Youth Gangs of Central Americans in L.A. on Rise

Upheaval in Central America is transplanting itself in the barrios of Los Angeles, where the influx of refugees into some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods has led to the rise of a new generation of youth gangs, authorities say.

Gangs of young men with roots in El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American nations make up about 5% of the city’s estimated 300 youth gangs, Los Angeles police say. But the influence of these Central American gangs is growing as they carve out niches in the San Fernando Valley and in the inner city, according to police and other gang experts.

Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran gang that came into existence only six years ago, has grown to 500 members, making it as large as entrenched Mexican-American gangs, authorities say. Members of Mara Salvatrucha and Crazy Riders, another gang with largely Central American membership, have been linked by police--either as victims or suspects--to five murders. Authorities say, however, they suspect that the gangs are involved in many other killings.

“They’re on the increase, and they’re making a name for themselves,” Detective Robert Contreras, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Gang Information Section, said of the city’s Central American gangs.

The proliferation of Central American gangs is especially troubling because members have a greater tendency to react with violence, police say. Authorities attribute this to the horrors that many Central Americans have witnessed back home, such as seeing family members executed by Salvadoran death squads.

“In their countries, they’re used to bombs and decapitated bodies,” said Manuel Velasquez, a spokesman for the city’s Community Youth Gang Services agency in the San Fernando Valley. “They laugh at drive-by shootings.”

Police arrested two alleged members of the Crazy Riders on Nov. 10 in connection with the drive-by shooting in Van Nuys of Walter Adama, 17, killed while standing in front of his home on Fulton Avenue. Police also suspect these gangs of involvement in a rash of car thefts several months ago in the area.

The Crazy Riders also was implicated in a major turf battle with another Latino gang near MacArthur Park, in which two people were killed and six were injured.

“We’re very concerned because they don’t hesitate to exert influence on other gangs,” said Detective Cliff Ruff of the Police Department’s Foothill Division in the Valley.

In recent years, hard times and war have brought as many as 500,000 refugees to the Los Angeles area from Guatemala and El Salvador alone, according to the Central American Refugee Center, which helps refugees obtain asylum in the United States. Others have come from Nicaragua, but the vast majority have come from El Salvador, which is in the midst of a decade-long civil war.

Haydee Sanchez, a spokeswoman for El Rescate, which provides legal and social services to refugees, said the long war has taken a toll on Salvadoran children.

“Little kids, at the beginning of the war, were scared when they saw bodies in the streets,” said Sanchez, who is from El Salvador. “Later, they didn’t care anymore. I have a lot of cases of boys who saw relatives killed. Later on, these kids are doing the same thing to others” on the streets of Los Angeles.

In the beginning of the migration that began in the late 1970s, Central American youths joined traditional Mexican-American gangs, experts say. In recent years, however, such youths have broken away from the traditional gangs and formed rival organizations.

Mara Salvatrucha, the best-known Central American gang, originated in the downtown Los Angeles area several years ago but has spread to other areas of the city. Gang services workers say Mara Salvatrucha is the most difficult gang to work with. Its chapters are nomadic, fading out of one area and into another, they say.

There are smaller bands of Nicaraguans, Hondurans and Guatemalans sprinkled around the city. Members include recent immigrants and those whose families migrated to the United States as long as a decade ago, experts say.

The territory being claimed by these gangs includes central Van Nuys and streets with deteriorating apartment buildings near MacArthur Park. Central American gang graffiti--”MS,” for Mara Salvatrucha (which, roughly translated, means “tough Salvadorans,”) and “CRS” for Crazy Riders--are frequently seen on downtown Los Angeles buildings and is increasingly spotted in the Valley, police and community experts say.

Mara Salvatrucha members have shown up at Grant High School in Van Nuys, where students are bused from the downtown Los Angeles area, said Fran Ramirez, an assistant principal. She said they have been involved in several beatings at the school.

“They all fit into the big puzzle” in the Valley, Velasquez said of the Central American gangs.

A 14-year-old Salvadoran boy nicknamed Little Cobra, declaring that he has quit Mara Salvatrucha, said violence has escalated lately in areas frequented by Central American gangs. “Everybody’s getting killed,” he said.

In a four-month period late last year, said John Garcia, a downtown Community Youth Gang Services worker, five members of the well-known 18th Street gang, whose membership is predominantly Mexican-American, were killed. The Crazy Riders gang is feuding with the 18th Street gang.

While authorities say the Central American gangs are growing in size and influence, they also argue that the percentage of immigrant youths choosing a gang lifestyle is small. “Like anything else, it’s only the few who cause the problems,” said Jerry Greenfield, a gang expert in the Police Department’s Rampart Division downtown, where many of the gang members live.

Although the various chapters of Mara Salvatrucha are involved in the same type of criminal activity as traditional Mexican-American gangs, there are differences in style, experts say. Central American gang members often dress in Iron Maiden T-shirts and listen to heavy metal music, while many Mexican-American gang members prefer the cholo look and listen to rock ‘n’ roll oldies.

Rolando Mora, 20, a Salvadoran whose nickname is “Micho,” said he joined Mara Salvatrucha for protection. Mora, who has been in the United States for three years, said he also joined because of racism in traditional gangs against people who are not of Mexican descent.

Velasquez said some traditional Latino gangs look down on recent immigrants. Eddie Vega, Valesquez’s colleague downtown, said that when the Central Americans first arrived, Mexican-American gang members “pushed them around. So they formed their own gangs.”

In working with the Central Americans, Vega tries to show them that there is enough freedom in the United States for an immigrant to make his own way. “This isn’t El Salvador--you can live a normal life and make honest money here,” Vega said he tells them.

But Sanchez said staying away from gangs is hard for recent immigrants of war-torn countries, who often are friendless and have lost parents. In other cases, say experts, Central American immigrant parents come to the United States first, then send for their children, sometimes years later. This can create alienation in the home that leads some youths to seek comfort in the gangs, experts say.

“A lot of them tell me they become a member of the gangs because it’s the only way to survive in the U. S,” Sanchez said.

She recalled a boy named Edwin who saw his father murdered by Salvadoran political extremists when he was 14. He and his mother packed and headed to the United States.

But when he settled in Los Angeles, the timid boy from San Salvador encountered a different kind of urban terror--youth gangs. They whistled and called for him outside his apartment in a crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhood and sometimes prevented him from going to school.

“He told me, ‘I don’t know what to do,’ ” Sanchez said. “He said, ‘I want to be good.’ ”

Edwin’s battle for independence from the gangs ended last year when he was arrested for car theft after joining a gang. While he was in Juvenile Hall in San Fernando, his mother died of an untreated case of pneumonia, leaving behind an angry young man who is almost unrecognizable as the earnest boy who wanted to study and do well in America, Sanchez said.

Armando Morales, a clinical social worker in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, said theories tend to support police and community gang experts’ assertions that the violence to which such gang members were exposed back home makes them more likely to lash out in America.

“They have been desensitized to the value of human life,” Morales said.

Many members of Central American gangs are in the United States illegally, police say. They complain of the difficulty of deporting gang members who are not legal residents. But Bob Moschorak, acting director of the Los Angeles district office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said taking action against criminal illegal immigrants is a top priority of the agency. In November, the INS deported 1,069 illegal immigrants identified as criminals. He said that was the largest number in recent years.