MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang

by Steven Dudley

Overview

*An NPR Best Book of the Year*

“A remarkable feat of reporting.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises

*WINNER OF THE LUKAS PRIZE*

The definitive account of the most notorious street gang in America—the MS-13—as seen through the lives of gang members and their families caught in its malicious web



The MS-13 was born from war. In the 1980s, El Salvador was enmeshed in a bloody civil conflict. To escape the guerrilla assaults and death squads, many fled to the US and settled in Los Angeles. Among them were Alex and his brother.

There, as a survival instinct, Alex and a small number of Salvadoran immigrants formed a group called the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, a relatively harmless social network bound by heavy metal music and their Salvadoran identity. But later, as they brushed against established local gangs, the group took on a harder edge, selling drugs, stealing cars and killing rivals who threatened their territories. As authorities cracked down, gang members like Alex were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger, and in Central America, the gang multiplied, eventually spreading to a half-dozen nations in two continents.

Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth, with an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad. But it is also misunderstood—less a drug cartel and more a hand-to-mouth organization whose criminal economy is based mostly on small-time extortion schemes and petty drug dealing. Journalist and longtime organized crime investigator Steven Dudley brings readers inside the nefarious group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and the exploitative and unequal economic systems helped foster the gang and sustain it. Ultimately, MS-13 is the story of the modern immigrant and the perennial battle to escape a vortex of poverty and crime, as well as the repressive, unequal systems that feed these problems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781488095344
Publisher:	Harlequin
Publication date:	04/26/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	283
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

STEVEN DUDLEY is the cofounder of InSight Crime, a think tank devoted to investigating organized crime and corruption in the Americas. As a journalist in Latin America, he spent the past two decades writing for the Washington Post, NPR, the BBC and the Miami Herald. MS-13 is the winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award.

Table of Contents

Author's Note 15

Introduction: Judging Norman 19

Part I Getting In (1979-1990) 31

1 The Beginning 33

2 Norman's Wars 50

3 The Making of a Street Gang 70

4 The Ghost of William Walker 87

Part II Getting Serious (1990-2010) 131

5 Los Señores 103

6 The Deported 120

7 "We go to war." 137

8 "We ruled." 160

9 Escape from Zacatraz 178

Part III Getting Out (2010-2019) 181

10 The Gang Truce 197

11 God and the Beast 213

12 The New War 230

13 Nothing to Hide 250

14 The Monster 271

Acknowledgments 291

Methodology and Notes 295

Notes on Chapters 299

Bibliography 321

Glossary of Major Gang Terms Used in This Book 340

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

03/30/2020

Journalist Dudley, who spent the last two decades covering crime in Latin America, brings his expertise to his chilling debut about the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Started more than 40 years ago in Los Angeles, the gang consisted of mostly teenage Salvadoran boys who wanted to forget the violence of their home country and its civil war by drinking and playing loud music. But it grew into a vicious group known for brutal murders. After gang members were rounded up, sent to U.S. prisons, and then deported, they recreated the gang in El Salvador and spread to other Central American nations. Dudley personalizes the history of MS-13 in a boy he calls Norman, a typical gang member, who as a child in El Salvador turned to the gang to protect him from the army, the war, and domestic violence. Eventually, Norman fled to the U.S. to get out of MS-13, but he has lived in fear ever since. For anyone who has ever wondered why and how gang members are made, Dudley has the answers. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Steven Dudley’s MS-13 is a remarkable feat of reporting; the ways in which the United States is complicit in the creation and preservation of MS-13 might well keep you awake deep into the night, as it did me. I can’t shake this book, or the feeling that we have doomed so many young men to a life of violence. We have to do better for them, for our children, and for our collective future.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us



"Steven Dudley's great contribution in this landmark account of MS-13 is to take a subject that has been sensationalized and mythologized and politicized beyond recognition and, through painstaking reporting and clear-eyed analysis, capture a truth that is less exotic—but more fascinating—than the headlines. Rather than default to easy alarmism or xenophobic caricatures, Dudley captures the origins of the gang as a human story of migration and migrant communities, and a policy story, about the unintended consequences of U.S. policy. By detailing the experiences of gang members and victims alike, he anatomizes the complex, fluid dynamics of this elusive transnational network. A startling book."—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

"Steve Dudley’s clear prose helps untangle the murky world of the MS-13 gang and its little-known history and origins. Dudley’s time spent with gang members offers keen observations on the complex nature of the gang's social, criminal and economic structures that few have had access to. As Dudley shows, the gangs formed, grew and evolved for many reasons, and its members are not cartoon gangsters but real people dealing with harsh realities that often result in great harm and loss in repeated cycles. Dudley provides vital details and context for the U.S. policies that make the problems worse rather than better our fundamental inability to deal with this rapidly evolving reality."—Douglas Farah, author of Blood from Stones

