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    Senior Member legalatina's Avatar
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    Guatemalan gang culture....women members

    International Herald Tribune
    Guatemalan gang culture conquers the abused with abuse
    By Marc Lacey
    Wednesday, April 9, 2008

    GUATEMALA CITY: To join one of Central America's fierce street gangs, Benky, a tiny young woman with heavy mascara and tattoos running up and down her arms, had to have sex with a dozen or so of her homeboys one night. She recalls sobbing uncontrollably when the last young man climbed off her and everyone gathered around to congratulate her on becoming a full-fledged member of the Mara Salvatrucha.

    To stay in the male-dominated gang, her leader ordered her to rob buses, grab chains off people's necks and even kill a girl from a rival gang. She always complied, although Benky is not completely sure whether her female rival lived or died after being hit by the bullet she fired into her back.

    Girls in the midst of the deeply machista gang culture thriving in Central America often find themselves straddling the line between victims and victimizers. It is abuse in their home lives that often propel them into the gangs in the first place, and those gangs often continue the abuse under the veil of protection. The gang is their adopted family, they say, offering what proves to be an unpredictable mix of affection and aggression.

    "If a girl is getting abused by her father, the gang will step in and end it," said Gustavo Cifuentes, a streetwise former gang member with an extensive rap sheet who now works for Guatemala's government, trying to lure gang members to better, law-abiding lives.

    If the girls do not follow the directions of the leader, Cifuentes acknowledged, a beating or even worse will be the result.

    Experts say that as many as 100,000 gang members rule the streets of Central America, most of them in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The gangs have affiliated groups in Mexico and the United States, creating an international net of lawlessness. How many are girls is not clear, though a recent study said that as many as 40 percent of the region's gang members may be females, showing off their sexuality even as they learn to strut and throw a fierce punch.

    "There are a lot more women and girls than anyone imagined," said Ewa Werner Dahlin, the Swedish ambassador to Guatemala, whose government helped finance a Central American-wide study that included interviews with more than 1,000 past and present, as well as male and female, gang members. "It's a surprise to the experts, and it shows that the authorities have been reacting to gangs without really understanding them."

    There are only a handful of girl-only gangs in the region, experts say, with girl gang leaders. Far more common was Benky's reality - a few young women in a sea of tough, sexually charged young men.

    With four jail stints behind her, Benky, 23, is now experiencing a new phase of life, but one that is proving just as rough as all she has endured before. Getting out of a gang can be as challenging as getting or staying in it. In Benky's case, when her fellow maras learned she was trying to abandon them, they shot her six times.

    After nine months of hospitalization, she now limps through life, selling candy on the buses she used to rob because her gang tattoos disqualify her from most other forms of employment. Most of those who made up her gang have died in shootouts with the police, she said, but one of the few still living spotted her recently on the street and yelled out a threat on her life. He was surprised that she had survived the hit.

    "It looks so good from the outside," remarked Benky, who like others in this article asked to be identified by first name or nicknames to avoid stirring up trouble on the streets.

    To understand her sentiment, one must know how grim her childhood was and that of many other gang girls. She began living on the streets at the age of 6 with an older brother. She is not sure what happened to her mother, but she recalls her father having no interest in raising them.

    Her brother was shot by a member of the 18th Street gang, which prompted her to join the other giant gang in the region, the Mara Salvatrucha. "I thought it would be like my family," she said. "I thought I'd get the love I was missing. But they'd hit me. They ordered me around. They told me I had to rob someone or kill someone, and I did it."

    It is a lament heard from girl gang members across the region. The young women complain of lives ruined, of close calls with death, of nightmares of all the awful things they did for their barrios.

    It often begins, the girls say, with group sex, usually dulled with alcohol and marijuana. Benky had begun hanging around the gang and knew a few other girls who had joined. They told her that all she had to do was talk to the leader and he would induct her as well. Before she knew what was happening, though, members of her new family members were taking turns on top of her.

    The abuse ebbed when she began dating a gang member and he protected her from the rest. "He was very kind," she said. "Sometimes, he'd go out and rob buses just to get me what I wanted."

    Other girls tell similarly twisted tales of gangster love. Ana, 21, who spent four years as a member of the 18th Street gang, said she was given a choice between group sex or a group beating when she joined because she was friends with the gang leader's girlfriend. "Other girls didn't get to choose," she said. "I thought the beating was better. I'd have a black eye and I'd be hurt. But at least I wouldn't get pregnant or get a disease."

    Her gang days were intense ones, she recalled, full of assaults and robberies and other behavior she now regards as unladylike. "I learned to use a gun more or less, but I was better with a knife," she said.

    Her gang had a separate leader for the girls, and that tough young woman one day ordered Ana to beat up a neighborhood girl whom the leader found annoying. The girl happened to be a friend of Ana's, but she said she did what she had to do.

    Another former gang girl, also Ana, 17, broke down in tears as she described how someone in her gang shot and killed her girlfriend. "I lost my best friend, and my own gang killed her," she said. "That's when I realized that if they killed her, they could kill me, too. I got tired of living this life where they might say, 'Let's go kill someone,' and you had to go along."

    Ana had a somewhat easier time than others putting her gang life behind her. Her mother was dying from cancer, and that prompted her to move back home and care for her around the clock. When gang members called, she would brush them off and tell them her mother was sick. Some members of the gang eventually stopped by her house one day to see whether she was telling the truth, peering at her mother in bed. But the long illness allowed Ana to make a break.

    Assisting her was the fact that she never got any tattoos to identify herself as a gang girl. That is becoming more and more common as Central American governments crack down on gangs with their "mano dura," or firm hand, policies. Gang experts say that the new generation of gang members eschew tattoos and dress more like any other urban youngsters.

    "The gang member of today looks just like you or me," said Marco Antonio Castillo, whose Grupo Ceiba organization is trying to provide former gangsters with the education and job training they missed while rampaging on the streets.

    The 21-year-old Ana now has a 3-year-old daughter with her husband, who is also a former member of the gang. She said that because it was her awful home life that propelled her into gang life - her drunken father beating her mother - she tries to set a different example for her girl. "We try not to fight in front of her," she said. "We keep our voices down."

    Male gang members say the girls play an essential role, and not just as sexual partners. They are able to move more freely on the streets when the police are around, men say, transporting drugs or guns. And bus robberies are best done, veteran gangsters say, with a team of two males and two females, confusing passengers about who is involved.

    At Santa Teresa prison, a sprawling lockup for women here, one can find signs of hope and despair. Bianca, 24, a tough member of the 18th Street gang who is locked up on drug charges, leaves the impression that the ranks of the gangster girls will hold steady as she shows off her bold gang tattoos and speaks of protecting her neighborhood.

    But another girl, 25, who goes by the nickname "Happy," tells why she intends to leave the gang when she finishes her sentence for robbing buses. In the initial years that she was behind bars, members of the gang would come by to visit. But that faded, and nowadays, five years in, it is only her mother who brings her food and clothes.

    "She's family," Happy said. "It took years, but I finally learned that."

  2. #2
    Senior Member legalatina's Avatar
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  3. #3
    Senior Member miguelina's Avatar
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    Life is all about choices. Gangs have been around for centuries and no one is forced to join. The warnings against joining gangs have not changed. Once in, never out.

    I remember my parents threatening me with the beating of a lifetime if I so much as even thought about joining a gang when I was younger. When did we lose control of our children?

    We could do with LESS PC and alot more common sense! Show me who you hang out it, I'll show you what you are.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)
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