by Colonel Robert Killebrew, Small Wars Journal Op-Ed
A Volatile Brew (Full PDF Article)
Last June a group of men in police SWAT team uniforms stormed a building in Phoenix, Arizona, and killed a suspected drug dealer. But the gunmen wearing police uniforms and firing police weapons weren't cops -- they were members of a Mexican drug gang evening scores with a troublesome dealer in the United States. When the real police arrived, the gang dug in for a shootout. That's increasingly common south of the border, but fortunately it didn't end well for the criminals this time.
The Phoenix incident is just one symptom of the growing unrest across the United States' southern border, where the Mexican government is waging a deadly war against murderous drug cartels. Even further south, a volatile brew consisting of thousands of demobilized former soldiers and guerrillas, state-sponsored terrorists and criminal-terrorist hybrids such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the Salvadoran MS-13 gang is threatening the rule of law in Latin America. More ominously, it's moving north. In fact, some of these thugs are already here.
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Nothing that I have read suggests that MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) a street gang out of Los Angeles originally was created in opposition to EME (The Mexican Mafia) which is originally a California based prison gang.
Useful new books on these topics are:
Chris Blatchford, The BlackHand. New York, William Morrow, 2008.
William Dunn, The Gangs of Los Angeles. New York, IUniverse, Inc., 2007.
Tony Rafael, The Mexican Mafia. New York, Encounter Books, 2007.
I think we have a few problems.
First our borders are porous and poorly defended.
Leaving the U.S. to flee prosecution is only a cheap bus ticket away.
People can and do flee from prosecution just by hopping the border.
They spend a few months in the village with relatives and return to the U.S. when they hear law enforcement isnt actively pursuing them.
Then they simply pay a coyote to transport them across the border.
You can depend on getting high quality false documents in any latin american neighborhood for a few hundred dollars.
Now one option is R.I.C.O.. It works. It depends on the willingness of gang members to brag to people in the gang and outside it about thier status in the gang as an up and comeing person in the gang.
That kind of thing is huge. It's the last thing any gang wants.
The problem is scale. R.I.C.O took close to 40 years to crush the back of the italian mafia in the U.S. but even during prohibition you never had more than never had more than a 5 or 6 thousand made men.
The gang MS-13 was created as oppostion to is LA-EME or more commonly the mexican mafia. In Los Angelas alone there are more than 50,000.00 confirmed LA-EME related gang members on the streets of LA alone.
We arent equiped to deal with kind of influx in our prisons.
Securing the borders only does so much. We can imitate the DMZ along the Korean peninsula. The problem with that is we move law enforcement to the border and ignore the real source of the problems in our own inner citys.
In my opinion jobs make it really hard to be a criminal. It's hard to justify the gang life when your going to work each day.
Theres no ill's in the world that dont go away when you can feed those kid's. Pay your bill's and have some extra money to put in the bank.
First rate commentary on a critical, but often overlooked or set-aside, issue by Colonel Killebrew.
Personally, I don't quite care about quibbling over the exact origins of the gangs isaac. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what is to be done?
As an American of Italian heritage I've heard first-hand about how the Mafia took a foothold in the US due to its so-called protection of Italian immigrants. Bottom line - the Mafia was a cancer - regardless of the when, where, and why...
Thanks in advance,
Dave
I agree, as a migrant mexican I really know how bad it is there.
I mean that government needs all of te help it can get.
A few thing you reaserched are wrong.
The first. 18th st and MS-13 are both gangs started in southern caifornia.
Those are home made american gangs that started in the US.
More specifically los angelas.
MS-13 exists today because salavadorean migrants in LA had to band together to defend themselves against the established mexican gangs.
18th was formed in Los Angelas as a way for Mexican imgrants to protect themselves from stablished black gangs.
As different memeber of both gangs were deported they took the gang life style back to their countries of orgin.
To countrys unprepared for it.