This is an article about San Salvador but printed in the U. S., probably because MS-13 has become a major problem in our country thanks to our government for not enforcing our borders.

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http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... xml&coll=2

Gang's burning memories
Monday, January 29, 2007
N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post
San Salvador - The first patient of the day was a plump 16-year-old wearing sparkly barrettes, Mary Janes-style shoes and a shy smile.

But there was nothing girlish about the tattoo that Abelina Orellana had come to get removed: a giant "18" scrawled across her back in crude, gothic numerals. The emblem signified membership in the vicious 18th Street, or Eighteen, gang that, along with rival Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has terrorized communities across Central America for nearly a decade.

As long as she was marked with the symbol, Orellana's hopes of building a new life apart from the gang were slim. Employers would be fearful of hiring her. Members of MS-13 could mistake her for an active member and attack her. And police might jail her.

Indeed, so strong is the stigma of a gang tattoo in El Salvador that some former members who can't afford professional removal have resorted to burning their skin off with battery acid or a hot iron.

This health clinic in the basement of the concrete-block San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church in northeast San Salvador offers one of the few alternatives. Olga Morales, coordinator of the clinic's Adios Tatuajes, or "Goodbye Tattoos" project, estimates that since the program began in 2002, she has helped more than 1,000 patients.

Now Morales casts her practiced eye on Orellana's back. The challenge, she explained, would be to avoid leaving behind a scar in the same shape as the tattoo she was about to erase.

"OK, don't worry. I have the solution," announced Morales, an anesthesiologist by training. "I'll burn some extra skin next to the top and bottom of the '1' so the scar will just look like a rectangle."

Orellana nodded her agreement. Then she climbed onto a metal table topped by a thin, plastic mattress and lay on her stomach.

This working-class enclave, known as Mejicanos, is considered such a stronghold of MS-13 that cabdrivers will not bring passengers here after dark. Last year, neighborhood gang leaders accused the Goodbye Tattoos project of trying to lure away their members and threatened to shut down the clinic. At least five of Morales' patients have been shot dead - she presumes in retaliation for trying to leave their gangs. Recently, local MS-13 leaders sent word that they wanted the clinic to start paying $400 a month in "renta," the gang's term for protection money.

Each time, the parish priest has managed to defuse the crisis by personally meeting with the gang leaders.

"But the truth is we're very vulnerable," Morales said with a nervous smile. "We have no security. We are at their mercy."