ANALYSIS - El Traido - J.L. Rocha-Julio2005

7/30/2019 ANALYSIS - El Traido - J.L. Rocha-Julio2005

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ANALYSIS

The Traido:

A Key to Youth Gang ContinuityJOS LUIS ROCHATraidos are grudges based on rivalry and ill will between individuals or groups,

which can be taken to the ultimate consequences. They are actively at work in our politics

and among our politicians. They also help us understand the continued existence

of youth gangs over time, as well as the excessive violence they generate.

he main character in Anthony Burgess novelA Clockwork Orange, 15-year-old Alex, is

the leader of a small group of kids who terrorize the streets of a timeless London in which the youth

gangs sometimes join forces, forming armies for nocturnal war. Alex talks in a mixture of English and

nadsat, the slang used by the youth gangs.THe and his droogs (friends) face off against other gangs, consume gallons of milk lacedwith drugs, dress in the latest fashion, savagely assault and tolchook (beat)elderly people, delight in

making their victims gush krovvy(blood), and surrender themselves to a primitive and boundless hedonism.

Youth gang member turned clockwork orange

Written over forty years ago, this novel reflects with incredible precision the world of the

youth gangs in todays Nicaragua: abundant violence, theft, drugs, the use of a particular

slang and an excessive interest in original clothes and tattoos.

In one passage fromA Clockwork Orange, Alex recounts: It was round by the Municipal

Power Plant that we came across Billyboy and his five droogs. Now in those days, mybrothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours or fives, these being like auto-teams, four

being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes

gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big night-war, but mostly it was

best to roam in these like small numbers. Billyboy was something that made me want to sick

just to viddy his fat grinning litso, and he always had this von of very stale oil thats been

used for frying over and over, even when he was dressed in his best platties, like now. They

viddied us just as we viddied them, and there was like a very quiet kind of watching each

other now. This would be real, this would be proper, this would be the nozh, the oozy, the

britva, not just fisties and boots.

The police end up catching Alex. He is sentenced to eight years in prison, but the

sentence is ultimately commuted in favor of a new Pavlovian-style treatment that makes him

feel violently sick in the presence of even the most trivial display of violence. This newcondition leaves Alex at the mercy of all of his former victims. He has become a clockwork orange, his vital

juice feeding mechanisms that force him into socially acceptable behavior. Never mind the suppression of free

will. The perfectly legitimate objective of ending delinquency justifies any means. In the end, the treatment

loses its effect and Alex returns to his old way of life. In the ineffable world of Alexs little group inA Clockwork

Orange, as in todays Nicaragua of youth gangs called Los Comemuertos or Los Chancheros, youth gangs face

off against each other, whether in groups of five or twenty. They form armies for nocturnal warfare and they

strike not only with their fists and boots, but also with more lethal objects.

In A Clockwork Orange, the criminologists invent a way of transforming young Alex. In

May 2004, the vice-president of the Nicaraguan National Assembly presented a bill to

regulate crimes and misdemeanors committed by youth gangs, aimed at eliminating youth

gangs by condemning all of their members to prison. Another mechanized cure.


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Prescriptive responses and repressivemethods dont work

Is it possible to turn youth gang members into clockwork oranges? No, because prescriptive

responses, repressive methods, laws and Pavlovian conditioning just dont work, as has been

proved by a number of different studies.

Different snapshots have been taken over time and the analyses tend to agree on a

number of basic elements: youth gangs were initially formed by their members as youthgroups that provided identity, respect and control of a given territory. A violent

temperament and a love of the neighborhood, or barrio, were the essential elements that the

gang scene fed off. But over time and as the result of all kinds of economic and social

circumstances, certain differences started to emerge. The most significant are the youth

gangs progressive tendency towards anarchy and the leading role they now play in drug use

and trafficking.

We can update our understanding of the current situation of youth gangs in Nicaragua

while still not getting a complete pictureby examining police figures on juvenile

delinquency, the specific situation of youth gangs in Managuas Reparto Schick

neighborhood, and the traido, or grudge, which is a key factor in understanding the

continuity of youth gangs and their excessive violence. In Nicaragua, a traido is a rivalry, a

deadly aversion between certain groups or individuals. It is a profound enmity in which thepast overshadows current relations. It is a mechanism that keeps the troubled side of gangs

at the forefront.

Do the Police see delinquencyand gang as synonymous?

