate gangs, and can it stop the continuous cycle of migration and trans-national criminal activity?
Read this week's briefing (below) to learn about the historical and economic factors that led to the erosion of national identity and the rise of a new medievalism.
The New Middle Ages
John Rapley
Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, (May/June 2006). ©2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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GANGSTERS' PARADISE
... Suspicious stares alert you that you have entered Kingston's gangland. But if the local don -- or "area leader," in the polite lexicon of official Jamaica -- has granted you permission to enter, you are safe. ...
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| 1960s |
The 18th Street Gang is formed in the Pico Union district of Los Angeles. Sometime later, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is formed, possibly as a splinter group. The two gangs become rivals.
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| 1980 |
Civil war begins in El Salvador, lasting 12 years and claiming an estimated 75,000 lives. Honduras and Guatemala suffer similar bloody wars throughout this period.
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| 1980s |
Central Americans flee the violence in their home countries for U.S. ghettos, finding themselves without work and needing protection from the local Mexican gangs that despise and threaten them. Ranks of the maras swell in the U.S.
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| 1992 |
Peace accords end the Salvadoran civil war. Over the next several years the U.S. will begin to deport Salvadoran gang members to their home country in large numbers. The maras grow to play a large role in the drug trade in the U.S., and develop a reputation for brutal violence.
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The local gang maintains its own system of law and order. ... It "taxes" local businesses in return for protecting them. ... It provides a rudimentary welfare safety net by helping locals with school fees, lunch money, and employment -- a function that the Jamaican government used to perform. But over the last couple of decades, keen to reduce spending, it has scaled back many of its operations, leaving a vacuum. ... As one kind of authority has withdrawn, another has advanced.
Jamaica's gangs -- each a fluid but cohesive organization with a clearly demarcated territory -- fund their activities partly through their participation in one of the industries in the vanguard of globalization: the transshipment of illegal drugs. ... The local police frequently cooperate with the dons, whose ruthlessly efficient rule can make the cops' jobs easier. ... Even when the police capture dons or their gunmen, convictions are next to impossible to obtain because potential witnesses remain silent out of loyalty or fear. ...
Kingston's gang-controlled neighborhoods are just one result of a growing worldwide phenomenon: the rise of private "statelets" that coexist in a delicate, often symbiotic relationship with a larger state. ...
The performance of traditional state functions in such communities may actually have improved as the official government has receded. Often what takes place is not so much collapse as reconfiguration -- what some scholars have described as the emergence of a new Middle Ages.
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Inside This Episode
Learn about El Salvador's history of civil unrest and political and social turmoil in the photo essay.
Explore international and domestic gang culture in the Handbook.
Go behind the scenes with director, Ricardo Pollack, in the filmmaker notes.
Members of 18th Street, Queen (left) and Wilmor (right).
photo credit: Tim Watts
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Explore the theme of power and politics. Examine the use of violence as a means of resistance against perceived oppression. Discuss the issue!
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