The Rapid Evolution of the MS 13 in El Salvador and N=Honduras from Gang to Tier-One Threat to Central America and U.S. Security Interests
By Douglas Farah and kathryn Babineau
The Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gang is now a tier one criminal, political, military and economic threat in the Northern Triangle.1 While it employs differing strategies from country to country, the organization nonetheless competes with – and often defeats – the state in important theaters of operation. The evolution was described by one gang expert in El Salvador as moving from “gangsters to political conspirators,” visible in the spikes in gang-driven homicide rates (up to 40 a day when necessary) when the gangs are seeking to pressure the government for concessions on key issues. This study focuses on the MS 13 in Honduras and El Salvador, where it represents an existential threat to the viability of the state. In both countries, the gang has achieved new levels of power and sophistication, via increased revenues from its control of multiple steps in the cocaine supply chain. Now, the MS 13 is not solely involved in transporting cocaine; it also unloads shipments arriving by air from Venezuela and in Honduras runs laboratories that transform coca paste – mostly from Colombia - to hydrochloric acid (HCl).2
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While Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia absorb the vast majority of the U.S. attention and resources paid to the Western Hemisphere, the evolution of the MS 13 poses a challenge that could greatly weaken the security of the U.S. southern border. The threat is at least as complex and real as those posed by structures in Mexico and the United States, and far harder to overcome due to the lack of political will and functioning institutions in the Northern Triangle. In order to successfully meet this challenge from the next generation MS 13, the United States and its limited number of reliable allies in the region must adopt a new and different strategy that treats the organization as a fully functional transnational organized crime (TOC) group with increasingly strong political components.
Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2018. 32p.