The National Police maintain that a large part of juvenile delinquency is associated with youth

gangs, and therefore tries to keep a thorough record of the number, location and activities of

such gangs. In 2003, the police recorded 174 youth gangs and 2,685 gang members in the

departments of Jinotega, Matagalpa, Estel, Chinandega, Managua, Masaya and Granada,

although they lacked figures for the countrys remaining departments. Masaya had the

highest average number of members per gang, at 21.25. The figures revealed a notable

growth of gangs in departments outside the capital, rising from just half a dozen in 1997 to

almost 60 in 2003.

In January 2003, the National Police calculated that there were 117 youth gangs and

2,139 members in Managua alone. A month later, they recorded the same number of gangs,

but a greater number of members (2,171), for an average of 18 gang members per group.

This is similar to the average recorded for Colombian gangs, known asparches, in 1997. If

these figures are accurate, they signal a considerable reduction in the number of young

people in each gang. At their peak in 1999, the police registered 110 gangs and 8,500

members in Managua (77.27 per gang), a figure that was slightly higher than that provided

by youth gang members during a previous study carried out the same year.

All of the names:The registered and the missing

It is highly likely that the police wereand still areunderestimating the different forms of

participation in youth gangs, considering members as inactive who have merely changed the

way they participate. And this is not the only factor overlooked by the police. This year the

police registered the existence of 12 gangs and 158 members in Managuas District V: Los

Raperos, Los Rampleros, Los Cancheros, Los 165, Los Pablos, Los Comemuertos, Los

Bloqueros, Los Nanciteros, Los Power Rangers, Los Plos, Los Cholos and Los Diablitos. But

this list only includes gangs from Reparto Schick, ignoring groups from other barrios in the

district with recognized youth gang activities.

The number of gangs per neighborhood has also been underestimated. In the Grenada

neighborhood, the Police only mention the Los Diablitos gang, although the neighborhoods

inhabitants talk of other gangs, like Los Crazyand Los Colchoneros.

Other gangs known for their active presence in Reparto Schick are also absent from the

police registry, including Los Mataperros, Los Churros, Los Billareros, Los Placeos, Los


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Bfalos (now known as Roba Patos), Los Aceiteros and Los Puenteros. Los Puenteros

maintain a habitual presence in the newspapers and have been identified as responsible for

several murders. There are also notable omissions in other districts of the capital, such as

Los Parrilleros and Los Tomateros, which are among the gangs most often mentioned in

conversations with gang members from Reparto Schick, but do not appear in the police lists.

Everything suggests that the police are underestimating the number of youth gangs and

youth gang members. Is this a simple lack of information or an attempt to sugar the pill?The National Police could be interested in minimizing the number of gangs in their reports to

please a government whose main objective is to attract foreign investors to Nicaragua, the

country with the least violence in Central America, as the official discourse puts it.

Central American gangs:Nourished by deported emigrants

Gangs in Nicaragua are less violent and more anarchic than those in its Central American

neighbors to the north. In Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador there are two large youth

gang conglomeratesMara 13 and Mara 18 (mara meaning gang)who receive their

name, financing and certain norms from two big gangs in Los Angeles in the United States.

The influence of US gangs has traveled back down with those deported from the States totheir Central American countries of origin, who effectively export and globalize the world of

these two gang transnationals. There are many former migrants deported by the United

States in many barrios and gangs of Tegucigalpa, San Salvador and Guatemala City.

In Tegucigalpa the gangs have been nourished by deportees, as described in an article in

the Los Angeles Times: Nearby is a neighborhood called El Infiernito, or Little Hell, controlled by a street

gang, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS). Some MS have been US residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a

federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes. Now they are

active throughout much of Central America and Mexico. Here in El Infiernito, they carry

chimbas, guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink charamila, diluted rubbing

alcohol. They ride the buses, robbing passengers.

To a large extent, the deportees define the level of influence: Given the widespread

migration to the United States as a result of the wars, the gangs ideas and organizing agents

[the deportees] have flowed back, according to Guatemalan anthropologist Ricardo Falla.

The influence ofMara 13 and Mara 18 has not reached Nicaragua because Nicaraguan

migrants have been significantly less likely to face deportation. While Nicaragua received

only 3 deportees for every 10,000 inhabitants between 1992 and 1996, Guatemala, Honduras

and El Salvador received 6.55, 15 and 15.75 deportees respectively per 10,000 inhabitants

during the same period.

Many Nicaraguan immigrants were able to acquire political refugee status during the

eighties, and were subsequently able to make the jump to residents and citizens more easily

than other Central Americans. This preferential treatment reduced the volume of Nicaraguan

deportees. This tendency also continued in the nineties.

