MS-13
The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF THE MOST INFAMOUS STREET GANG IN AMERICA
In the 1980s, El Salvador was involved in a bloody fight for control of the government. To escape the guerrilla assaults and death squads many fled to the US. As a survival instinct, they formed a group called the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, a relatively harmless social network bound by rock and roll. 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 were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger.
Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on Earth, with tens of thousands of members operating in a half-dozen nations and two continents, and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year. Through the story of former gang member Norman and his family, journalist Steven Dudley brings readers inside the deadly group.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.