How The MS-13 Gang Actually Works | How Crime Works | Insider

My name is Alex Sánchez. I was involved with the MS13 and that's how

crime

works

. Play violence comes in all forms. I ended up going to prison. They shot me. They reported me. The

crime

s I committed took me to a place that is ugly, but. I learned and came out strong. I came to the United States in 1979 and experienced culture shock and then culture shock with other ethnic groups, especially even Mexicans, among Latino groups. I started looking for ways to defend myself and in high school. I was introduced to the Salva Stoners 13

gang

. Initiation into the

gang

is always through a beating.

They call it jumping in English or Spanish. Blinking, which is being hit directly by four or more people. This is part of what you expect if in the War. It's that they will beat you up, you will suffer violence, right, and that is the beginning of being attacked, it is violence. I ended up joining what was called the local Normandy click initially, it was about protection, being there for each other, there were seven of us, two women and five men, and we were all homeless. Shortly after, we had our first friend who was murdered. We called him Rocky from the local Normandy click and that basically brought in this element of revenge of getting back at those they hurt.

Around 85,886 there was an influx of guns coming into the United States, especially Los Angeles with the crack epidemic. It was the first time you saw the Uzi. The AK-47 MS13 did not have the funds to get that type. of weapons, so for us, the cheapest thing we could use was the machete, it was something culturally relevant to us, it was a harvesting tool in our country and eventually we were known as a gang that the machete in Gag Warfare we use. I would go and fight in the park on the street. You know, some of us would carry knives in the past.

A chain. The police stopped him and found a gun. I will say divine intervention. I don't know. I probably would have killed someone or I would probably be in prison serving a life sentence like a lot of the people I'm going to see. The violence I used was the form. that I used to release that pain that fell inside I was that angry boy and I became an angry man and it took me a long time to realize that I can make a change I had tattoos on my body on my fingers on my arms and I tattooed the name of the gang on the chest, for the more traditional gangs they put the name of their gang or the name of a girlfriend on the eyebrows, but to start I tattooed my entire face. for MS13 it was something different the more tattoos you had the more committed you were to letting people know that I'm here, I'm in your face I went through the painful process of removing the tattoo, you know it was difficult for me because I felt like a coward when To do it, I was letting go of so many things that I had done and things that I believed in, but that was part of the process, you know, the relationship that MS13 with the 18th Street vario goes back a long time.

In the '80s we were mostly on the same blocks as his neighborhood, but we also maintained a close relationship, mainly because the 18th Street neighborhood in the area was made up of many immigrants, mostly Central Americans and Salvadorans, but mostly 1992, Shaggy from Western Locals was shot to death by members of 18th Street and that's serious. Many people's relationships began to die mainly because everyone knew each other's hiding places. Calle 18 was much larger than MS13. He's still in the area. they were more connected to other gangs and they also brought in other Cho neighborhoods, uh, to target us.

They called me and said, hey, Alex, get ready because you can't, you know, don't trust them anymore because they're going to want to do it. Killing them guys, it was a cruel war, it was a difficult war, there have been points where they called them like a temporary truce and all that, especially in El Salvador, but also in 1993 in Los Angeles there was a truce between all the Latin gangs . that

actually

reduced the violence, but the violence has not returned to the levels we saw before 1993. If you just live on the sides and do what you're told and represent the neighborhood well, then you know you will.

Nothing happens if you break the rules, then there is punishment, there are some who are tried to death, especially those who collaborate with law enforcement, those who become snitches or betray their brothers, but I have not seen that there is a group work of gang members who walk around and look at every direction where you lived to attack and kill you. Most of the time, the people who die that way are because they return to the MS13 block, which is known as Mar Salvatrucha, you could say. MS13 Mrs. Lamara, right, you can have different references to him, even alluding to dagara or the claw, which is the sign of the gang, well, he has the devil's horn, the two fingers that are also used in the rock scene heavy metal. people transformed it, put both hands to make an M or S and so on MS13 or mss3 during the time that was in that heavy metal scene, whether it was Slayer Iron Maiden or Mega Death, that music was really how we let it out.