According to statistics from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, between 1992

and 1996 Nicaraguans benefited far more from naturalization and were less affected by

deportation than other Central Americans. During that period, Nicaraguan deporteesrepresented just 8% of the total number of Nicaraguans naturalized, compared to 17% in the

case of Salvadorans, 30% for Guatemalans and 61% for Hondurans.

The know-how left by the wars

There has been a marked evolution of the profile and functioning of Nicaraguan and Central

American gangs in recent years. The motivation, procedures and emphasis of activities have

all changed. The gangs and other armed groups initially spread as peace came to the

Central American countries.

According to Ricardo Falla, peace, in a way not unlike the increasing nationalism of

recent years, made the structure of bipolar confrontation give way and the countries own

internal tensions rise to the surface. After the wars, violence remained in the atmosphere, as

did the know-how to handle arms and manufacture homemade weapons, while organized


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crime groups, though different from youth gangs, appear to strengthen them either directly

by using themor indirectly.

In one Managua neighborhood very close to Reparto Schick, British anthropologist Dennis

Rodgers found that the gangs had real, well-planned military strategies and ritualized battles,

with a gradual escalation of the use of increasingly dangerous arms. They had a well-defined

structure and a certain command of military tactics, because some of their first members had

done their military service in the Sandinista Army at the end of the eighties. All of this wasplaced at the service of an emerging semantic and normative sectarianism with a territorial

base that was part of the youth gang scene.

A kind of corporativism and a form of work

In Eastern Europe after the fall of real socialism and in other regions of the world, there was a

triggering of nationalism, attempts to build communal paradises and the search for territorial

identities, all reactions pushing in the opposite direction to globalization. In Nicaragua, the

end of the war of the eighties and of the revolutionary project unleashed a kind of

corporativism, a segmentation into interest groups according to ideology, profession or

territory.

The current actions of Nicaraguan politicians can be also analyzed in terms of gangs,revealing a way of operating based on the tight weave of a group of friends. The gang style

of the Nicaraguan political class was proposed as a category of interpretation by former

Sandinista guerrilla leader and current president of the Sandinista Renovation Movement

Dora Mara Tllez when the first pact was being forged between Ortega and Alemn.

Such corporativism also had its expression in the barrios, where just like the various

associations of bureaucrats, intellectuals and technocrats, young people sought a group that

would protect them against the collective other. In poor neighborhoods, the gangs

developed in the streets, providing a family and a form of work, as Falla has pointed out. The

gang provided security because each member felt protected by the group and provided a

community service: defending a territory and its citizens against recurrent attacks from

enemy gangs.

With time, changes took place. One of them was the age range of gang members, which

decreased as many of the leaders and older members ended up in prison. Approaching

adulthood and therefore losing the protective cover of the Code for Children and Adolescents

also acts as a disincentive for gang activities. As if they felt that becoming an adult means

that things get serious, some moved into other activities. Being a drug runner or dealer was

a much less dangerous and almost always less visible way of offending, and it offered

financial rewards. In this line of work it was also much easier to cut deals with the police.

From throwing stones to smoking crack;from defenders to delinquents

The biggest change, which has led to others, can be summed up by noting that gang

members went from throwing stones to smoking crack, from having their feet firmly planted

in the territory of the neighborhood they were defending to having their head in the clouds,high on drugs. This does not mean that gang members didnt previously get high on crack,

cocaine, marihuana or glue, but it does mark a change in their activities. Drug use and

trafficking have come to take a central place, completely displacing the task of defending the

neighborhood. The most active gang members are now more reluctant to offer information

about their activities, to protect not only themselves, but also the complex network of which

they form a part. This network includes the bosses who supply them and shower them with

gifts, the clients who demand confidentiality, the neighbors who cover for them, and the

police whose silence and collaboration come at a high price.

This transformation could at least in part be the effect of the gang members education,

which Falla summed in the following way: If the street is the youth gang school, then jail is

the university. Some gang members I interviewed during a research study in 1999 became

involved during their time in the La Modelo prison in Tipitapa, just outside Managua, in more

professional drug gangs and trafficking networks.


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Increasing drug use requires increasing income. Gang members either have to choose

cheaper legal drugs, such as alcohol, to avoid the stigma of being delinquents (and just be

consideredpirucas, or habitual drunks), or else accept the stigma and resort to mugging or

armed robbery to ensure that they always have the money to buy drugs. One thing leads to

another, as drugs push them into robbery. The least daring turn into roba ropa mojada (wet

clothes thieves), stealing into neighbors backyards to make off with the recently washed

clothes hung out to dry there.These gang members thus stop being defenders of the neighborhood and end up being

seen above all as delinquents. The effects of the drug relax certain clauses of a formerly

sacred code, such as not stealing from neighbors. The vulnerability of the neighborhood has

come to represent a deterioration of the social capital of both the gang members and the

neighborhood itself. There has been a loss of internal cohesion, which in a context of limited

external connections puts the neighborhood on the path from amoral familiarism to anomy.

