ILOPANGO, El Salvador — Minutes after hooded commandos stormed his tiny shack in the middle of the night and hustled him off to jail, Juan Carlos Diaz was smiling.
Had he shot a bus fare collector in cold blood before 25 horrified commuters, as the police said? The 18-year-old high school dropout grinned before answering: "Not even close."
But he acknowledged joining the M-18 gang four months earlier and proudly looked down at the 10-inch-high "18" tattooed on his chest and abdomen. "For me," he said, "that number is everything."
That appeal has attracted an estimated 30,000 Salvadorans to M-18 and its rival, Mara Salvatrucha, twin armies whose reign of terror has left this country -- urban and rural areas alike -- paralyzed with fear. The gangs claim an average five homicide victims a day.
On the October night Diaz was arrested, the teams of heavily armed police nabbed 15 other gang members, all suspected in killings, in this warren-like slum bordering the capital, San Salvador. The raids were part of Operation Super Firm Hand, a controversial anti-gang campaign -- praised by a shattered public but criticized by human rights activists -- that gives El Salvador's police sweeping arrest powers to combat the increasingly sadistic violence.
Government officials, including Deputy Citizens' Security Minister Rodrigo Avila, blame the violence at least in part on the deportation of nearly 12,000 Salvadorans with criminal records from the United States since 1998. Many are prison-hardened former gang members in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities who were sent back here as illegal immigrants.
"The deportations are at the core of the problem," Avila said. "Gangs here now copy the whole L.A. gang culture, the way they talk, the clothes they wear and the absolute ruthlessness."
Many deportees simply join their counterpart gangs here upon arrival, often gaining leadership roles because they are generally the most violent in the ranks, National Civil Police Chief Ricardo Menesses said in an interview.
Deported gang members have little choice but to rejoin a gang, said Eric Henriquez, 37, a former M-18 member in East Los Angeles who was deported here in 1998. Henriquez now heads Homies United, a group that provides rehabilitation counseling to gang members. Most of its clients arrived here with no money, no support group, no job prospects and knowing little Spanish, if any.