It's not like we were evil devil worshipers, there were some individuals within the gang structure that were into Santa Muerte, for example, you have people from all the dominations in the game, some people who believe in Christ, so it's a community in general, that's what you call the vario. So in some ways you know being in the gang is like being some kind of religion in '86. I ended up getting arrested and went to the central juvenile detention center. Once you are in prison you have to defend yourself and you are known by other rival gang members as someone who defended himself, so it became a right of passage to rise through the ranks that way, I eventually made it to prison in 1991 and I went back to prison at least three times and in 1994 I finished. being deported after 12 years of a Civil War, the war was over in El Salvador, so many people were being deported, my first thought was, I'm going to start over, I have no criminal record, I speak English, so maybe I could get in in the tourism business or something like that, right.

I wasn't planning on going there and ganging up or getting trapped or dying there, but that changed immediately once I got to the airport as I headed to the terminal. I saw the gang riding up the hillside and the ATS set 13 but as we went down the road I ended up seeing on the brick wall the Roman numerals XV I I I which means 18th Street and then I realized wow, they are here too. The rivalry must continue and I began to look around and be more alert as to where I was and who was next to me, so shortly after arriving in El Salvador I ended up receiving death threats and a deadly squat called Sombra Negra emerged. or the black shadow and its mission was to eradicate gang violence that was on the rise.

I had two people with me, two gang members who were young, had been child soldiers in the war and admired me. He had two grenades. and I gave them to them. I had never used a grenade and I said I would probably blow myself up but these two guys know how to use a grenade so I carry my gun and they carry the grenades and that's how we went to different places because I was under threat from being killed or shot or even trying to kidnap me from these death squads, the level of violence was probably quadruple what I had experienced in the United States and that was a residue of the war, so you saw gang members , you know, using that kind of in-your-face violence, you know, that was used during the war.

I couldn't go home anymore, so I was running away. I ended up finally deciding to flee El Salvador. because I felt that Death Around Me emerged as another immigrant. I was kidnapped in Waka by the feds and almost died in the desert and crossing Matamoros towards Brownsville, Texas, so I have this knowledge of the tragedy. From what I saw of other immigrants coming from South America it is not something I would wish on anyone to be attacked, kidnapped, held for ransom and possibly killed just for entering the United States, but the desperation of what our country is. .

The countries it passes through, you know, force people to have to put themselves through such an ordeal. The only place I could go back to was my old block. He was tired of going to prison. I was tired of a life of violence and looking over myself. I came back and I was able to talk to the neighborhood and they gave me a pass because they saw that I was working and taking care of business and I kind of still lived on the block, but I wasn't there. By not getting involved in any of their gang activities, there is a specific leadership structure I would say, but it is whoever feels that void at that time in the neighborhood where there is no clear individual, most of the time no one really wants to take the lead. leadership of a gang because you become the main target of the authorities.

They are not a secret group of people who are trying to make millions and millions of dollars. They are disorganized structures that work on crimes from which they could benefit in Central America, Honduras, Guatemala. I know you have individuals that could turn you into a criminal entity, such as being part of a cartel or engaging in human trafficking, but it's not something that is a direct goal of the gang to be something like that. So what El Salvador has done now by creating the largest prison on the continent in the smallest country on the continent is that they fit more than 40,000 people in a place called teola, the prison is called seot and they have been transferring all of these people . there they have designated as gang members to be imprisoned for life these individuals will never leave those prisons except in the coffin and that is the message they have received from the president we have seen this before El Salvador uh has had zero tolerance Initiatives with the initiatives uh zot tolerance manura that created mass incarceration and did not reduce violence.

This prison is basically going to hold all of these people who have been unfairly tried based solely on their affiliation and sentenced to life in prison. prison in the history of mass incarceration, especially in California, which has over 33 prisons, this has been a failure in terms of reducing violence, so we know that mass incarceration of people is not going to get us out of the problems that created this whole problem in the First of all right now, we have the military of El Salvador addressing the problem, they arrest, they are on the streets, they have roadblocks and every two kilometers, you know, to see who passes by, You have the local police, the national civil police, but we also have clandestine organizations like the death squads, the exterminators who call themselves before it was the black shadow.

Now it's these exterminators, which are social cleansing groups that target specific people to kill them, basically, so I think politicians really need to start thinking. What is the exit strategy from this mass incarceration and from militarizing the country as they are doing now and beginning to really focus also on the prevention part that has always been neglected by all the politicians of all the presidencies prior to the mar salvatrucha that started at the end? 70s to early 80s and what is considered the Korea Town Pico Union area of ​​Los Angeles and began due to the mass migration of immigrants from Central America accompanied by miners and children who came here and suffered this culture clash with different ethnicities from the beginning.

