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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:51 am
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Results for maras
6 results foundAuthor: Umana, Isabel Aguilar Title: Violent Women and Violence Against Women: Gender Relations in the Maras and Other Street Gangs of Central America's Northern Triangle Region Summary: The so-called maras and other youth gangs of Central America’s Northern Triangle are mainly comprised of men; nevertheless, women are present in multiple ways in the lives of gang members, either as mothers, sisters, girlfriends, friends or fellow gang members. This publication is based on the findings of an exploratory study of the role of women and gender-based relations in the inner circles of these gangs. The study examines the motivations of some girls and teenagers to join street gangs, their experiences as women in these groups which are dominated by men, as well as the reasons why some of them decide to leave the group. The study is based on a series of interviews with active or former female gang members from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras; interviews with male gang members and former gang members; interviews with some professional social workers who work on social reinsertion programmes for gang members. This publication concludes with a series of policy and funding recommendations to international policy makers to address the issues raised in the study to ensure that that vulnerable young girls and teenage women who are victims of gender violence receive appropriate and timely interventions. Details: Brussels: Initiative for Peacebuilding, 2012. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 11, 2012 at: http://www.ifp-ew.eu/pdf/201204IfPEWViolentWomenAndViolenceAgainstWomen.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Central America URL: http://www.ifp-ew.eu/pdf/201204IfPEWViolentWomenAndViolenceAgainstWomen.pdf Shelf Number: 125973 Keywords: Gang ViolenceMarasStreet Gangs, Female MembersYouth Gangs (Central America) |
Author: Sida Title: Maras and Youth Gangs, Community and Police in Central America Summary: The presence of criminal youth gangs – called pandillas in Spanish – has long since become an almost permanent feature of everyday life in Central America even if their number, geographical distribution and exact character have varied over the time and from country to country. However, during the last decade a qualitatively different kind of criminal youth gang has developed and firmly established themselves in three countries of the region – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. This new type of gang – called maras – has rapidly become a major concern for the governments of these countries and a source of deep fear among the population living on the outskirts of cities and in poorer urban districts. The maras consist of groups of youths aged 8 to 35 who aim to control whole neighbourhoods or territories, making membership of the mara their lifestyle and identity, and crime their way of life. There are many different branches of maras, although the two most feared and well-known are the Mara 18 and the Mara Salvatrucha, both originating in the city of Los Angeles, USA. Estimates of the number of mara members in Central America vary widely, but the figure is likely to be in the range of 70,000 to 100,000, with the highest number present in Honduras, followed by El Salvador and then Guatemala. Maras constitute an urban sub-culture of a special kind, giving their members not only a sense of belonging but also of protection, pride and power. Their identity is reinforced by special rites, by a terminology of their own and self-invented symbols, such as their numerous and very visible tattoos. Solidarity with the mara is of supreme value, and to betray the group may be punishable by death. Mara members do not dedicate themselves to crime exclusively – they also participate in the normal labour market and share many leisure time interests with other young people. However, their criminal activities are frequent and include extortion, armed robbery, assault and kidnapping, as well as – increasingly, it seems – retailing drugs on the street. Murder is commonplace and may also be committed as a reference for power and controlling group behaviour. They have also been linked to lucrative border-crossing arrangements (from Guatemala to Mexico), trafficking in human beings as well as in arms, and it also appears that they are used as professional “torpedoes” and killers by groups of organized crime. Their main fight is against rival gangs for control of territory, which is generally identified by graffiti. In this fight, anyone – of any age – who has a friend or family member belonging to a rival gang may be “marked” (raped, or severely hurt) or even killed – in order to humiliate the enemy and convey a message to them. In the three Central American countries which are most affected, a considerable number of municipalities and/or city blocks are effectively under the control of different maras. Details: Stockholm, Sweden: Sida, 2008. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 21, 2013 at: http://www.sida.se/Global/About%20Sida/Nyhetsarkiv/Nyhetsarkiv%202009/Dokument/Maras_and_Youth_Gangs,_Community_and_Police_in_Central_America%5B1%5D.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Central America URL: http://www.sida.se/Global/About%20Sida/Nyhetsarkiv/Nyhetsarkiv%202009/Dokument/Maras_and_Youth_Gangs,_Community_and_Police_in_Central_America%5B1%5D.pdf Shelf Number: 129119 Keywords: Gang ViolenceMarasPandillasViolent CrimesYouth Gangs (Central America) |
