By Anthony Wayne IV Fontes

Everyday brutality in Guatemala City shocks and numbs a society that has suffered generations of war and bloodshed. Much of this violence is blamed on maras, gangs bearing transnational signs and symbols, that operate in prisons an poor urban communities. I will explore how the maras’ evolution in post-war Guatemala has made them what they are today: victim-perpetrators of massive and horrifying violence, useful targets of societal rage, pivotal figures in a politics of death reigning over post-war society. However, while maras and mareros play starring roles in this account of extreme peacetime violence, they are not the problem. They are a hyper-visible expression of a problem no one can name, a deafening scream, a smokescreen obscuring innumerable and diffuse sources of everyday brutality. The maras will be my entry-point into a world defined by mortal doubt, and my guides as I navigate the rumors, fantasies, fears, and trauma swirling about criminal violence in post-war Guatemala City.

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  The specter of violence has become so utterly entwined with the making of lived and symbolic landscapes that it cannot be extricated from the very fibers of everyday life. I will illuminate the myriad of spaces this violence infiltrates and reorders to expose the existential uncertainty haunting efforts to confront, contain, and overcome violence. In the process, I provide an alternative, intimate understanding of the violence and suffering for which maras speak, or are made to speak, and the ways this violence and suffering affects individual consciousness and communal life, orders urban space, and circulates in public discourse. Thus, I have arranged my arguments and stories in such a way as to capture the destabilizing psychological, affective, and visceral impact the conditions of extreme violation at work in post-war Guatemala City have on knowledge- and meaning-making. The veins of uncertainty fracturing this account are meant to rupture the pretense of knowing, and so break through into the treacherous and largely unmapped territory that is life lived in the shadow of constant violence.

Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 2015. 222p.

By Mark Pitcavage

The Aryan Circle is a large, growing and dangerous white supremacist gang based primarily in Texas. Active in prisons and on the streets, it has a long track record of murder, including the deaths of two police officers in Bastrop, Louisiana, in 2007. • The Aryan Circle originated in the Texas prison system in the mid-1980s and is now the second largest white supremacist gang in Texas. • The Aryan Circle has four segments: its Texas prison population, its federal prison population, its out-of-state prison population, and its non-incarcerated population. Total membership is probably over 1,400, making it one of the largest white supremacist groups in the United States. The most disturbing trend is the growth in its free-world membership. • The Aryan Circle is headed by an elected president and run by senior members. Billy “Thumper” Haynes was elected the Circle’s new president in 2008, but many Circle members fought the choice. In mid-2009, he was replaced by Greg “Droopy” Freeman. • The Aryan Circle recruits in prisons and on the streets. Members tend to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds; many members work in the oil industry. The Aryan Circle is unusual in that women can become members. Some women have achieved positions of considerable responsibility, but sexism makes it difficult for them to rise to the highest ranks. • The original “homegrown” white supremacy of the Aryan Circle has become more sophisticated. However, many Circle members still have only a crude understanding of white supremacist ideology. The Circle uses white supremacy to increase group solidarity. • The Aryan Circle has few relationships with “traditional” white supremacist groups. Its relations with other prison gangs are often violent; the Aryan Circle has been involved in a number of prison gang wars. • The Aryan Circle not only deals drugs; many members abuse drugs, especially methamphetamine. Efforts by Circle leaders to combat drug use by members have failed. A new effort started in 2008 faces serious hurdles. • Much of the Aryan Circle’s criminal activities are profit-driven. Inside prisons, the smuggling of contraband (particularly drugs and tobacco) is the most important endeavor. Outside prison walls, Circle members engage in drug trafficking and a variety of theft and robbery rings. • Organized violence is also a feature of Aryan Circle activity, including killing suspected informants and engaging in violence against rival gangs. Aryan Circle members have also committed hate crimes, in and out of prisons.

New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2009. 37p.

By International Crisis Group

Nearly 20,000 Salvadorans were killed from 2014 to 2017. That’s more violent deaths than in several countries that were at war during those years, such as Libya, Somalia and Ukraine. The murder rate – an astonishing 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 – is still sky-high at 60 per 100,000 in 2017. The culprit in most of these murders is the maras, the country’s powerful, pervasive criminal gangs.

Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2018. 16p.