This juvenile gang was formed in the 1980s in Los Angeles by immigrants who were fleeing the civil war in El Salvador. But since many of the founders were former guerilla fighters, they brought with them a cavalier attitude toward life and death. This in turn facilitated their use of extreme violence that even shocked other gangs in the area. But it also enabled MS-13 eventually to take control of large amounts of gang territory.
By 1996, the U.S. government adopted a policy of deporting MS-13 members back to their countries of origin, in many cases after serving jail or prison sentences here. Unfortunately in many ways that strategy backfired, because it resulted in the deportees using their knowledge, experiences and prison connections to form similar MS-13 gangs all around the world.
Today there are estimated to be somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 members of MS-13 in the United States and the rest of the world. They range all over our country from Alaska to New York, with strongholds in the DC area, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Charlotte, New Orleans, and Knoxville, in addition to Los Angeles, and they are also found in El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and even Spain. All of this makes MS-13 almost as organized and all-pervasive as the Mafia.
The initiation process conveys the depths to which the members of this gang have descended. Males mostly go through the initiation process of receiving the brutality of a full-on assault with unrestrained punches and kicks from the gang members for 13 seconds. The females, who make up about one percent of the membership, can either be initiated in the same way as the males, or they can be “sexed-in,” which means that an initiate girl is repeatedly raped by all of the males present until the males are satisfied. But this process also gives those young women almost sub-human status in the eyes of the other members.
The MS-13 makes its money the same way most other criminal gangs do, which is by being involved in extortion and dealing in human, arms and drug trafficking. But due to their reputation for gruesome violence, MS-13 members are also often hired by other gangs as contract killers.
The story of the book centers around a personable and bright young lady named Brenda Paz, who was sent by her parents from Honduras to live with her uncle in Texas. But since this uncle had little time or inclination to treat this “additional mouth to feed” with any affection or caring, she soon sought her “family support” elsewhere, which happened to be with the MS-13 gang.
The book told us that Brenda was present when numbers of various crimes were committed, including a time when her boyfriend first beat severely and then killed a boy who was a casual friend of hers. Eventually Brenda was arrested by the FBI and questioned about the murder, and after awhile she decided to become a government informant against the gang.
Unfortunately, it was obvious to everyone but Brenda that being an informant was an ultra hazardous thing to do. So even though she was thoroughly warned, given a new identity and placed in safe quarters in a different state, she went back to her “friends” in the gang because of boredom and loneliness. But once the gang learned of her cooperation with the government, they lured her out to a lonely place, and brutally knifed her to death, notwithstanding the fact that she was pregnant.
Why am I using this column to discuss things like this with you? Because gangs like this can only thrive, or even exist, by default, which is to say that they fill the void when we don’t show enough caring to provide positive role models for all of our children. The truth is that someone will always mentor our children, and if it is not people like parents, basketball coaches, boys and girls’ club leaders, or school teachers, children will be mentored by people like Charles Manson or gangs like MS-13. These malignant people are always out there recruiting, and when they get hold of children it doesn’t take long to get them into a “Lord of the Flies” mentality, which can quickly result in the brutalities and initiation rites used by MS-13.
With this understanding, when I see in the news that people have rallied to raise enough money to preserve the “Hollywood” sign, but positive programs for youth mentoring and employment like Homeboy Industries instituted in gang territories in Los Angeles by Father Gregory Boyle die for lack of funding, I really get frustrated.
So particularly we in the legal profession should address and be pro-active with these problems right now, because ignoring them will result in them becoming more severe. Thus if you want seriously to reduce human tragedies in our communities, as well as crimes and the costs of putting so many people in prison, help to support programs that provide positive mentoring to all of our children. You know where these programs are, and most of them desperately need our help.
James P. Gray is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, works as a private mediator for ADR Services, Inc., is the author of “A Voter’s Handbook: Effective Solutions to America’s Problems (The Forum Press, 2010), and can be contacted at JimPGray@sbcglobal.net or through his website at www.JudgeJimGray.com
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