Author: Carranza, Marlon Title: Detention or Death: Where the “pandillero” kids of El Salvador are heading Summary: This report focuses on organised territorial youth gangs, known as ‘maras’ or ‘pandillas.’ The two pandillas focused on were: Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS) and Barrio 18. Part One gives a contextualised summary of these groups. Part Two takes a closer look at the human face of this phenomenon, with profiles of individuals involved. Part Three examines possible solutions to the problem, with an evaluation of relevant social programmes and policies. A full-length version of the report summarised in this chapter can be found at www.coav.org.br. Details: COAV (Children and youth in Organised Armed Violence’), 2004. 22p. (Executive Summary; Full Report in Spanish at www.coav.org.br) Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 26, 2013 at: http://www.coav.org.br/publique/media/elsalvadoring.pdf Year: 2004 Country: El Salvador URL: http://www.coav.org.br/publique/media/elsalvadoring.pdf Shelf Number: 129163 Keywords: Gang ViolenceMarasPandillasYouth Gangs (El Salvador) |
Author: Fontes, Anthony Wayne, IV Title: Of Maras and Mortal Doubt: Violence, Order, and Uncertainty in Guatemala City Summary: Everyday brutality in Guatemala City shocks and numbs a society that has suffered generations of war and bloodshed. Much of this violence is blamed on maras, gangs bearing transnational signs and symbols, that operate in prisons an poor urban communities. I will explore how the maras' evolution in post-war Guatemala has made them what they are today: victim-perpetrators of massive and horrifying violence, useful targets of societal rage, pivotal figures in a politics of death reigning over post-war society. However, while maras and mareros play starring roles in this account of extreme peacetime violence, they are not the problem. They are a hyper-visible expression of a problem no one can name, a deafening scream, a smokescreen obscuring innumerable and diffuse sources of everyday brutality. The maras will be my entry-point into a world defined by mortal doubt, and my guides as I navigate the rumors, fantasies, fears, and trauma swirling about criminal violence in post-war Guatemala City. The specter of violence has become so utterly entwined with the making of lived and symbolic landscapes that it cannot be extricated from the very fibers of everyday life. I will illuminate the myriad of spaces this violence infiltrates and reorders to expose the existential uncertainty haunting efforts to confront, contain, and overcome violence. In the process, I provide an alternative, intimate understanding of the violence and suffering for which maras speak, or are made to speak, and the ways this violence and suffering affects individual consciousness and communal life, orders urban space, and circulates in public discourse. Thus, I have arranged my arguments and stories in such a way as to capture the destabilizing psychological, affective, and visceral impact the conditions of extreme violation at work in post-war Guatemala City have on knowledge- and meaning-making. The veins of uncertainty fracturing this account are meant to rupture the pretense of knowing, and so break through into the treacherous and largely unmapped territory that is life lived in the shadow of constant violence. Details: Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 2015. 223p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed December, 2015 at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/16c477pk Year: 2015 Country: Guatemala URL: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/16c477pk Shelf Number: 137426 Keywords: Gang-Related ViolenceGangsMarasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Zinecker, Heidrun Title: Violence in Peace: Forms and causes of postwar violence in Guatemala Summary: On 29 December, 1996 the conflict in Guatemala between the URNG, a leftist guerrilla organization, and the authoritarian state came to an end. With the implementation of the peace agreements and the completion of peace-building, Guatemala has without doubt taken an important step on the road to democracy. However, the country's regime does not guarantee a civilized life for its citizens. Even by Latin American standards, it permits an extremely high level of violence. This can be characterized as violence in peace. Although the rates of homicide conditioned by this violence are higher than those that prevailed during the civil war, there is no danger of a return to war. During the war political violence was the main cause of death, and violent crime has now taken its place. This report analyses three forms of postwar violence which are especially typical of Guatemala: political violence, the maras, and lynch law. It then goes on to examine their causes. In the course of this examination, a number of elements which are generally supposed to be causes of violence are excluded as causal factors: the perpetuation of a culture of violence or/and war-violence racism and ethnic exclusion, poverty, and inequality in the sense of a general distribution of income as measured by the Gini coefficient. In the next step, an alternative model of explanation is presented. This distinguishes between enabling structures which make violence possible and structures that might prevent it (with particular reference to the absence of preventive structures). The report identifies regime hybridity and a rent economy as structures that make violence possible, and investigates these structures in order to identify the concrete configurations which are immanent to the structures and cause violence. In the case of the rent economy, the specific structures identified are the especially pronounced bipolarity between the oligarchy and the lowest quintile of the population, new rents as outlets for oligarchical structures and catalysts of violence, low