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A comprehensive analysis of Hispanic gangs in the United States cannot be imagined without Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, an international criminal group that emerged in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s.
Mara Salvatrucha was originally formed to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in Los Angeles. Over time, the gang evolved into a traditional criminal organisation and later into an influential international criminal organisation that created a moral panic in the United States and other countries.
Many members of the Mara Salvatrucha were deported to El Salvador after the end of the El Salvadoran civil war in 1992 or after arrests, which contributed to the gang’s spread in Central America.
Mara Salvatrucha is currently active in many parts of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. The majority of its members are Central American nationals, particularly Salvadorans.
The history of Mara Salvatrucha as an international gang is closely linked to the relationship between the United States and El Salvador. In 2018, the gang’s U.S. members, numbering up to 10,000, accounted for less than 1% of the 1.4 million gang members in the United States, and the same proportion of homicides committed by gang members.
Mara Salvatrucha has between 30 and 50 thousand members and associates worldwide, 8 to 10 thousand of whom live in the United States. According to other estimates, the total number of members of the group is about 30 thousand people worldwide. Several thousand Mara Salvatrucha members are believed to be held in the notorious Terrorist Detention Centre in El Salvador.
Mara Salvatrucha is an extremely violent street gang that operates through ‘cliques’ throughout the United States, as well as in El Salvador, Honduras and other countries in the Americas and Europe. The gang makes its money primarily from drug trafficking and extortion and is known for its gruesome murders of perceived rivals, as well as gang members and associates who have broken gang rules. MS-13 is responsible for dozens of murders in the Eastern District of New York alone.
MS-13 ‘s biggest international rival is the 18th Street gang.
Other rival gangs include the Bloods and the Latin Kings.
Members of the Mara Salvatrucha are usually impoverished young men and teenagers, often homeless and estranged from their families, who live off petty drug dealing, theft and extortion from street vendors and other petty criminals. The brutality of the maras or mareros has led to some of them being recruited by the Sinaloa Cartel, which is fighting against Los Zetas in Mexico’s drug wars.
Mara Salvatrucha is one of the largest Hispanic street gangs operating in the United States. The group has cliques in approximately ten US states, and the gang itself operates in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia. The Mara Salvatrucha cliques in the United States are loosely connected, and their specific activities are determined primarily by local circumstances. Law enforcement officials have reported increased coordination of criminal activity between the gang’s cliques in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York.
Since approximately 2021, virtually all Mara Salvatrucha cliques in the United States have been united under a single hierarchy, led by a group of senior gang leaders, most of whom are incarcerated, known as La Mesa. La Mesa, among other functions, allegedly authorises and directs killings throughout the country.
In El Salvador, the gang is more centralised and cohesive. In 2002, several high-ranking members of Mara Salvatrucha began to create Ranfla Nacional, a command and control structure of the gang that directed acts of violence and assassinations in El Salvador and the United States.
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