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How a group of metal heads in Los Angeles in the 1980s evolved into a gang that terrorises three countries is the subject of “MS-13” by Steven Dudley, founder of Insight Crime, a site that covers organised crime in Latin America. The story begins with El Salvador’s civil war, which between 1980 and 1992 left 75,000 people dead and over 1m displaced. Like the guns Ronald Reagan’s administration sent down for use against leftist guerrillas, the gang is an American export. Mara Salvatrucha (“Salva” for El Salvador, “trucha” for “savvy”) first referred to a group of refugees in Los Angeles with tastes for crack and heavy metal. When they took to wielding machetes, America started deporting them.
《野蛮萨尔瓦多人》一书的主题讲述了20世纪80年代洛杉矶的一群金属党是如何演变成为一个恐怖统治三国的黑帮，作者是史蒂文·达德利，也是“犯罪洞察”网站的创始人，该网站涵盖了发生在拉丁美洲的有组织犯罪。故事从发生于1980年至1992年的萨尔瓦多内战开始，这场战争造成了7.5万人死亡，100多万人流离失所。就如同罗纳德·里根政府提供给萨尔瓦多用来打击左派游击队的枪支一样，“MS-13”帮派同样是由美国出口的。“MS-13”（“Salva”代表萨尔瓦多，“trucha”代表“精明”）最开始指的是洛杉矶的一群对打击乐和重金属音乐感兴趣的难民。当他们开始挥舞砍刀时，美国开始驱逐他们。
Back in El Salvador, MS-13 thrived on the same ingredients that drove the previous generation to take up arms (minus the ideology): poverty, impunity, a culture of violence, lots of young men and too few opportunities. Salvadoreans living under gang control call their teenage overlords los muchachos (“the boys”), a euphemism once used for the guerrillas. Acknowledging the parallel, Mr Dudley suggests that the term “insurgency” properly captures the gangs’ weaponry and political capital.
回到萨尔瓦多，让“MS-13”帮派蓬勃发展的因素与促使上一代“MS-13”成员拿起武器的因素相同（不包括意识形态）：贫穷、有罪不罚、暴力文化、年轻人众多以及机会紧缺。生活在黑帮控制下的萨尔瓦多人称呼这些少年小霸王为“游击队员”，这是一种委婉的说法，曾用于游击队。达德利承认了这一点，他觉得“叛乱”这个词恰当地抓住了帮派的武器装备和政治资本的特点。
As with rebels of earlier decades, El Salvador’s response hardened the hoodlums. Consecutive presidents packed the prisons, but with virtually no rehabilitation they became gang training grounds. Then, in 2012, an ex-guerrilla forged a short-lived truce between gangs and the government that halved the murder rate but horrified elites and the American embassy (the mediator is now in jail). Still, it set a precedent. Deals continued in secret: support from MS-13 probably swayed the tight presidential election of 2014. Yet official policy reverted to all-out war against the gangs, fuelling a new exodus of migrants to the Mexican-American border, including numerous children. Mr Trump claimed, falsely, that many were gang members.
与几十年前的叛军一样，萨尔瓦多的应对使这些暴徒更加猖獗。连续几任总统都把监狱搞得水泄不通，但实际上罪犯并未得到任何改造，监狱成了黑帮训练的场所。然后在2012年，前任游击队使帮派和政府之间达成了短暂的停火协议，这一举措使谋杀率减半，但是却让掌权人物和美国大使馆感到震惊（调解员现在在监狱中）。不过这还是开创了先例。交易还在秘密中进行：来自“MS-13”帮派的支持很可能左右了2014年紧张的总统选举。然而萨尔瓦多发布的官方政策恢复了对黑帮的全面战争，促使新一批移民涌入美墨边境，其中包括许多儿童。特朗普谎称，其中许多人是帮派成员。
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