Trenchant history of the gang that Donald Trump has called as dangerous as al-Qaida.MS-13, which takes its name from the enigmatic Spanish phrase "Mara Salvatrucha," is now 40 years old, and it has members throughout the U.S. as well as El Salvador. Owing to a vicious civil war between a government backed by the Reagan administration and communist guerrillas, tens of thousands of Salvadorans fled to the United States, with a particularly strong presence in Los Angeles. Two refugee brothers founded MS-13 to protect their community from other gangs-and then, over time, discovered that they could gain power and wealth by controlling segments of the drug trade and other criminal enterprises. Now, journalist Dudley writes, MS-13 is a loosely organized gang that "had grown by coming at their enemies in waves, like a marabunta, or army of ants, as the street gangs were baptized so many years ago in El Salvador." The gang is marked by several signatures, including heavy tattooing and a tendency to kill their victims with machetes, chopping them to bits. Like any gang, Dudley observes, MS-13 is both a product of its environment and a shaper of it, strengthening social bonds "via violence and predatory criminal acts." Gang life is also far from romantic, as he reveals, marked by excessive drug and alcohol use, that constant violence, and, often, homelessness-landlords are reluctant to rent to gang members who treat their properties as "a crash-pad, a party-place, a meeting spot, a stash house, a torture chamber, a brothel or all of the above." The gang is also dominant in places such as LA, New York, and even Washington while its members travel freely back and forth to El Salvador, bribing the authorities to look the other way.A cleareyed account of a criminal enterprise that is undeniably a threat to civil society wherever it turns up.

Journalist Dudley, who spent the last two decades covering crime in Latin America, brings his expertise to his chilling debut about the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Started more than 40 years ago in Los Angeles, the gang consisted of mostly teenage Salvadoran boys who wanted to forget the violence of their home country and its civil war by drinking and playing loud music. But it grew into a vicious group known for brutal murders. After gang members were rounded up, sent to U.S. prisons, and then deported, they recreated the gang in El Salvador and spread to other Central American nations. Dudley personalizes the history of MS-13 in a boy he calls Norman, a typical gang member, who as a child in El Salvador turned to the gang to protect him from the army, the war, and domestic violence. Eventually, Norman fled to the U.S. to get out of MS-13, but he has lived in fear ever since. For anyone who has ever wondered why and how gang members are made, Dudley has the answers. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (May)