IT IS MIDYEAR and the rains have begun. The humidity makes it hard to breathe, and people sweat profusely. Vegetation begins to spread throughout the hills.
Going up the hill is a true feat. The street is muddy and uneven, and the dirt threatens to dislodge itself, sending those of us on the only road that comes here tumbling back down.
But it’s another sort of storm that has Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha worried. Little Down’s stunt did not go unpunished. Columbia Little Sycos did not hold back. Last night they murdered Calazo, a friend and collaborator of the clica, well loved in the neighborhood. He was a bus driver. Last night, on his final trip of the day, two passengers got up and pointed their guns. One at him, another at the other passengers. A few feet ahead, gangsters lay in wait, armed to the teeth. Before putting two bullets in Calazo’s head, one asked:
“You gonna pay the rent or what?”
Then he fired twice.
They stole Calazo’s moneybox and all the passengers’ cash. The men were forced to take their shirts off in a search for MS tattoos. Then they were all told to leave the bus. A gangster from Columbia Little Sycos climbed in, poured gasoline over Calazo’s dead body, tossed a match, and ran. Luckily, an MS ally was able to put out the fire before it could spread. On the bus rode a member of Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha. He managed to hide his tattoos, and that is why he is still alive. It is he who tells us.
Between the bus drivers and the Guanacos clica exists a sort of alliance—some might call it extortion. It’s simple: the drivers pay the clica, and this not only guarantees that no member of MS assaults them, it also guarantees that no one else, including Barrio 18, messes with them. As time passed, a certain friendship developed, and now the bus station features a gigantic MS mural. There, the gangsters gather to play cards with the drivers. They travel by bus when they need to go down the hill. The buses are, in short, Guanacos official transport.
It is a bad blow, not just for the clica but the whole community. Calazo had several young children. The community is indignant and demand that the funeral be held here, at the communal house, since his parents live in Soyapango, Barrio 18 territory.
Some inhabitants have left the hill, fleeing their homes in fear. Gustavo, the head of the youth center, is one of them. Tutoring has been shut down for good, and Destino is in charge of running the center, which is now little more than a bakery. Chaos and fear reign, and people speak of nothing but war.
From the hillsides, PNC patrols can be seen. Pickup trucks make their way up and down the neighborhood, and except for the graffiti, there is no sign of the gang.
Destino is in the youth center. He is baking bread like nothing’s wrong, though it was he who called me last night to tell me of Calazo’s death. He sounded more indignant on the phone than in person.
Destino doesn’t like to talk of war. He avoids the subject and leaves when it comes up. But now he seems more open. He speaks of an old pact that today has been broken. Guanacos have always scorned the Barrio 18 clicas, saw them as kiddie stuff. But they always had a tacit agreement. Territory below the giant amate tree belongs to Barrio 18, and anything above to Mara Salvatrucha. This includes bus routes. It has been this way for years. Conflicts have ended in death and brutality, but they have never extorted in enemy territory. These sorts of arrangements are called southern pacts, in reference to an old Chicano gang alliance in Southern California.26 It’s not clear if it was Barrio 18 or MS-13 who broke the pact, and it matters little now.
Destino tells me gangsters often resort to these pacts in times of strife: “My kids live with their grandma in a bitch neighborhood [Barrio 18]. Nearby, in Zacamíl neighborhood. I used to hesitate about going. Everyone knows who I am. The thing is, they started fucking around: ‘We’re gonna kill your grandma,’ they’d tell Isaías, my eldest. A while ago, some fucker put out a cigarette on Isaías’s arm. I coulda easily gone and fucked shit up. If I had that mentality I had before, I used to not give a shit, I woulda set things straight. But I’m not doing that anymore. So I talked to the gang higher-ups, the mafia, you know. I told them what was happening and they told some others. ‘Look, Destino’s kids are being bothered and we want it to stop.’ And the problem stopped.”
Police patrols are an empty spectacle. After swarming the neighborhood like a horde of ants they leave, and the gangsters emerge from hiding. They come from every direction, always more of them. Reinforcements have arrived from other clicas to back up Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha.
Alicia arrives at the youth center. She is one of the most powerful women in the neighborhood, one of those women whose tongue is a lethal weapon. She can make a rumor spread through the hills in a single day and tear a person’s reputation to shreds. When her stories aren’t enough to destroy her enemies, she resorts to a more powerful weapon: MS-13. She tells them of people in Barrio 18 territory who have made fun of the gang. The gang tends to punish these people. She is feared in the neighborhood. Today, she has come to complain. She asks Destino if they are going to take Calazo’s death standing.
“So, you guys are gonna wuss out? Damn, that’s fucked. Everyone’s asking if you’re just gonna take it.”
Calazo’s friends have also pestered the gang, demanding the same safety they pay a steep fee for each month. It is not just the Guanacos who are in this war; the whole community is red with rage at Barrio 18, and they want them to pay. There is an air of vengeance on the hill.
In front of the communal house, though it’s early, Jazmín is closing up her juice stand. She tells me, anticipating the violence, that she has sent Hugo to boarding school.
“Yeah, I sent him to Izalco, a school with a priest. He can’t keep living here anymore. I don’t know how we’ll get by, but I was losing him,” she says, almost shouting. Then she lowers her voice and says: “He’s at La Unión but I don’t want anyone to know, because I’m scared that man [Little Down] will go take him out.”27
Hugo would never have gone willingly. Jazmín had to trick him. She said she was taking him to the beach, that they would play in the sand and swim in the ocean. And so at 5 a.m., Hugo dragged his mother down the hill, anxious to reach the sun on the beach. Hours later, the boy realized where he was. He cried, yelled, and threatened to stop loving his mom, but Jazmín had decided.
“Look, I already lost Karla. After she left home . . . now she’s snatched up. So I don’t want to lose this kid.”
It is true, Karla has been devoured by the beast. She lives with Little Down, and he, with the obsessive territorial logic of gangsters, has marked her forever. On her shoulder blade there is a tattoo in gothic script: Little Down.
26 This Sureño alliance is still in force today in California and other parts of the US. The enormous and complex system operates under the umbrella of the Mexican Mafia.
27 Izalco is a municipality in the western part of El Salvador, where La Unión is one of the country’s fourteen departments. It is the department furthest from San Salvador, bordering Honduras.