“I don’t have God, I don’t have the devil, I have La Mara. La Mara rules. La Mara is my father,” said Fausto angrily.
He is the third child of a single mother. He was born in Suffolk, Long Island, two years after his family left Santa Bárbara, Honduras, in 1992.
Far from the aggressive images of the Central American Mara Salvatrucha – shaved heads, tattoos on their faces and bodies – the MS13 on Long Island goes about unnoticed. Only the “vacil” (3 dots) tattooed between a person’s fingers, or on the side of their left eye, can identify a member.
“Jail, the street, or death. That’s what the 3 dots mean. There isn’t any other destiny. When you join La Mara, you don’t leave it except by dying. Your soul also belongs to them,” said Fausto.
Since age 16, Fausto was accustomed to meeting up with other MS13 members in the courtyard of a high schoolin Central Islip, an area with a large Salvadoran and Honduran population. The young men arrived in cars accompanied by older “mareros” between 21 and 25 years old.
“The oldest members tell us what to do. They send us off to buy guns and sell drugs. We can’t consume them. That’s the rule and it’s respected.”
Hydroponic marijuana (one pound is worth more than $4,000), crack, or prescription drugs (one pill sells for $10) are part of the menu of drugs that the gang members offer.
The MS13 uses schools on Long Island to recruit new members, Fausto explained. “The police can lock up 5 of us, but we’ll get 20 more members. La Mara doesn’t end,” he said.
Before joining La Mara, Fausto suffered abuse and abandonment. “Mom wasn’t there,” he said, his jaw tense. When he was a student, barely a year ago, Mexican gang members asked him for money when he was leaving school.
“That day I didn’t have money and they made me pay. La Mara protected me. From then on I haven’t had any parent except La Mara,” Fausto explained.
Sergio Argueta, founder of the STRONG organization in Hempstead, Nassau, linked the decisions of young people like Fausto to a complex and little known social dynamic among young, low-income Latinos.
“The children that grew up alone in their countries and then migrate to join their parents are extremely vulnerable,” explained the expert. “They join ‘gangs’ seeking protection from abuse,” he added.
Considered to be one of the leading experts on youth violence in the northeast region of the country, Argueta has studied how dysfunctional families and racial conflicts strengthen gangs.
“There is a permanent battle between immigrant Latinos and Hispanics born in this country. The struggle for power exists within the same Latino community,” said Argueta.
The problem of gangs is not limited to Long Island. Violence occurs on the streets of New York City within prostitution rings and drug trafficking.
Osvaldo, a 20-year-old ex gang member of Puerto Rican heritage, was stabbed seven times.
Osvaldo said he belonged to one of the most violent and extensive gangs in the tri-state area from age 12 to 18. He’s too scared to identify the gang.
He was born and raised in East New York, Brooklyn. He’s the oldest of 8 children. His mother was a drug addict. His childhood memories are filled with poverty, abuse, and abandonment.
Like Fausto, Osvaldo said that the gang became the family he never had.
“They sent us, the new members, to rob people. We had to bring them money, drugs, or women so we wouldn’t get hit. An old gang member, who was 25 years old, was the one who gave orders,” he explained.
Tired of meeting death face to face every day, he mustered the courage to leave the gang, but not before being stabbed several times and beaten by more than 20 people. “They left me for dead,” he remembered.
Patricia Haversham-Brown, director of residential services at The Fortune Society, said that Osvaldo is an excellent example of ex gang members that strive to rehabilitate themselves and have a second chance at life.
Haversham-Brown remarked how alarming it is that adult gang members take control of the lives of children and teenagers.
If the streets are tough for a young boy, for a young woman it is worse. A 19-year-old Puerto Rican woman nicknamed “Huérfana” (Orphan), and a member of a cell belonging to the Trinitarios in the South Bronx, revealed that girls are “used” by gang members.“The worst thing is when you become pregnant, because your child is born and grows up in the gang,” she said.
Huérfana has participated in police anti-gang programs; but she hasn’t left the Trinitarios because other gang members threaten her with beatings.
She said girls who grow up without a father look for someone to love.
“Older gang members sleep with 14-year-old girls, who see them as their men and protectors. They prostitute the girls.”
She said in some neighborhoods in the Bronx, frequent shootings in places like Soundview are “normal” and part of street life, since it’s easier to obtain a weapon than a computer.
“You can get a pistol for $100. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The important thing is that you can pay for it.”
In 2009, the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (or MS13) had about 500 members in New York, the majority of them Salvadoran American, Central American and Mexican, according to an FBI report. In 2010, the Trinitarios (or 3NI) had about 10,000 members in the tri-state area, the majority of them Hispanic.
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