Cutting to the core of the gang crisis.

• Author: Trujillo, Amparo
• Position: INTER-AMERICAN SYSTEM

In Latin America, some countries are experiencing a serious and alarming increase in crimes committed by youth gangs, called maras or pandillas. Recently released INTERPOL figures put the total number of gang members in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize at sixty-nine thousand. Mexico has also been experiencing a recent rise in crimes caused by gangs.

"This is a social problem that needs to be dealt with now," Ambassador Abigail Castro de Perez, El Salvador's Permanent Representative to the OAS, stated during a session of the Permanent Council as it debated a resolution on hemispheric cooperation for the treatment of gangs. "Actually, it should have been dealt with in the 1970s and 1980s. If we had addressed the problem earlier, perhaps we wouldn't be where we are now."

In El Salvador, studies show that gangs were not present in the country before the armed conflict. Rather, the war caused an exodus to the north, and young Salvadorans came into contact with gangs that already existed in places like central and southern Los Angeles, California. As the Salvadoran youth organized to confront them, they ended up forming their own gang, one that would later be known as the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 (named for 13th Street, where Salvadorans often settled after arriving in Los Angeles).

U.S. officials reacted by deporting gang members to their countries of origin, and a north-to-south flow of young gang members began. With their recently acquired criminal skills, these gang members found in the poverty and marginalization of Central America the perfect breeding ground for their illegal activities.

"We're not talking about groups that get together to play soccer. We're not talking about people who get together to chat in a cafe. We're talking about a group of people who not only murder people and sell drugs, but also amputate the limbs of innocent people in order to leave their mark, to terrorize entire populations really," stressed Ambassador Jorge Chen, Mexico's Permanent Representative to the OAS.

The United States, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are at the center of the crisis produced by violent gang crimes, though the phenomenon has extended to other countries in the region as well. Today the problem has grown to the point that members of gangs are accused of trafficking in human beings, smuggling migrants, trafficking in weapons, and kidnapping. These are transnational crimes--which can...