Youths flock to massive El Salvadorean gang that is their only chance of a 'job'

"MS" is inked across his shoulder blades, pronouncing his membership of the world’s largest and most violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha, which boasts 30,000 members across El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the United States.

"The tear means that you have killed," said Pedro, indicating a tattoo by his right eye. "One day they will stretch right down my cheek."

Established in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, Mara Salvatrucha was just one gang of the dozens that haunted the poorer areas. Made up initially of youths from El Salvador, the group soon recruited others from Central America. "Mara" means gang in El Salvadorean slang, "Salva" is for Salvador and "trucha" is slang for alert. Mara Salvatrucha soon made its name as the most vicious gang in the city.

"We brought something new to the gang scene in LA," said Ernesto Miranda, a founder member, who was deported from the US seven years ago. "We were hardened to violence, coming from a country in the middle of a civil war. For us killing was like going down to the supermarket."

As thousands fled to the US, the Maras found waves of recruits who could handle guns and had no qualms about using them. But the police were equal to the task of fighting the gang and put the leaders in prison, then deported them.

Then, as they arrived back in Central America in the early 1990s, they found countries struggling to rebuild themselves after civil war, ill-prepared to deal with Maras forged on LA’s streets and with criminal educations polished in California’s prisons.

Murder rates in El Salvador rocketed, exceeded in the hemisphere only by Colombia’s.

Armed with Draconian "Anti-Mara" laws, the police are now making headway. The laws allow them to arrest anyone with gang tattoos, and anyone proved to be a member faces up to six years in prison. The murder rate, in a country smaller than Scotland, is down to five a day.

Help is coming from unexpected quarters. Another founder, Carlos Vasquez, was so feared that the Italian mafia would hire him to do "hits".

"I found myself in jail again, this time for murder," he said, scratching a tattoo. "I was in a bad way, wounded from a knife fight with a black gang in the prison and my feet rotting, having spent so much time in the ‘hole’ [solitary confinement]."

The only book he was allowed there was a religious one, and his mother sent him a Bible, which changed his life.

Deported to El Salvador, he linked up again with Miranda and they started work trying to help gang members. His kills still give him respect.

"The Maras offer a code, a family to members, many of whom come from broken homes or the streets," Vasquez said. "God offers a different creed, a different family."

Yet with endemic poverty and few job opportunities, Mara Salvatrucha has no difficulty recruiting.

Pedro, who wears a shirt to cover his tattoos and avoid arrest, knows he will die in the gang, and die young.

"But what else is there?" he asks with a shrug. "Even if I wanted a real job, who would give me one with all these tattoos? Besides, I won’t get no respect serving burgers at McDonald’s."