GRADUALLY, MEJICANOS RETURNS to a tense sort of normalcy. People slowly fill the streets, meek at any provocation. The buses continue on their normal routes and the market is open, as usual, as if nearly a week ago seventeen people had not burned alive.
As for the police spectacle, only a small checkpoint remains. It is a few traffic cones lined up, as if to divide the street in two, and a pair of agents watch the cars drive by. Other bystanders investigate the site, still smoking, where the bus was set ablaze.
“Look, man, I’m going to be real with you. Things are gonna get real.”
The Informant tells this to me in a small café some ways from the hill, like a preamble before he launches into an avalanche of stories. This time, there will be no recording. He says that people forget, but recordings do not. He is melancholy. On occasion a rage is seen in his eyes, the same one that animated him when he was with Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha.
He tells me the clica is in dire straits. On the day of the massacre, the police captured Little Down and El Maniaco. It looks like both will be charged for several murders. If they’re found guilty, they’ll pay thirty years for each victim.
Little Down’s reign is suspended for now. His glory days may be over. If the prosecutors do their due dilligence, no longer will he wander the streets, amulets up and down his neck, the very harbinger of death. According to The Informant, the cops got him that night in a surprise raid. A swarm of cops surrounded his house. They didn’t dare beat down the door. They ordered the men to leave with their hands on their heads. Little Down responded with a hail of bullets. Guanacos Criminales’ ex-hitman was not going down without a fight. The whole neighborhood thundered with gunfire. Little Down, with a tantrum of lead, managed to hold off the police. He took off, gun in hand, alongside El Maniaco. But the hive of police was unyielding. Even when surrounded, the gangster fought, but in the end he was captured.
I remember Little Down sitting next to me recounting fragments of his life as a Mara Salvatrucha hitman, his years in the Mariona jail under the fearsome reign of Bruno,32 his ever-tragic love affairs, his years on the lowest rungs of Mara Salvatrucha, his fatal encounters with Barrio 18. I remember his dark almond eyes, glittering with rage.
It is rumored that the clica is led again by Dark, but it’s just that, a rumor. Nothing is certain at the moment. Little Down has left the clica for good. The king of the Guanacos has fallen, and the clica anxiously awaits a new leader.
The Columbia Little Sycos, for their part, take advantage of the crisis to make another move.
One night after the massacre, while cops and soldiers bustled through Mejicanos, up higher, in the last neighborhood on the hill, a squad of Barrio 18 prepared a third strike against the Guanacos. Two cars loaded with gangsters made their way up the only road leading to the community. They reached Dark’s house. Silently, they descended in search of the temporary leader, and opened fire on his home, shooting anything that moved. What was left of the clica ran out to defend itself, and made the neighborhood ring out with bullets. It is said that for several minutes the clica defended itself rabidly, but lost against the onslaught. Not a single cop car made its way up the hill.
It is likely that Destino is right when he says there is a pact between the cops and the Columbia Little Sycos. One day after the massacre, on the outskirts of the neighborhood where it took place, the cops found the gun that killed Juan Martínez, the bus driver. It was a nine millimeter, the property of the police. It’s not proof, but it’s suspicious.
I ask The Informant how the Mara will respond to this invitation to barbarity. I ask if El Viento has given an order. He looks me in the eyes and says nothing.
He then tells me that Mara Salvatrucha’s next move will be horrible and violent. Some have spoken of burning alive all the Jardín area merchants. An eye for an eye. It is common practice around these parts.
According to a PNC investigation, burned bodies have been found in the area for years, courtesy of the gang war. Others prefer a hellfire of bullets. They think the people in the area are all complicit with Barrio 18, and that they deserve the same fate as the people on the bus. Others, more modest in their vengeance, want to kill one of the gang leaders. It is not a complicated plan. They will send a boy with a camera phone, like a spy. Once he has gathered enough information on the subject, it will be sent to a squadron of men at the top of the hill. Another common practice around these parts.
I ask him if he thinks Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha will survive the onslaught, if, now leaderless and disoriented, the clica will not succumb and abandon the hill for good. The Informant is thoughtful for a moment, and says no. Dryly, with certainty.
He tells me it’s not the first time they have faced a crisis and launches into stories where El Viento, Destino, Calavera,33 Casper, and Little Down save the day. He speaks of the war on Mara Gallo and their extermination. He speaks of Barrio 18’s many attempts, and how they have been repelled for ten years running. He tells me this time will not be different. Mara Salvatrucha will prevail.
As for leaders, he says, it doesn’t matter. There are more than enough candidates. The Informant eyes me slyly and asks:
“Have you heard of Garrita? El Viento and Sky found him in a park . . . that’s what they told me.”
According to legend, the two gangsters found a newborn. They saw, though crying and malnourished, something more than a child. They saw a way to continue their dynasty. They saw themselves in that child. So they decided to keep him, and raise him in the breast of the gang. The Mara would be the only family he would know, and he would learn to respect and love her from the beginning. The baby would be some sort of chosen one, and all of the area clicas would know and acknowledge him as a living extension of Guanacos’ power.
They decided that the boy should spend time in each clica. The gangsters’ women would see to his needs. As a sign of their pact, they tattooed his face with the Salvatrucha claw. It is probably one of those stories that grows more embellished with each whisper. The fact is, the kid exists, he sits in prison accused of homicide and sports the tattoo on his face. He is certainly a candidate for successor.
Calm has returned to the last neighborhood on the hill. The gangsters are hidden, and slowly people return to their lives. The first buses resume their travels. Very few are brave enough to drive them—or ride them.
Alicia is one of them. She gets on, empty pots in hand. It’s a good sign, it means she has managed to sell her wares.
Jazmín still runs her juice stand in front of the communal home. She has given up on Hugo, and limits herself to cleaning his clothes and feeding him when he comes home. He is still in school, but the other kids fear him. It is her fault for getting mixed up with gangsters, say some. She is widely criticized, but Jazmín is unconcerned. She has another chance, one that grows in her daughter’s womb. Karla is a few months from giving birth to Little Down’s child. She has returned to her mother’s house, and now they work the drinks stand together. They will raise the baby together, too.
The vagrant keeps howling in the streets, there is no ceasefire from the demons who afflict him daily.
Destino, meanwhile, continues making bread.
Gustavo hasn’t shown himself around these parts. He abandoned his post for good.
The rest of Guanacos Criminales Salvatrucha are still children, eager to play at war again, awaiting an invitation, a new challenge from Barrio 18. It won’t take long.
This war has ended, but a new one will start before long. One in which the soldiers look the same and the cycle of death continues.
It is evening, and a mantle of clouds clusters over the hill. The rain will come soon.
32 José Edgardo Bruno Ventura is one of the most recognized capos in El Salvador’s modern history. He was the leader of a prison gang known as La Raza (The Race) and was, perhaps, the most emblematic convict of the 1990s.
33 In English, Skull.