The British seasoned photographer, Adam Hinton has published photos of gang members in the tiny Central American country of El Salvador, exposing how deep violence has eaten into the country.
The photos were said to have been taken in 2013 at the prison known as Penal de Ciudad Barrios in the capital, San Salvador where gang members have completely taken over the administration of the prison without the support of the government.
According to the Plaid Zebra, Hinton was given permission to access the prison by members of the gang known as Mara Salvatrucha. The Mara Salvatrucha gang runs the prison. Hinton said when he was allowed inside the prison, he never spotted a single guard. The prison and its inhabitants are the subject of Hinton’s new book, MS-13, which features striking photographs of the elaborately tattooed gang members.
It is said the only time the police will come near the prison is when the family members of inmates go for their routine conjugal visits. Even then, the police will stand guard outside the prison walls.
As an experienced photographer, Hinton has toured many countries in the world. But Hinton said he soon discovered that El Salvador’s violent history had created an environment in which gangs had become a core part of the neighborhoods they claimed to protect. However, he admitted that his life was not in danger when he entered the prison.
“The relationship between the gang and community is more complex than the stereotype of them all being mindless thugs. I didn’t feel at all vulnerable as the inmates would know that I wouldn’t be in there without the permission of the leadership”, he said.
According to commentators in the country, the Ciudad Barrios prison is the result of the Salvadorian government’s policy of segregating prisons in order to prevent clashes between the Mara Salvatrucha members and their rivals. This policy is said to have almost turned prison into dumping grounds for gang members. The 18th Street gang members are said to be the main rival of the Mara Salvatrucha.
Hinton said this policy by the Salvadorian government has not been helpful in solving the problem. He said “The government avoided some violence by only having one gang in the prison rather than mixing the gangs – but it’s not dealing with the problem, just sweeping it under the carpet”.
According to observers, gang formation in El Salvador was imported from the United States. The chronology of events below will tell you why.
From 1980 to 1992 El Salvador was gripped by a violent conflict between a right wing government and communist rebels. Despite the government’s brutal tactics, which included rape and torture, newly elected US President, Ronald Reagan considered it an important ally in the fight against communism. The war left so many displaced that today nearly 17% of El Salvador’s GDP comes from money transfers made by families living abroad.
Forced into exile, many Salvadorians chose Los Angeles (LA) as their new home, where local gangs had already claimed large parts of the city. They started to join these gangs.
A professor at the University of Southern California, Thomas Ward spent 16 years among members of Mara Salvatrucha in LA and El Salvador. Professor Ward revealed the group started as a “stoner gang” in LA, created to protect Salvadorian immigrants. Their rivals, 18th Street were also born out of LA and named after where the gang was formed on 18th Street and Union Avenue, according to Ward.
However, in the early 1990s when gang violence began to spread to several states in the US, the US government adopted a devastating policy. The US law enforcement agencies were authorized to send planeloads of gang members – made in America – to El Salvador where the government was ill equipped to deal with them. Since 2007, the US has deported 160,000 Salvadorans, some of which have not been convicted of crimes. Many of these deportees are well established within their gangs allowing the Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street to expand their membership into other countries in Central America.
Professor Ward puts it in plain language that “We have exported the gang subculture.”
Currently, El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world with nearly 3,000 murders occurring in the first half of 2015. The month of June alone saw 677, the most violence-related deaths in a single month since the end of a 12 year Civil War which forced a quarter of the population to flee the country.
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