Social Causes and Consequences of Maras in Central America

The subject that I have chosen for my essay is: ‘Maras in Central America. Analyse its social causes and consequences’ – a gang that operates on territories of Central and Latin America. During writing my essay I want to analyse the phenomenon of how a not that big community of Salvadoran young immigrants has been transformed into one of the most dangerous and the largest gang groups in the United States and Northern Central America in about 30 years. Also I would like to analyse and present social causes and consequences of Las Maras. The past 20 years has been an escalation of crime in Central America. Surprisingly not in Colombia but in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are one of the most dangerous countries in the world. According to

Bringing up on the streets of big cities, young Latin Americans were joining to existing gangs or creating their own. Some of them, mainly Salvadorians joined The 18th Street Gang and other groups, recruited mainly from among Chicanos (Americans of Mexican origin) and Mexicans. However, with the development of the Salvadoran community in the United States there was a need to create an entirely new group, that would give young people a sense of national identity. The first was the Mara Salvatrucha gang which initially focused only Salvadorans and later also people from other countries of Central America. In the meantime in Central American countries first Maras started appearing. Weakened by internal conflicts in Guatemala and El Salvador, many people lived in very bad life conditions, being practically excluded from the society. Maras in these countries were created mostly by groups of young people that shared power between themselves in various districts and parts of the country. In 1992 in Los Angeles, there were many blood riots which drew the attention of American police to the significant increase in activity of street gangs. Anti-gang policy in the United States tightened. In 1994 created the Law "Three Strikes and You're Out" as a result of which people convicted of three or more offenses receive much higher sentences. The next step in the fight against Latin American gangs was the adoption by the US Congress in 1996 the new anti-immigration law. People without citizenship of the United States who have been convicted at least one year of imprisonment were deported to their countries of origin. Interestingly, even US citizens who had Latin roots could be deprived of their citizenship rights and treated in the same way as immigrants. At the same time the list of crimes for which threatened deportation became increasingly longer. As a