Essay --

Mara Salvatrucha Mara Salvatrucha, otherwise known as â€Å"MS-13,† is quite possibly one of the most well known and most notorious street gangs in the world. Beginning in the poor immigrant streets of Los Angeles in the 1980’s, the gang has spread like wild fire across not only the United States, but across the world, from Alaska to Spain (Tkach & Parker, 2006). Originating in Los Angeles, California, MS-13 was founded by refugees from El Salvador. â€Å"Mara† is a Central American term for gang; â€Å"salva† refers to El Salvador, â€Å"trucha,† meaning â€Å"trout† in English, for something that is clever, or sharp. MS-13 is also known as the â€Å"Salvadoran Army Ants.† After MS-13 spread from their birthplace in Los Angeles across countries, their activities helped make the infamous Northern Triangle: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as the most violent place in the world that is not at war (Dudley, 2013). Mara Salvatrucha has been named one of the world’s most dangerous gangs due to their origins, growing population of the gang, the brutality of their crimes, the signs and famous tattoos Mara Salvatrucha is known for, the prison life hiding the leaders, and the evolution into organized crime. Starting with civil wars of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, refugees traveled northbound to Los Angeles. In 2012, the United States Treasury Department named MS-13 as a transnational criminal organization. The Treasury Department gave insight on details about how truly powerful MS-13 is, including that the gang is involved with â€Å"drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder, assassinations, racketeering, blackmail, extortion, and immigration offenses† (Dudley, 2013). Mara Salvatrucha has been placed with the Zetas from Mexico, ... ... from Mexico, Italy’s Camorra, and the Japanese Yakuza, confirming that Mara Salvatrucha is one of the most dangerous gangs. When a member is sentenced to prison, it is beneficial for the member because they learn criminal and gang knowledge by the veterans of MS-13 that reside in prison. Learning the graffiti, the hand signals and stacking, the tattoos and their meanings, obtaining information from different cliques can all be obtained due to members of MS-13 going to prison. While America sits and continuously deports MS-13 gang members away from the States, they are spreading the terror to other countries. Now, in El Salvador, this country is seeing more violence now due to the gang violence than they did when they were going through civil war. Ironically, the civil war is what drove refugees up to Los Angeles and what became the birth place of Mara Salvatrucha.