"Ripped straight from the headlines, MS-13, is one of the year’s most important books, a gripping meticulously reported account of the rise of one of the world’s most notorious street gangs. Author Steven Dudley spent years studying MS-13. With his remarkable access, Dudley skillfully weaves in the story of gang members to show how MS-13 grew from a social network to a criminal enterprise that President Trump has blamed for the rise of violent attacks in communities across the United States. After relatively humble beginnings in Los Angeles in the 1980s, it has spread to more than a half-dozen countries and become the focus of law enforcement in the United States and Central America. In spite of these efforts, MS-13 remains a threat. But Dudley does more than chronicle the history of the gang. He uses MS-13 to tell a larger story of flawed U.S. policy that has helped the gang flourish."—Mitch Weiss, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Broken Faith and Tiger Force


“Steven Dudley’s latest book is a historical treatise moved forward by a series of captivating narratives that present a wholistic, unifying perspective on the Mara Salvatrucha. Where other authors have stopped short in their own work on this mysterious gang, Dudley’s research presses deeper into the past, and walks father into the countryside of El Salvador and neighborhoods of Los Angeles to bring to the conversation a thoroughly researched and reported body of work. In one read, MS-13 counterbalances many of the wrong assumptions made about the gang among politicians and law enforcement while highlighting some of the most often obfuscated truths about the realities of what it means to be a Mara Salvatrucha, from wannabe to homie, and then desperate to escape a gang that never lets you go.”—Samuel Logan, author of This is for the Mara Salvatrucha

"Steven Dudley skillfully cuts through the hype and clichés to tell the dirty true story of the gang—from its painful birth in Los Angeles to its bloody adolescence in El Salvador to the showdown in the Trump era. People need to read this thorough investigation to find a better way."—Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and Gangster Warlord


“The definitive account of MS-13… An outstanding book for true crime readers.”—Library Journal STARRED review


“Chilling.…For anyone who has ever wondered why and how gang members are made, Dudley has the answers.”—Publishers Weekly


“Trenchant….A cleareyed account of a criminal enterprise that is undeniably a threat to civil society wherever it turns up.”—Kirkus Reviews


"A deep dive written in plain prose backed by years of research, MS-13 is a remarkable resource for thorough understanding."—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

03/27/2020

Dudley (codirector & cofounder, InSight Crime; Walking Ghosts) has written the definitive account of MS-13, the violent international crime organization. This panoramic narrative ties together the gang's formation in Los Angeles, by immigrants from El Salvador seeking protection from other gangs; Dudley also examines MS-13's links with the Mexican Mafia and relevance to American immigration and foreign policy. The book benefits greatly from the perspectives of a gang leader, a recruit, the Salvadoran military, and U.S. federal and state agents. Like a deadly virus, MS-13 has mutated, and Dudley provides a chilling, even-handed account of its origins. Norman, the gang leader seeking asylum in the United States, is at the center of Dudley's work. He grew up amid violence in El Salvador, embraced MS-13 as a new family, and ultimately tried to leave it. This volume is more complete than its predecessors—such as Samuel Logan's This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha and Juan José Martínez d' Aubuisson's A Year Inside MS-13—and reflects the author's deep knowledge of the subject, derived from his local reporting and codirection of a government funded three-year study of MS-13 in the United States. VERDICT An outstanding book for true crime readers.—Harry Charles, St. Louis

Library Journal

2020-03-01
Trenchant history of the gang that Donald Trump has called as dangerous as al-Qaida.

MS-13, which takes its name from the enigmatic Spanish phrase “Mara Salvatrucha,” is now 40 years old, and it has members throughout the U.S. as well as El Salvador. Owing to a vicious civil war between a government backed by the Reagan administration and communist guerrillas, tens of thousands of Salvadorans fled to the United States, with a particularly strong presence in Los Angeles. Two refugee brothers founded MS-13 to protect their community from other gangs—and then, over time, discovered that they could gain power and wealth by controlling segments of the drug trade and other criminal enterprises. Now, journalist Dudley writes, MS-13 is a loosely organized gang that “had grown by coming at their enemies in waves, like a marabunta, or army of ants, as the street gangs were baptized so many years ago in El Salvador.” The gang is marked by several signatures, including heavy tattooing and a tendency to kill their victims with machetes, chopping them to bits. Like any gang, Dudley observes, MS-13 is both a product of its environment and a shaper of it, strengthening social bonds “via violence and predatory criminal acts.” Gang life is also far from romantic, as he reveals, marked by excessive drug and alcohol use, that constant violence, and, often, homelessness—landlords are reluctant to rent to gang members who treat their properties as “a crash-pad, a party-place, a meeting spot, a stash house, a torture chamber, a brothel or all of the above.” The gang is also dominant in places such as LA, New York, and even Washington while its members travel freely back and forth to El Salvador, bribing the authorities to look the other way.

A cleareyed account of a criminal enterprise that is undeniably a threat to civil society wherever it turns up.

Kirkus Reviews