Brutal Gangs: MS-13
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Mara Salvatrucha–or MS-13 if you’re in a hurry–grew out of the disaster that was El Salvador in the early 1980s. The short version of what happened is that the local oligarchy cracked down on farmers and rural peasants with death squads that were trained and supported by the CIA—because communism is bad, you see.
The slaughter claimed around 50,000 lives and created a refugee crisis in the region. Thousands of displaced Salvadorans made their way to southern California, and found that the menial labor jobs were mostly taken by Mexicans and other earlier immigrants.
The organization that would come to be known as MS-13 was the solution these refugees hit on to penetrate what was then the growth industry of cocaine smuggling.
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Over the years, MS-13 has become notorious for its exceptional brutality. In the world of cross-border drug smuggling, it takes a special effort to stand out as exceptionally brutal, but MS-13 has managed it with routine beatings and assassinations of key players in the cocaine trade, instant death for informants both inside and outside of prison, and savage beatings for anyone perceived as standing in their way.
Next up: When very angry paramilitary revolutionaries decide to go into crime…
