Unwanted Export

I watched an interesting documentry tonight on the gang culture in El Salvador. The programme was looking at the growth of street gangs that mirror gangs in L.A. because they’ve been started and get a lot of their members from Salvadorians who are deported from the US.

During the eighties, thousands and thousands of people fled the civil war and made for Los Angeles, many bringing their kids with them. A lot of these fell into the gang life and crime and the US has been deporting a ton of them when they’ve been convicted of something because they’re not US citizens. The programme showed big groups arriving back at San Salvador airport to a country most had left when they were infants and as soon as they come off the plane the local police take them aside to check their tattoo’s and gang affiliation’s.

Two of the biggest gangs that have jumped over from LA are called MS and 18th Street and with local kids getting really into them, are very violent and have spread out to smaller towns. When deportees arrive they’ve got a ready made crew to hook up with. Even if they want to stay clear they have problems, one guy newly arrived from California was walking around with his arms bandaged up to his elbows to cover his MS tats because there were a lot of 18th Street living around his grandmother’s house.

It was strange seeing all these people who’d grown up in the US and had the accents find themselves in this poor third world environment. It didn’t paint a very rosy picture for the future in El Salvador, the problems getting bigger and they’ve no money to fight it. They filmed in the main prison in the capital, built for 800 but with over 3000 squeezed in.Bet that place hums. Don’t know what the solution is but one thing the programme showed is there are some pretty women in El Salvador.

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