rates of investment, and a low level of empowerment of work. However, none of these structures is, on its own, a cause of the high intensity of violence; they form a complex system. The absence in Guatemala of a structure that could prevent violence can be identified in the poor performance of the security sector, i.e. the police and judiciary, and in the lack of democratic commitment on the part of civil society in this sector. This low level of performance is, in addition to political exclusion and the absence of the rule of law, a characteristic feature of regime hybridity. Although this report is a case study, it has an intrinsically comparative character. This is because the other Central American countries (El Salvador and Honduras with a higher, and Costa Rica and Nicaragua with a lower intensity of violence) form the matrix which renders visible the specificity of Guatemala. Nicaragua is of particular significance for this implicit comparison, because it is the only country in Central America that has experienced a civil war in the recent past but seen a low level of violence since the end of that war. The conclusion of the report identifies two ways in which violence, or the intensity of violence, can be limited in the long term. In the Costa Rican model, a low intensity of violence has been achieved directly, via a long historical path in which "Democracy - Performance + Democratic Content" is combined with "Social Market - Empowerment of Labour + Production of Investment Goods". In the Nicaraguan model, a low intensity of violence has been achieved indirectly but over a shorter period of time; here, there can be no doubt about the absence of democracy, and therefore the existence of regime hybridity, or the absence of a social market economy, and therefore the existence of a rent economy. The main finding of the report follows from the Nicaraguan model: the level of violence can be reduced even though ethnically based exclusion, poverty, and inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) are present, and even though a rent economy and regime hybridity are present as well. If violence is to be successfully reduced, it is necessary for the police and judiciary to be supported conceptually and practically in their efforts to prevent violence and to rehabilitate violent offenders, and to bring about improvements in criminal investigation practices, the support provided to victims, and consistent criminal justice policies. Development aid can help in all these areas. Simultaneously, measures must be taken to bring about the empowerment of civil society - which, however, should not mean the empowerment of vigilantism. In addition, the situation of the lowest quintile of the population should be improved in such a way that there is at least a prospect of relative socioeconomic egalitarianism. This can be done if smaller enterprises are strengthened so that they can serve as a counterweight to the ruling oligarchy, in the context of an improvement in the rate of investment in the production of investment goods. In this way it would be possible to reduce both the official level of unemployment and the concealed unemployment that exists in the informal sector, leading to the empowerment of work. These autochthonous policies are necessary for Guatemala, and they should be combined with the exertion of international political pressure on the USA's problematic policies on immigration, integration, and deportation. This should include the provision of support to Guatemala (as well as El Salvador and Honduras) for the integration of young people deported from the USA. This report presents the first systematic analysis of postwar violence in Guatemala. It is based on approximately 50 interviews with Guatemalan academics, politicians, police and judicial officers, Maya priests, and NGO activists, and also with violent offenders, all of whom were interviewed during a month-long period of field research in Guatemala in March 2006. Details: Frankfurt, Germany: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 2006. 46p. Source: Internet Resource: PRIF Reports No. 76: Accessed June 13, 2016 at: mercury.ethz.ch Year: 2006 Country: Guatemala URL: mercury.ethz.ch Shelf Number: 139425 Keywords: GangsHomicidesMarasPovertySocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeVigilantismViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Castillo, Vogel Vladimir Title: A History of the Phenomenon of the Maras of El Salvador, 1971-1992 Summary: This thesis grounds its examination of the maras of El Salvador in the historical past (1971-1992) rather than the present, which constitutes a departure from current scholarship on the subject. This thesis revises our current understanding of the emergence and development of maras in El Salvador through the recovery, insertion and examination of key local events, conditions, and historical actors of the 1970s and 1980s. From signifying friendship and camaraderie prior to the late 1980s, the maras increasingly became the target of public concern and Salvadoran security forces over the course of the 1980. By the late 1980s the maras increasingly became associated with criminal activity in Salvadoran society and popular culture. To document these changed conditions, this thesis relies extensively on previously untapped and ignored primary sources: newspapers and oral history interviews. Details: University of North Texas, 2014. 86p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed July 18, 2018 at: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799509/#description-content-main Year: 2014 Country: El Salvador URL: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799509/#description-content-main Shelf Number: 150910 Keywords: Gang Violence Gangs MarasYouth Gangs |