Defining what is allowed and what is not

Does this change in role imply another way of legitimizing themselves or a loss of legitimacy?

The youth gang is one of the ways in which a social group can participate in the production of

norms, albeit in a local, informal sphere. The gang cannot define what is legal, but it candefine what is allowed and what is not, as well as which behaviors are considered viable and

which are not. At moments of disorder, there is a multiplication of authorities and a

heightening of competition to see which of the different norms will be imposed. A multitude

of groups emerge demanding the right to legislate and impose their norms over others, to

assume the authority to classify which behaviors are permitted and which prohibited.

The loose change paid to a gang member to cross through his neighborhood while he

stands guard on a street corner is a socially accepted tax. It is a transaction in which the

passers-by purchase the right of way. In the barrios, the healthy young people have grown

up with gang members as playmates, and they have many transactions and common

interests. They may label some of the slackers as harmfulwhich is often also a self-

imposed labeland be scared of them when they are under the effects of drugs, but their

habitual relationship is fluid and tolerant. Sometimes, in fact, the healthy kids even defend

the gang and its members. As Roberto Tapia told me, Those guys see me as one of the

nice kids, because Ive got a good house and go to university. But theyre fine with me.

Some are my brothers. If they ask me for a buck, Ill give it to them. What do I lose?

Theyve got their problems to deal with.

They instill fear andbuild a community network

Although currently less accepted, the gangs impose themselves by instilling fear and

providing certain services. According to some who dont sympathize with the gangs, If we

make accusations against them, they come and stone the house. Falla observed that the

police are either inoperative or groping around in the dark. The victims dont denounce what

happened out of fear. The gang exercises fear over its victims so that theyll keep quiet. Asa gang member with the alias El Bibern recalled, We used to throw stones at the buses, but

the conductors and drivers didnt go to the police because they knew theyd be on the same

route the next day. They knew the bus was sure to get another stoning.

Collaborating with local people also improves the credentials of some gang members.

For example, Managuas Walter Ferreti neighborhood suffers from chronic water shortages,

and gang members from the neighboring Augusto Csar Sandino neighborhood work lugging

water and rubbish for ten crdobas and five crdobas a barrel respectively. One of the

inhabitants from the same neighborhood hasnt forgotten that gang members put up my

moms house for nothing... well, for two liters of rum. Such favors build up a community

network of mutual obligations based on an ethic of basic reciprocity. A gang known as Las

Grgolas built the church in their street, although they never go to services. But they are

convinced that working on the church amounted to a blessing, and believe thats why we

havent been killed.


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Relations with the police:From local support to beatings

The new penal legislation for both adolescents and adults requires more in terms of the

presentation of proof and witnesses. However, witnesses very rarely turn up when gangs are

involved, discouraged by either sympathy or fear. Confronting one gang member is to

confront the whole group. In fact, it amounts to confronting a whole group of families. Social

and even physical death are a constant threat. Community efforts to go the police to savethem from the gangs inevitably run up against gang and neighborhood codes that punish

bombines (informers or stoolies).

The gang members even have sympathizers among the adults. Some confess to having participated in

the fights when the neighborhood was threatened, while others provide weapons and most just keep quiet.

Even the police sometimes collaborate. Police officers living in Reparto Schick are often closely linked to

relatives or friends who are gang members. El Peln, a gang member who has been badly treated by other

police offices on many occasions, recognizes that the police who live in his neighborhood are different: Theyre

fine with us. They just ask us to respect them. If theres a fight, they dont get involved or call other police

officers. They even sold us pistol ammo and gave us AK-47 bullets.

But he has a very different vision of other police officers: They beat us and tell us that

were trash, bacteria, a blight. They say, If you die, its one less bacteria for society. When

were locked up in the station they steal the food were brought and let others steal theclothes were wearing. But theres also another kind of exchange in such cases, with the

police taking it out on gang members by beating them up and the gang members obtaining

immediate release in exchange. Those who have been beaten and show signs of their ordeal

are let out so they dont make a formal accusation to the Attorney Generals Office. Many

police officers opt for this form of venting their frustration, knowing that they probably wont

have anything on the gang members given a criminal system without the personnel to gather

evidence and the likelihood that no witnesses will turn up to testify.

