Portrait of a ‘real’ marero: Fantasy and falsehood in stories of gang violence

Abstract

In 21st-century Guatemala transnational gangs (or maras) have become erstwhile emissaries of extreme peacetime violence, distilling in spectacular fashion the fear, rage, and trauma swirling around out-of-control crime. Young gang members (or mareros) are drawn in by and work hard to recreate the phantasmagoric figure the maras cut in social imaginaries, linking the acts of violence gangs perform to the ways gang membersand myriad others-make sense of this violence. This article traces how collective fantasies about gangs are essential in the making of the 'real' marero by engaging with the oral history of a single informant: a former member of the Mara Salvatrucha named Andy who became a protected witness for the Guatemalan government. Through Andy's life and violent death, it illuminates how essential shared fantasies and falsehoods are in the production of knowledge about criminal terror, as well as in the production of violence itself.

Decolonising Youth Justice, Rethinking Childhood: Caribbean Counterstories in Detention

“…Such questions, argues Fontes (2019: 334), ‘hinge on the complex relationship between agency, event, and act of narration that materialize the events in the moment of its (re)telling’—a triangular relationship he calls a narrative bloc . This concept helped us understand that events are not locked in time and that in (re)telling them, people reinvent themselves and their own place in the world.…”

Citizen Cooperation with the Police: Evidence from Contemporary Guatemala

“…Despite improvements, the witness protection program remains anemic, and cooperating with the police in Guatemala can be dangerous. The strongest gangs have extensive networks that include members of law enforcement, giving them the ability to identify witnesses and their locations (Carr, 2015; Fontes, 2019). Because of continued threats to witnesses and their reticence to testify, prosecutors often secure sworn testimony well before trial because witnesses often abscond when the trial date arrives (Dudley, 2016).…”

“…Guatemala's office for the protection of witnesses also benefited from CICIG's support (beginning in 2009); by 2014, it was providing support and temporary protection measures to an estimated 551 people (UNHCR, 2018), reflecting a willingness among some civilians to cooperate with the police and judiciary. Still, many other cooperators (both former gang members and civilians) have been offered little protection for their help (Fontes, 2019). Despite improvements, the witness protection program remains anemic, and cooperating with the police in Guatemala can be dangerous.…”