Contemporary security discourse emphasizing “terrorism” has displaced the focus on the “gang epidemic” that prevailed in the latter decades of the twentieth century. However, since 2005, law enforcement agencies and media organizations have sparked a renewed interest in gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), dubbed “the world’s most dangerous gang” by the FBI. Thus far, the few existing investigations of MS-13, mostly in government reports and media segments, have centered almost entirely on enforcement issues concerning immigration, gang structure, and prison information networks. These narrow positivistic analyses obscure the more complex structural factors surrounding the formation and proliferation of transnational gangs, and consequently potential prevention strategies.

In contrast to these approaches, we employ a broader perspective, temporally and geographically, that aims to understand why MS-13 exists in the first place. Drawing on critical theories of gang formation and governmentality, we argue that the advancement of neoliberalism in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, and its implementation in Washington Consensus form in Central America, seriously contributed to the sharp spike in MS-13 activity beginning in the mid-1990s. Since then, the formulations of enforcement strategies and policy responses, both in the U.S. and El Salvador, have generally assumed that MS-13 exists in a vacuum, ignoring the social and economic contexts in which the gang operates. A sustained decrease in gang activity requires a qualitative transformation in the policy prescriptions of multilateral institutions, in the bilateral relationship between the United States and El Salvador, and in the domestic policy configurations of both countries.

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Matthew Lymburner is an MA student at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University. He is interested in Brazilian history and political economy, and progressive politics worldwide.
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Eliot Che is a researcher and web developer. He studies the political implications of technological transformation and the social effects of virtual space. His other interests include human rights, art activism and untraining his dog, Max.
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