Carol Umanzor

Final Exam paper

Prof. Palafox
Due 12/13/06
The Children of El Salvador’s Civil War and United States Special Interest:
La Mara Salvatrucha

La Mara Salvatrucha is known as a grotesquely violent gang made up of Latin American

youth rooted in El Salvador (DeCesare 1998). Yet, how many of us really know about the origin
of this gang and why it was founded in the first place? United States government played a pivotal
role in the lives of the Salvadorian youth who would come to create this gang. Not only after
they arrived in the U.S., but well before they ever stepped foot on U.S. land. The U.S.
government along with the Salvadoran Military succeeded in creating an environment that
exacerbated the civil war in El Salvador and drove thousands out of the country and into the
U.S., where La Mara Salvatrucha originated. We often see La Mara portrayed as a foreign
problem that has infiltrated the U.S., allowing the U.S. to cleanse itself of any association with
La Mara. This allows the U.S. to deal with the havoc as a foreign problem, which is resolved
with the use of deportations and with the labeling of “terrorist acts”. Evidence shows otherwise.
La Mara Salvatrucha was cultivated in U.S. as a result of a brutal prolonged civil war heavily
influenced by the U.S. military. The problems that have come with the creation of this group are
as much a responsibility of the US as they are to El Salvador and need to be recognized as such
so that the issue can begin to be addressed.
In order to understand how the creation of La Mara came about, we must examine the

history of both El Salvador and the U.S. during the 1979-1992 period, in which the Salvadorian

Civil War took place. In El Salvador for a long time a large portion of the population lived in

poverty while a small elite group controlled the majority of the land and resources. Oppression of

the poor by this elite group in El Salvador was the major cause that led to the civil war in the late

seventies (Gonzalez 2000). After a call for Social Justice from the Second Vatican Council many

poor Salvadorians began to organize and use their voting power to create change in the country.

This action worried both the military and the small elite group that controlled the country. They

feared that the poor would actually succeed in electing someone to bring upon social change. In

order to prevent this, the military and those in control launched coups in 1972 as well as in 1977,

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Carol Umanzor
Final Exam paper
Prof. Palafox
Due 12/13/06
rigged elections, and sent out death squads to control the population (Gonzalez 2000). All of

these obstacles led to animosity, anger and lost hope. By 1979 the routine rounds of the death

squads and all the repression around Salvadorians had driven the poor to take up arms and

respond. During this time the youth who would come together to form the notorious Mara

Salvatrucha were merely children witnessing public displays of violence, daily decapitations and

repression.

Ernesto Miranda grew up in El Salvador and at the age of fourteen he joined the

Salvadorian Military. Ernesto described his experience with the military by saying “Nos

entrenaron para acecinar a nuestra propia gente” which translates into “they trained us to murder

our own people.” This young man would shortly flee El Salvador and later become one of the co-

founders of La Mara Salvatrucha. Once in the U.S. pressure from other gangs brought him and

young Salvadorans to band together and create La Mara Salvatrucha in order to defend

themselves. The U.S. sponsored training that he and other members of La Mara received in the

Salvadorian Military allowed them to become the violent gang they are today (del Barco 2005).

So why would the U.S. sponsor and fund a corrupt military that would take adolescent boys and

put them in the line of fire? U.S. special interest and corruption in the Salvadorian Military

would lead to this unfavorable situation.

During this time in the U.S., the cold war was on the agenda of the Regan

Administration. In hopes of presenting El Salvador as a success story in the war against

terrorism, which back then was affiliated with communism, the U.S. began to take a special

interest in El Salvador’s Civil War (Gutierrez 2004: 14). The Reagan administration painted a

picture of El Salvador as a communist-ridden country in need of being saved by the big capitalist

super-power, the United States. El Salvador stood as a symbol of a resistance against the Soviets

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Carol Umanzor
Final Exam paper
Prof. Palafox
Due 12/13/06
or communism. The U.S. government justified its actions by claiming that the “popular uprising

in El Salvador…threatened U.S. security and were part of a worldwide communist aggression

aimed ultimately at the United States…the poor people of Central American were a tool of the

