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I just want a job and a normal life.”But no one in this poor, crime-ridden country would hire anyone wearing gang marks. Those who join will be members for life, knowing they have nothing to lose They will rob, smuggle or kill to survive. Once they choose this path to death, there is no turning back.. Though she wasn’t expecting visitors, Itidal al-Nazli, 35, was happy to display the sparse contents of her refrigerator. Despite the daily and lengthy interruptions to electricity supply since the Israelis bombed Gaza’s only power station in early July, it’s where she still stores the more perishable food for her family of 10 children. Yesterday morning, after the family had breakfasted on two large potatoes and an aubergine donated by a kindly neighbour, it contained six rather shrivelled peppers, a bag of coffee, three olives in a bowl, a bag of charcoal, and three bags containing crusts of bread.

The killers left a blood-soaked note, insulting the government for its anti-mara laws.”We are not animals, we’re just human beings,” says Flor de Maria, a 23-year-old with two children. She was 12 when she joined the Mara-18, both parents having died in the Salvadorean civil war Today she carries the gang number on her forehead and neck “I want to remove these tattoos, but I can’t,” she says “The other gang members will kill me It’s dangerous for me to go outside I was already shot by the Salvatruchos I don’t want my kids to become like that. On Christmas Eve 2004, thugs from the Mara Salvatrucha attacked a public bus on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, shooting and hacking to death 28 commuters Among them were four children. Three years ago, the former Salvadorean president Francisco Flores launched what he called the Plan Mano Dura (Strong Hand Plan) in an effort to reduce criminal activities by tightening up penalties and sanctions against the mareros Some reactions were brutal.

Still more deaths are expected.So far, any attempt by the government of El Salvador and those of neighbouring countries to curb this threat has failed. They recruited them as hit-men and drug-runners who would smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, on its way to the US. This meant even more cash flowing to mara upper echelons, and even more power. Today, classified reports from the Salvadorean National Public Security Council reveal that, given their strategic geographical location between the Americas, the Central American gangs are planning to create a third force to compete with the Colombians and the Mexicans for the multibillion-dollar prize that is drug trafficking.

“We caught you and your friends red-handed right around the corner You were robbing people at gunpoint on a bus. And you had bags of marijuana on you.”Drug-smuggling is among the maras’ most profitable activities. As their power began to grow, the drug cartels in Medellin, Cali and Tijuana realised that the thousands of mara urban warriors could be of considerable use. This belief partly explains the bones and devils tattooed on their bodies, as well as their satanic rituals, such as hacking a victim to death and scattering the organs on the ground in a pentagonal shape.”I joined the Mara-18 because my father kicked me out when I was a boy, and I happened to live in an M-18 district,” says Jose, a 23-year-old gang member who has just been arrested “Now the mara is my only family I’ve got the number 18 tattooed all over my body. That’s the only reason why I got arrested.”A police officer says, “Yeah right, so whose stuff is this, huh?”, tossing a bunch of stolen rings, bracelets, necklaces and watches in one hand. If not, kill him.What the two gangs do have in common is the belief that life and death are somehow intermingled. This is why many children from the same barrio, who grew up playing together, today find themselves hating each other to death on opposite fronts: if he has a tattoo with your number, he is your brother.