The migratory flow began to impact other states like Long Island, you know, in the 2000s, the Washington DC metropolitan area, places like Houston, Texas, where there is a large Salvadoran community, the United States prison became in part of that continuation of the gang's commitment. I didn't stop the gang by imprisoning all of these people, but it influenced the gang to grow and connect. Once the war in El Salvador ended, the United States government began deporting people en masse not only to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and that is what began the expansion of the MS13 in those countries.

It began in El Salvador in 1996 by gang members who have been deported to El Salvador, many of the members I knew from the gang's neighborhood or had served time. in prison with them. They invited me to a conference in Santa Cruz and that's how we started creating programs in Pico Union and Korea Town. Initially it was not easy at first, we really did not have the trust of the authorities. in 2000 I became part of the Rampart scandal where a gang unit officer was arrested for stealing kilos of cocaine from the evidence room and who turned around and then recounted all the crimes the gang unit was committing, stuff what we were saying. what they were doing in court but the jury didn't believe us because of a police officer.

I became part of the shaving scandal behind being a key witness. Alibi for a 14 year old boy who was being accused of murder where he was in church during our program during the time the murder occurred so it couldn't have been him and that's when the same officers who arrested him came after him of me and arrested me with the sole purpose of handing me over toimmigration to be deported, so it became this new scandal within immigration during that time and the police of how they used immigration as a tool to get rid of people they didn't want around and then eventually I was released and got political asylum in 2002 but the LPD had not forgotten me and they were not happy that I sued them correctly and they settled and in 2009 they came after me again and put me in a federal RICO case for the charges. they were laid off and I was able to restart again because my friends lost everything, we lost the office, we lost the funds, we lost the staff, so you know, we organized ourselves again and now you know we have 11 employees, you know, doing a lot of work in the community.

I've been a part of that, you know, it's like I know I'm on a hit list for the federal government, the LAPD, and they're just looking for ways they can charge me, so I have to walk a fine line. everywhere I go I have to watch everything I say, well the media has really given a lot of publicity to the MS13 gang running around the state, especially when you have a president who directly mentions a particular joke like MS13 and the repercussions that that has . get behind this because once a president mentioned something, he's saying, he's telling his departments to go after this particular group.

MS 13 is one of the most vulnerable gangs to go after because they are being attacked for immigration rhetoric. bad guy, an individual commits a crime, it appears in all the newspapers, while other gangs like the Crips, the 18th Street Bloods and the Latin Kings, which in some cases are bigger than the MS13, you know they are not . They have coverage like this because most of them aren't either. Puerto Rican or Mexican, American or African American, which makes them American citizens and nothing feeds the gangs, since they label them as the most dangerous in the world, as the most dangerous in the city, Mayor Antonio Vosa at one point said that They published a list of the 10 worst gangs in Los Angeles and all the gangs wanted to be a part of it, it was like Hey, I'm dangerous too, so it created the system of trying to see who is which gang is number one and each gang wants to be number one.

You get to a point where You get tired of the police chasing you You get tired You know your mother calls you and says Hey, I'm raising your kids, when are you going to raise your own kids? So you start trying to figure out that I'm doing it too. old for this or I want to be more responsible people get older, some of them become Christians, some of them, you know, try to study and get a degree or something and start their own businesses. You have many, many MS13 gang members who are pastors who have turned their lives around and are now preaching they still call me a gang member right and I say well I am I am part of that I work in those communities so I am I can't say I'm not I am no longer a gang member because that is how society has labeled me that I am a gang member G for life but am I a gang member who is calm?

Yes, I am someone who is now looking forward to helping the children of many of my friends. who are in prison, yes, in my life I have done many things, many good things but also bad things and I regret those things that I have done, but what I am doing is trying to give back to the community what I once took homie suos organization we don't stop the gangs we're reducing violence law enforcement is incarcerated on them we're trying to save as many as we can helping them once they're ready to make their lives profitably you don't have that, you know, a house two-story, two-bedroom apartment with a pool, no, you won't have those things.

I can support myself and my family in a somewhat, you know, humble place that I have, which is not. I'm even renting mine, but I think a nonprofit always struggles with the day-to-day costs. . We love having well-off people who have the funds and can give us what we need to expand.