Soviet Union, and therefore a threat to the United States.”(Kahn 1996:31). With this argument

the U.S. was able to aid the Salvadorian Military with weapons and military training, regardless

of the fact that the Salvadorian Military was corrupt and unjust towards its people (Gonzalez,

108-109, 135). According to Robert Kahn the author of Other Peoples Blood, during his time in

office, Reagan spent $545,000 in military aid for El Salvador every single day. The Salvadorian

military received so much support that the their goal changed from defeating the “guerillas” into

prolonging the war, so that they could continue to receive the enormous amount of aid from the

U.S. (Kahn 1996). This prolongation of the war led to thousands of deaths and the displacement

of Salvadorians. Many of which who fled to the U.S. in seek of refuge.

Salvadorian refugees fled a country where they had experienced brutal traumatic events

in search of place that where they could seek refuge. Many fled to Los Angeles, California in

search of this place of refuge. Here Salvadorians began the busy life that encompasses the

American lifestyle; many worked multiple low paying jobs in order to survive. Although this

was not ideal to many, it was much more favorable than the life they had left. However with no

time to cope with the trauma of war, issues began to surface. Many of the young people were left

at home while their parents worked all day to make ends meet. These youth would find

themselves yet among another type of war. With the war epidemic in Los Angeles at a peak,

Salvadorian youth found themselves in a new war zone. Lainie Reisman explains in her article

“Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Responding to Central American Youth Gang Violence” how La

Mara Salvatrucha was created to by Salvadorian youth “establish their own network to rival the

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Carol Umanzor
Final Exam paper
Prof. Palafox
Due 12/13/06
existing Mexican and African-American gangs” (Reisman 2006:148). Under the social pressure

of their peers and those around them, the newly arrived Salvadorian youth banded together to

form a gang to defend themselves against other gangs. During the war Salvadorian children and

youth throughout El Salvador were exposed to traumatic violence. Some even fought for the

military or for the FMLN (the guerilla group created by some of the country’s poor population)

in their early teens and were directly involved in the violence (Mahler 1995:36,44). Many of the

young men that founded La Mara Salvatrucha had been members of the military and were

trained to brutally kill, a trait La Mara Salvatrucha is known for. In her article “The Children of

the War: Street Gangs in El Salvador” Donna DeCesare (1998) finds that “for may Salvadorian

immigrant children unacknowledged war trauma exacerbate the feeling of rebellion that

accompany adolescence,” which helps explain why Salvadorian youth were more likely to

respond violently in times of stress.

Edgar Bolanos emigrated to the U.S. in 1989 to reunite with his mother who had fled the

Salvadorian civil war in 1983. During the war in El Salvador, at the age of three Edgar witnessed

his uncle’s murder and was also a witness to his grandmother beating by soldiers when she

refused to disclose the whereabouts of his father, who was involved with FMLN. Like Ernesto

he faced pressures from his peers to join a gang, problems at home served as another factor in his

decision. Edgar joined La Mara Salvatrucha when he was 13 years old (DeCesare 1998).

Today La Mara Salvatrucha is known as an extremely violent gang that has spread from

L.A. to many places all over the country as well as to Central America. Although the gang began

and is still comprised of mainly Salvadorians, the factors that led to its creation are closely tied to

U.S. foreign policy and U.S. society. The civil war began because of the injustices within the

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Carol Umanzor
Final Exam paper
Prof. Palafox
Due 12/13/06
Salvadorian government, but it was prolonged because of U.S. intervention. The training and aid

the U.S. provided to the Salvadorian military allowed for the prolongation of the of the war and

led to the mass migration of Salvadorian refugees to the US. The situation in Los Angeles

existed before the Salvadorians arrived, but it led to more problems for these refugees, which

elevated the stress and pain they were already dealing with. None of this serves as a justification

to the brutal violence that La Mara Salvatrucha has committed, the goal of this paper is to put

everything into context so that this issue could be dealt with accordingly and so that we might be

able to one day see the end of violent gangs like this one. Dealing with the issue from a different

perspective could lead to solutions that get to the root of the problem and not just the symptoms

or outcomes of it.