Word: gangs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Until the homeboy invasion, local gangs got by with knives or primitive steel-pipe guns. They got drunk and maybe smoked a little grass. But that all changed under the deportees' murderous influence. The pipe guns were replaced with AK-47s and Uzis, and the marijuana with crack, which in San Pedro Sula sells for only $4.25 a "rock." Now, gang members aspire to have a teardrop tattooed on their cheek, to signify they've killed a rival. The new-look gangs quickly began shaking down grocery shops, factory girls and bus passengers for "taxes." They hijacked buses for drive...
...Outgunned and underfunded local police forces are overwhelmed by this lethal American export. Tiny El Salvador has over 55,000 gang members, including some 10,000 deportees. San Pedro Sula, a city of half a million Hondurans, has over 35,000 - and only one police officer who handles gangs. "About all I can do," says Magdalenys Centeno, "is see who shows up at the gang funerals and take their photos." According to Centeno, almost all the leaders of local gangs Control Machete, The Junk, Poison, Crezi Kids, MS and 18 are deportees from the U.S. "They're much more violent...
...wave of returning gang members hit Central America in the mid-'90s, when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was given more power to hunt down and prosecute illegal aliens. According to the INS, the number of criminal deportations to Mexico and Central America has doubled since 1995 to 62,359 last year. INS officials concede that many of these "removals" belonged to gangs, either in prisons or in Hispanic neighborhoods back in the U.S. In Florida and New York, aliens in jail for criminal acts are given a choice halfway through their term to either be deported immediately...
...Both the 18th Street and MS were originally started by Salvadorans in Los Angeles to fight the Mexican gangs, and then spread to San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. They thrive on robberies, extortion and "taxing" the street drug dealers. Says Russ Bergeron, INS media director, "We have a fundamental obligation to protect our American citizens from the threat posed by gang violence." And however ill-equipped Central American countries may be to cope with these criminals bred in U.S. cities, other governments have an obligation to take back their nationals, says the INS. But as San Pedro Sula...
...inability of the police to tackle the gangs has spawned vigilante groups such as El Salvador's Sombra Negra (Black Shadow), which has been gunning down deported youths since 1994. Death squads have caught on in Honduras, too, where human rights workers say they've killed over 180 gang members over the past two years. Suspected of being off-duty cops and soldiers hired by local businessmen, these groups are not particularly discriminating. "Any kid who has a tattoo is fair game," says Human Rights Commission member Hugo Maldonado. Sociologist Ernesto Bordales concurs. "The general feeling here is that...