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Gang Life in Urban Jungle: Beheadings, Beatings, Drugs, Uzis
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- National Geographic photographers are famous for painstakingly filming wildlife in exotic locations, perhaps while having their blood drained by leaches and sparrow- sized mosquitoes.

``Explorer: World's Most Violent Gang'' enters a scary urban jungle inhabited by a bunch of thugs known as MS-13. Before this deeply unsettling, one-hour program ends, host Lisa Ling and her crew escape being taken prisoner by gangsters capable of devouring the correspondent with no more remorse than a barracuda shows a snook.

The gang originated in Los Angeles in the late 1980s; its formal name -- Mara Salvatrucha-13 -- is a mishmash of Spanish and slang terms. ``Mara'' means gang, ``trucha'' is slang for ``watch out,'' ``salva'' represents El Salvador and 13 is a gang reference to Southern California. ``Salvadoran army ants'' is a popular translation, reflecting early ties to Salvadoran paramilitary groups.

According to Ling, there are upward of 10,000 MS-13 members in the U.S. and perhaps 10 times that many worldwide, primarily in Central America. They are mostly male and heavily tattooed, favoring representations of shotguns, spider webs, prison life and devils.

Beatings, Murder

Gang members live, and die, by simple rules: Initiates must endure a beating of at least 13 seconds, one of which is brutally presented here. Members are required to kill rival gangsters and bring in money, often through drug trafficking. And once you join, you cannot quit.

Departure, viewers soon learn, is a capital offense.

Brenda Paz joined the gang when she was 13 and later became a police informant. She tells her story in police videotapes, which show a teenage girl with dark hair and an apparent fondness for fast food. Paz discusses, among other things, the components of the typical arsenal, including Uzi automatic weapons, shotguns and grenades.

Unwisely, she resumed her relationship with a few gang members, who discovered a diary detailing her double life. Paz was stabbed to death in 2002 in Virginia; she was 17 and pregnant at the time. Some MS-13 killings are even more gruesome. Al Valdez, an investigator from Orange County, California, says he has ``debriefed MS gang members who will decapitate their victims.''

Bus Massacre

Ling also taps the expertise of an active gang member who goes by the name of Jester. He's 20, a good-looking kid with a smile that is as pleasant as it is misleading. He joined when he was 9 and soon thereafter got his first hit order. Since then, he says, he has shot at least 20 others. ``You gotta kill people,'' he explains.

Indeed, the body count in the show soon reminds one of a Schwarzenegger epic, including footage of a 2004 massacre in El Salvador in which gang members stopped a bus and killed 28 passengers. They are shown reposing in a massive blood slick.

Ling and her crew had been on the ground in San Salvador only a half-hour when they got word of a hit. They rushed to the scene and found a freshly machine-gunned gangster, whose body was slid into a trash bag, thrown in the back of a red police pickup and carted off to the morgue.

Multinational Franchise

Ling interviews the victim's mother, who says her son joined the gang because he was an illegal immigrant with no friends or family. At his funeral, the pastor urges surviving gang mates to return to their families and follow Jesus. No one appears to answer the altar call.

Hoping to discover if there is a gang superstructure or, perhaps, a godfather, Ling and her crew head to a prison to interview gangsters. But before they arrive, a caller warns that the inmates are planning to kidnap the visitors. The itinerary suddenly changes.

The gang is growing. MS-13 is ``franchising more rapidly than any other gang,'' according to a police official, and now has members in 33 states and six countries. It's a multinational with everything, it seems, short of a seat on the stock exchange.

To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com.

Last Updated: February 8, 2006 00:07 EST