MS-13: How infamous gang grew from stoned youths to ruthless criminals
“Kill, rape, control” - it’s the motto of one of the world’s most dangerous gangs.
Once a youth group who listened to rock music and smoked marijuana, Mara Salvatrucha, widely known as MS-13, is now a crime syndicate with tentacles spreading across the world.
The group was formed in the Spanish neighbourhoods of LA during the 1980s by young immigrants who escaped El Salvador’s violent civil war.
In the late 1990s, the US deported MS-13 gang members to the small Central American country, but the government there was unable to to deal with them.
Authorities jailed the men, which only gave them time and space to plan criminal activities once they were released.
The mass incarceration has been blamed for turning a group of stoners into a gang of hardened criminals.
Today, MS-13 makes more than $AU41million annually through extortion, murder, human and drug trafficking and prostitution, according to the BBC.
Compared with Sinaloa, a drug cartel, which rakes in $AU23billion from the US alone, MS-13 may not seem like a major player on the world of crime.
But their reputation for ruthlessness and violent crimes has earned them a spot as one of the deadliest groups in the world.
MS-13 has a global reach, including a presence in Mexico, Canada and Australia.
NSW Police Detective Superintendent of Operational Intelligence, Stephen Blackmore, told nine.com.au that while there were no established MS-13 entities in NSW, but there were “other ethnic based crime groups that have evolved from similar situations to MS-13.”
Ruthless initiations
MS-13 often recruits poor and at-risk teenagers, known as ‘chequo’.
To become a ‘homeboy’ the chequo must ‘get wet’ by carrying out a crime, often a murder of a rival gang member.
Once the murder has been verified, the gang holds a vote on membership.
If a chequo receives enough votes, “leaders would slowly count to 13 while gang members beat the prospective member,” according to FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Wood.
MS-13 members are often tattooed in highly visible places, making it more difficult to erase their past affiliation with the gang.
Common tattoos include MS, Salvatrucha or devil horns, which forms an M when displayed upside down.
In recent years, the gang has been reportedly moved away from tattoos in visible places, so they can commit crimes without being recognised.
Many former members are killed but becoming a member of a religious community is an accepted reason for departure, according to The New York Times.
Horrific violence
MS-13 has been involved in numerous horrifying crimes and victims are mainly minors from Central America.
One of the most horrific murders is that of two girls aged 15 and 16, who were brutally beaten with a baseball bats and machetes.
One of the victim’s mothers told The New York Times: “I want him [Trump] to ensure that we’re going to get the proper funding for the resources for our kids.”
Another famous case includes the massacre of 28 people on a bus in Honduras, Central America, in 2004.
Gunmen surrounded the bus and sprayed it with gunfire, killing six children, 16 women and six men, according to the BBC.
Special Agent in Charge Angel Melendez, from the US immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that “They [MS-13] enjoy being extremely violent because it's what gives them their standing in the criminal world,” according to National Public Radio.
Trump pledges crackdown
US President Donald Trump claimed that MS-13 has “literally taken over" US cities and vowed to bring these "violent animals to justice.”
He cited a case in Maryland, Baltimore, in 2017 in which “MS-13’s animals are accused of stabbing a man more than 100 times and then decapitating him, dismembering him, and ripping his heart out of his body.”
Trump has used MS-13 as justification for stricter border control, including construction of a wall separating the US and Mexico.
Trump blames the Obama administration and its immigration policy for fuelling the gang’s growth.
But Ioan Grillo, author of Gangster Warlords, a book on US gang crime, said "I have seen no evidence that the Obama administration can be blamed in any way for the existence or activities of the gang in the US," according to the BBC.
Trump has previously suggested that undocumented immigrants are a risk to public safety and is using the gang as the latest excuse to block migrants’ entry into the country.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has implemented a program to limit gang violence.
Last year, the program arrested 1300 immigrants with connections to gangs - 104 of whom were involved with MS-13.
Trump has said he will make “radical” changes to U.S. aid practices by withholding government assistance from countries whose citizens enter the United States illegally.
