Posted on 07/26/2014 7:20:36 PM PDT by blueplum
Visiting El Salvador over the past year, it was hard not to think the country's number-one job is standing around outside with a gun. In the region from which child migrants are fleeing to the US, personal security is largely a question of what you can afford to pay. El Salvador has, by one estimate, 25,000 private guards in a country with 20,000 police officers. In Honduras, which boasts the highest murder rate in the world and has seen the largest exodus of young people to the American border this year, guards outnumber cops five to one.
Wealthy Salvadorans can retreat to residential compounds that resemble a militarized version of a Palm Beach retirement community, complete with golf carts. Behind high walls and even higher voltage wires, one economist gushed to me: "This place has everything – we never have to go outside!" For the rest, those who stay and those who get sent back, gangland drama is a fact of life.
:snip:'
Both major gangs now plaguing the region originated in Los Angeles. The gang that became MS-13 was originally an informal collection of teenage civil war refugees and metal-heads who borrowed their devil-horns hand sign from Judas Priest. Their onetime ally-turned-rival, Mara 18, traces back to the 1940s but shared with the newer gang an open-door membership for Central Americans that put them both at odds with the area's more established, exclusively Mexican gangs. When those gangs began to terrorize the new immigrants, MS-13 and Mara 18 fought back.
:snip:
During El Salvador's recent presidential elections, the opposition party posted billboards in regions from which the largest number of migrants are leaving. Under pictures of Salvadoran families in DC, California and New York read lines like I WANT TO RETURN TO A COUNTRY FREE OF GANGS...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The Guardian toes the liberal line as usual.
“Both major gangs now plaguing the region originated in Los Angeles.”
http://www.johnspeedie.com/healy/crap.wav
That’s certainly not the history of MS13 I remember from 20 or so years back.
I remember a 60 minutes expose about MS13 from better than 20 years ago. It was a long time ago but I’m pretty sure MS13 started as El Salvadoran guerrilla fighters. When the war ended, they turned to extortion, murder and terror.
They did things like stopping a bus on a country road and killing all but one person to take a message to the surrounding villages that MS13 was in control.
I agree. I almost put a [Barf] tag on the title, but I didn’t want folks to pass it up for that and miss the billboards reference.
Plus there’s the fact that Judas Priest was white boy metal and Rob Halford has always been a flaming homosexual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU
Did you ever consider that same fence can be used to keep you in? The proper solution is to stop the dual demand side of employers seeking to hire and governments seeking to provide benefits to illegal immigrants.
I don’t know much about the Mexican ‘mara’ gang either. Or even if the Judas Priest reference is correct! El Salvadorian metal heads? whod’a thunk?
Every latin American gang I’ve ever seen was big on the whole latin identity/separatist crap and wouldn’t be caught dead listening to gringo music.
stupid author......blame the US is always the lefts go to argument. The fact that corruption and generations of thugocracies ruining countries is never mentioned. They are not free. There is no liberty in these third world countries. Unfortunately the left in this country thought that if they threw money at them, these countries would use it to improve the lives of their citizens. It NEVER happened and NEVER will
we throw money at them, they want more.
They have a drug problem and poverty problem, we go spend millions fighting the drug war and in USAID, and they hate us anyway
We export criminals who aren’t here legally, and the left complains we are too harsh (and note how they stick ‘drunk driving’ with petty theft, as if it’s no big deal):
“a law that ratcheted up deportations of immigrants with criminal records – including legal residents – by making things like drunk driving and petty theft deportable offenses”
as if drunk driving and theft aren’t deportable offenses in their own countries
I guess MS-13 is Hell Bent for Leather.
true words
Hence gates were invented multiple mellenia ago.
fso301 and the "cripple" both make good points; but in a pinch, I'd fly you over the fence! Really, if it came to it, ways could be found. Remember. if we built the fence it would be indicitive of sound leadership.
Sure it occurred to me. But I’m not fleeing from my government. If it turns tyrant, I and millions of others plan to TAKE THEM OUT. By force, if it comes to that.
I don’t plan to run away, if things get rough. Do you?
If anything, it will be handy to trap our traitors against that fence, when it’s time to round them up and take care of them once and for all.
See 19.
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