Transnational moral panic: neoliberalism and the spectre of MS-13

Abstract

Since the election of Donald Trump, MS-13, the Salvadoran street gang, has become a national security and foreign policy concern for his administration. Due to the violence of street gangs like MS-13, El Salvador has become a country with the highest rates of homicides, alongside forced migration. Like much of the mainstream media and personal accounts of asylum seekers, the arguments about violence emerging from street gangs in El Salvador from the Trump administration are based on actual material conditions, but what is often missing are the root causes. This article argues that the production of a moral panic over MS-13 has been transnationalised between the United States and El Salvador to displace the contradictions of global capitalism in El Salvador to a local and deported relative surplus population. It argues that the spectre of MS-13 in El Salvador and throughout US cities must be placed within the limits of a Salvadoran revolution, the insertion of the Salvadoran political economy into the global capitalist system in the 1980s, the development of a neoliberal Salvadoran state, and the US sponsoring of law-and-order polices in the country as a response to regulate a relative surplus population.

The Nature and Structure of MS-13 in Los Angeles County

“…In July 2020, U.S. Attorney General William Barr called MS-13 a “death cult” and noted that the gang is “highly organized as a transnational organization” (White House, 2020). These accounts often appear wildly sensationalized, designed primarily to induce moral panic or to achieve specific political or partisan objectives (Barak et al, 2020; Osuna, 2020; Wolf, 2017a). Our findings are useful for evaluating the validity of these descriptions and the extent to which the structures and behaviors of MS-13 cliques in Los Angeles are consistent with these characterizations.…”

“…Unfortunately, existing research evidence is insufficient to draw confident inferences about these issues. In the absence of systematic research evidence, political rhetoric and moral panic continue to drive public opinion and public policy about MS-13 in the United States (Barak et al, 2020; Osuna, 2020).…”

¡Qué mamada! (What a Joke!): Humor, Hostility, and Hospitality along the Central American Migrant Trail

“…However, while Chava empathized with the contradictory ethical and moral dimensions of undocumented migration, where chingándole duro offers economic prosperity at the expense of “getting screwed over” north of the US‐Mexico border, he also had the privilege of a relatively languid workflow and the moral righteousness of having made it back home as a responsible father and husband. Meanwhile, anti‐immigrant rhetoric and “moral panic” coalesced around the specter of the MS‐13 marero on both sides the US‐Mexico border throughout the fall of 2016 in the context of the US presidential election (Osuna 2020). While Rolando and Gustavo appreciated that Chava risked alienating himself from his neighbors by welcoming two Central Americans into his home and workshop, their sense of urgency as the threat of a Trump presidency mounted (and along with it, the threat of a closed US‐Mexico border) rubbed up against Chava's hesitation to draw undue attention to his off‐books business.…”

“…There are indeed deeply rooted parallels between the kinds of anti‐immigrant xenophobia in the United States, where the figure of the “illegal alien” has served as a racialized shorthand that imagines Mexican migrants as criminals and a demographic threat (Chavez 2008; Dick 2011), and mounting anxieties surrounding Central American migration across Mexico. Rebecca Galemba, for example, writes about the ways that the specter of the MS‐13 gang member, or marero , operates as a derisive gloss for Central Americans in Mexico (Galemba 2018; see also Osuna 2020). These parallels intersect with what Ana Raquel Minian (2020) describes as a long‐standing “Faustian bargain,” whereby the Mexican government has treated Central Americans as geopolitical pawns for “buffering” conflicts with the United States (92).…”

Collusion, Co-Optation, or Evasion: The Politics of Drug Trafficking Violence in Central America

“…This work has shown the consequences of US criminal deportations and highlighted that while politically advantageous (Holland, 2013), the often-pursued Iron Fist ( Mano Dura ) policies in the Northern Triangle have generally exacerbated rather than reduced violence. The region’s neoliberal economic policies have also influenced the proliferation of the maras (Osuna, 2020; Zilberg, 2011), and contributed to high levels of violent crime more broadly (Alvarez, 2019; Levenson, 2013; O’Neill & Thomas, 2011). In addition to focusing on gangs (as opposed to trafficking-related violence), this work has largely focused only on the high violence cases of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras), as opposed to looking at the cases of lower violence in the isthmus (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama).…”