{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02719174871073605, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007501172058134084, 'mean_word_length': 5.466666666666667, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Mano Dura Policing: Feeding the Cycle of Gang Violence in the Americas

US-sponsored civil wars and repression in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras prompted scores of Central Americans to move north as undocumented migrants. Many of the refugees found shelter in Los Angeles’s ethnic minority communities, especially in the city’s impoverished Pico Union district. Faced with discrimination, crowded living conditions, gang harassment, and underpaid jobs, some families saw their children join existing gangs, notably the Dieciocho (18th Street Gang), or form their own group, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). Once the wars had ended, the United States stepped up its repatriations of offending noncitizens to resolve—unsuccessfully—what it considered an imported problem. Inadvertently, the export of US-style gang culture and conflicts made Central America’s local gang phenomena more virulent. Encountering few opportunities to turn their life around, deported youth carried on with what they knew best and soon absorbed existing neighborhood-based crews. Marginalized kids turned to the “maras” for friendship, fun, and belonging, but group loyalty and solidarity also required them to break the law. Over time gang crime and violence gradually intensified, yet the countries of the isthmus long lacked a gang policy. In 2003 the government of El Salvador launched Plan Mano Dura (“iron fist plan”), ostensibly to crack down on the maras and reduce the elevated murder rate. The repressive initiative, however, had highly adverse effects. While homicides escalated, the gangs strengthened their internal structures and professionalized their criminal involvement. One of the key questions on the subject surrounds the transnational nature of the maras and lies at the core of cultural anthropologist Elana Zilberg’s first monograph. Space of Detention, essentially concerned with the ongoing participation of the United States in the production and reproduction of violence in El Salvador, adopts a political history approach to explore the transnational youth gang crisis in these nations. Spanning the period between 1992 and 2007,