Mara (youth gang)
With Mara is known especially in El Salvador , Guatemala and Honduras criminal youth gangs (syn. Pandilla Juvenil ) or band associations in various countries of Central America , but also in the United States and Italy, are active. They are usually tightly organized and often have mafia-like structures. They mostly control large urban and rural areas and are sometimes also active across several Central American countries and also in the United States.
In the 1980s, many countries in Central and South America were ruled by dictatorial governments, and most of these countries were raging civil war. Many people, mostly from El Salvador as well as from Honduras and other Central American countries, fled to the USA from these unrest. After the end of the civil war in El Salvador in 1992 , a process began in the United States to return immigrants of Salvadoran nationality from the United States to their former homeland. Many of these deportees were gang members from areas of Los Angeles. After arriving in El Salvador, most of them continued their criminal activities there. Back in Central America they also recruited new members, who in turn entered the USA illegally and now reinforced the gangs there.
The most famous maras there are the warring Mara salvatrucha and the Mara 18 , which together are said to have about a hundred thousand members. The main focus of crime is the drug and arms trade .
In Honduras, Congress passed a law in 2003 punishing gang membership with at least three years in prison.
Origin of the name
The word “mara” , which the gangs use to designate themselves and which has meanwhile found its way into everyday language (and legal texts) in Central America, is possibly a short form of marabuntas . This is the name of a wandering ant species found in the Amazon region, Cheliomyrmex andicola , which invades an area en masse and mercilessly destroys everything, according to the most common of the origin mythologies of the maras and a corresponding theory about the origin of the word.
literature
- Huhn, Sebastian / Oettler, Anika: Youth gangs in Central America. On the construction of a non-traditional threat, in: Yearbook Latin America. Analyzes and reports 30; Münster 2006, pp. 31-48.
- Huhn, Sebastian / Oettler, Anika / Peetz, Peter: Different, threatened and threatening - youth gangs in Central America, in: Klimke, Daniela (ed.): Exclusion in the market society, Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 159–171.
- Peetz, Peter: "Maras" in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The threat to public security from youth gangs in Central America, in: Bodemer, Klaus (Ed.): Violence and public (in) security. Experiences in Latin America and Europe, Hamburg 2004, pp. 53–94.
Movie
- Sin nombre : 2009, director: Cary Fukunaga (deals, among other things, with the future prospects of members of the Mara Salvatrucha )
- La vida loca : 2007, director: Christian Poveda , who was killed by Maras in El Salvador in 2009
Web links
- Peetz, Peter: Central America's youth gangs. "Maras" in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, in: Focus Latin America, No. 5, March 12, 2004, pp. 49-63, Hamburg (PDF document 1.3 MB)
- Sebastian Schoepp: Gang crime in Central America - Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 4, 2009