WHILE we’re lulled into a strange, but false feeling of safety watching “The Sopranos” – which brilliantly portrays the declining U.S. Mafia, ruled by overweight, out-of-shape men who generally keep the violence within their ranks – the reality is that the most dangerous gang in the world isn’t Mafia at all.
The biggest, most dangerous gang in the world is actually called MS-13 – and is made up almost exclusively of Latinos, is estimated to be 100,000-members strong and is spreading like a virus in 33 U.S. states and six countries. It controls drugs, kills, extorts, runs jails and is responsible for thousands of deaths each year.
To join, you must do a couple of things: Get beaten to a pulp for 13 seconds by a raging band of your “brothers,” and be available to kill at will. Yes – some members have committed their first murders by the time they are 9 years old.
And no – MS-13 isn’t some foreign drug cartel that has moved into the U.S. In fact, it is a gang that was begun by a few teenagers in 1979 in a Los Angeles schoolyard. We’re talking something like five kids who were professed stoners who were only interested in heavymetal music and getting into Ozzy Osbourne concerts. Their reason for forming? They were tired of getting picked on in school.
Lisa Ling (formerly of “The View”) has actually nailed interviews with a few MS-13 gangsters who are, unlike the Gottis, as secretive and publicity-averse as a coven of vampires.
The interviews – and Ling’s bravery in nailing those interviews (she rides with two gangbangers, visits a prison in El Salvador after the government tells her that she may in fact be kidnapped) – is riveting TV.
National Geographic’s portrayal of this rapidly spreading gang includes the fact that it is organized and not a loosely held-together unorganized bunch of thugs.
The members – and you’ve seen them – are tattooed with their own histories. Their graffiti marks their territories, and
businesses from stores to push carts in their territories must pay protection money – often 50 percent of their income.
Included in the footage are government tapes of a young, now-murdered woman, Brenda Paz, who was one of few females in MS-13.
So how did a small, violent street gang from L.A. become an international phenomenon? Ironically, it grew out of the U.S. government’s policy of deporting the murderous gang members instead of jailing them. For the gang members, this was a free plane ride home – where they were not only not jailed, but free to spread the word of MS-13. Your government at work for you.
Brilliant. Scary. True. Don’t miss it.
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“World’s Most Dangerous Gang”
Sunday at 8 p.m. on National Geographic
[* * * *] (Four stars)