or not—the phantasmagoric image the maras strike before the public eye. That is, gangs play a part in forging their symbolic power and are in turn forged by it.
Clearly I had to be careful crisscrossing the blurred divide between the state and its underworld. I always introduced myself as a scholar/writer, emphasizing my interest in life histories and personal perspectives while eschewing direct questions about particular criminal activities. Hewing to the “outsider” role—one with no stake in the clumsy struggle between law and outlaw—was the best way I knew to preserve my safety and that of those who spoke with me. But after a year in the field I too was pulled into the vortex of vicious, sometimes deadly rumor circulating in and beyond the prisons. It happened at a conference in San Salvador while I was talking to a respected crime journalist. For months I had tried to track him down, and I asked him if he would give me an interview or at least have a drink with me and exchange notes.
After a long, calculating look, he replied, “Before I talk to you, I have to know one thing. Are you Interpol?” I laughed, but he went on. “I have heard that you are working for Interpol, passing them the information that you get. Is this true?”
“No!” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit more forcefully than I meant to. I wanted to seem nonchalant—“How ridiculous!”—but I could hear my pulse throbbing in my ears, and my mind was racing—flipping through all the people I knew whom he might have spoken to, all my gatekeepers, friends, and informants. Who would have said such a thing? Who was this journalist? Whom would he have talked to? Though I was able to clear up the rumor after returning to Guatemala—and no one, thankfully, got hurt because of it—the episode was an important lesson. In utter ignorance, I had been recast by rumor into the role of a transnational cop. That this role was entirely invented—to my knowledge Interpol doesn’t have agents in the field anywhere in Guatemala—mattered far less than the fact that this was how some of those I interacted with in prison chose to make sense of me. The consequences of my entanglement with these webs of rumor and suspicion could have been far, far worse.
Given how precarious the situation could be, and because informants and opportunities to enter prisons or mara-dominated zones could arise and disappear very quickly, I had to jump down every rabbit hole I found. Such was my “research plan.” Slowly, my network of friends and contacts grew beyond gangsters to include police, prosecutors, human rights activists, prison directors, social workers, taxi drivers, church pastors, journalists, and many others. Over the years I have done my best to keep in touch with this network, though many of my gang-involved contacts and friends have disappeared. There are few avenues by which to escape the violence of gang life. In their desperation to find a different way to live, some became protected witnesses in high-profile murder cases, evangelical converts, antiviolence activists, freelance hitmen, or drug addicts. Some still survive in prison or eke out a living on the street, while others have been killed by the police, their rivals, or their old gangs. It may be true that they were once perpetrators of the violence to which they fell victim. But as you will see, the violence for which the maras speak, or are made to speak, has a way of conscripting into its ranks all sorts of unexpected accomplices, erstwhile and otherwise.
PART ONE
Truths and Fictions
Bring Out the Dead
FIGURE 4. Where city and cemetery meet.
This narrative is an experiment in ethnographic storytelling. It splices conversations and information from several interviews with Calavera and sublimates analysis into the narrative arc. Names, dates, and details have been changed to protect the subjects.
Guatemala City, May 2012. Calavera eases open the door and eyes the street he grew up on. Blurred figures slip beyond his peripheral vision down an alley. Children from the neighborhood? Or perhaps not. Tinkling laughter. Nothing to fear. Then again . . . he knows well enough the demons lurking in children’s smiles. They make the best lookouts. Watching, just watching, they go. And didn’t Casper once call you his little chucho. Just let the dog off the chain and see . . .
Across the street the tiendita he knew as a child has been painted blue, “TIGO” stenciled in white block letters. His own Mara Salvatrucha tag is somewhere beneath those layers of paint. Behind the tiendita’s black metal grate, a small girl sits on a stool among Doritos and Lays potato chip bags strung up like baitfish among sacs of fried pigskin, plantain chips, and suaro for babies sick with fever. A refrigerator glows behind her, brown glass bottles sweating within, and beside the refrigerator rusted propane canisters are stacked like ordinance from a forgotten war. The girl watches the street without blinking, her lips pulled back in a half smile, gold teeth glinting in the sunlight slanting over the tin rooftops.
I stand before the arches of the cemetery entrance, waiting for Calavera. I have a small silver voice recorder, a camera, and a journal in a green US Army surplus satchel. Flower vendors clog the sidewalk. The scent of carnations and roses wilting in piles filters through the stench of burning garbage on the breeze. Further down the boulevard, the city morgue is abuzz. Men in white lab coats haul forensic equipment in and out. A line of silent visitors stretches out onto the sidewalk, waiting to identify the recently dead. Funeral home operators—wearing dark glasses and tattered blazers—linger among the aggrieved, handing out business cards. A month from now I will pose as a mourner and come to find the body of a young man named Andy. Government officials will not answer my queries. Eight years ago Calavera stood here holding his sister’s hand as she waited to identify her murdered husband. Then as now, coffin makers and stonemasons bend to their labors across the boulevard, their hammers echoing through the traffic. I mull over my plan: walk with Calavera to his brother’s grave and record his memories of growing up, his brother’s death, and their time running with the Mara Salvatrucha.
Calavera steps out and shuts the door quietly behind him. For a few heartbeats he lingers, tracing in his memory the constellation of bullet holes above the door long plastered over. Then he’s on the street, watching the neighbors’ shuttered windows as he walks. Few of his old compatriots remain who might recognize him. Except for Casper, who hardly ever leaves his safe house in El Trebol. Still, Calavera wouldn’t have even come here if he didn’t long to see his sister and nieces. Quickening his pace, he walks past a handful of boys kicking a rumpled blue plastic ball. They stop their game and watch him disappear down a cement footpath winding beneath electricity wires strung like sad nets to catch the falling sky.
“Hey, Anthony.”
I turn and Calavera is standing before me. We clasp right hands and embrace. He has lost weight since leaving prison, and he was skinny to begin with. His shoulder blades are sharp against my arms.
“What’s the vibe?”
Calavera shrugs. “All good.”
“Well, uh, shall we go?”
“Right on.”
We walk through the cemetery’s vaulted entrance and down a paved boulevard lined with ornate mausoleums and cypress and walnut trees. The street noises quickly fade.
“So . . .,” I begin. Last night I wrote down a list of questions—probing, intelligent questions with a subtle, penetrating arc. But now I feel like a clumsy stranger prying into another’s pain. I hold the recorder awkwardly between us, the red light blinking. “Have you been here since you got out?”
“No.” Calavera shakes his head. He has passed the last six of his twenty-five years languishing behind bars. The previous five he spent snorting, smoking, and selling drugs and shooting at rivals. The gang told him it was the way to avenge his brother’s murder.
We