A swarm of lawyersand the absence of the state

There is also a swarm of lawyers in the neighborhoods, willing to do anything to earn a juicy

fee. The families of the perpetrators are invariably more likely to invest in their services than

the families of the victims. As Falla found in the case of Honduras, the process tends not to

favor the victims unless they have the time to be pestering and pestering and going to the

police every day.

The gang members have the additional option of trying to be recognized as minors. As El

Bibern explained, I used to pass myself off as a minor. It was a strategy of mine. When

they locked me up I started thinking, How old are you, then, kid? Seventeen. But they ask

you right away what year you were born, so I had the answer already worked out: I was born

in 1985. Thats right man, so they took me off to the juvenile court. Thats why people say

and Im one of themthat young people are taking advantage of that new law they have for

children and adolescents now.

The Office of the Special Attorney for Children and Adolescentswhich in 2002 had only

one juvenile court in the whole of Managua and a meager team of just eight lawyersand theYouth Secretariat and the Ministry of the Familywhich have absolutely no presence in

Reparto Schicksound like remote and almost exotic entities to the inhabitants of the poor

neighborhoods of Managua. The Code for Children and Adolescents can always be wielded as

a threat against the police. But this has done nothing to increase police contacts with the

Office of the Special Attorney for Children and Adolescents. Meanwhile gang members,

evangelical preachers, professionals and other inhabitants of Reparto Schick were all unable

to mention a single activity carried out by the Youth Secretariat or the Ministry of the Family

in their barrio.

Traido: Eternal enmityTres Ojos (literally Three Eyes), who got his alias because of a third eye tattooed on his

forehead, killed a member of an enemy gang by striking him on the back with a machete.

After a failed attempt to pass himself off as a minor and get away with a lighter sentence, he was sent to the


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La Modelo prison. But his traidos, or sworn enemies, were patiently waiting for his release. A group of young

members of the offended gang were going around the barrio displaying a trident with the inscription Just for

Tres Ojos on the handle.

Traido can mean either a grudge or the person bearing it. It is the enmitysometimes

fatal and often eternalearned during youth gang militancy. In Mexico, traido means

eternal enmity and its said that when two people with a traido meet, they fight to the death. The

word traido has old roots in Central America. Over half a century ago, the novel Prisin verde (Green Prison)by Honduran author Ramn Amaya Amador used the term to describe a rival who is losing in a game of

chance. It is possible thatlike coima, which means a bribethe term traido was coined in casinos and

bars, from where it found its way on to the streets.

Traido: The thickest barof this cultural prison

The traido is a phenomenon with lasting resonance and operates as a mechanism that drives

youth gangs beyond their other functions, such as generating identity and protecting the

neighborhood. The fuel of old rivalries quickly explodes into new fights. The traido is the

thickest, most rustproof and resistant bar in the cultural jail in which youth gang members

find themselves trapped. It is like a regulation imposed on both the perpetrators and victimsof violence. They are bound together by pending revenge.

Traidos turn cycles of rancor and vendettas into long-term affairs. For example, four

years after having quit his gang, El Bibern still cant go past La Duya Mgica, a meeting

point for many inhabitants of Reparto Schick, because its controlled by his traidos from the

Tamales del Urbina, one of the most feared and notorious gangs. Likewise, the Ministry of

Health has a youth center in the Leonel Rugama Health Center, but gang members from

other neighborhoods cant visit it because its in the territory controlled by Los Comemuertos,

who have a traido with all other gangs.

Many gang members would have quit if it werent for traidos. After concluding that the

gang is a feeling that leads you nowhere, El Chapuln, a former member of the Los Bfalos

gang, said, We liven up the block without picking fights with anyone. But along come Los

Cancheros and Los Puenteros to flirt with the girls. Every Saturday they come looking to

provoke us with AK-47s, machetes and stones. So even if you dont get involved in anything,

others come looking for you.

Traido: Perpetuating the gangs

The traido is the fuel that keeps youth gangs going. Retired or discharged youth gang

members will tell you theyve left the gang, but that the group comes together again when

the traidos attack the neighborhood or when one of its members is assaulted by the traidos

when he goes to another neighborhood in search of drugs. Its like the classic line, I dont

want trouble, but if youre looking for it you know where to find me.

The traido is a stigma that although invisible, is registered in that unwritten file in which

all gangs record the acts of their enemies, particularly those who have caused them

significant harm. Julio Pea, a local carpenter, recalled how They attacked my son with amachete even though he wasnt a gang member any more. That joke cost him 32 stitches.

We get attacked here by those from Pomares, Los Bfalos and those from Zone 6.

According to Carlos Emilio Lpez, who until earlier this year was the Special Attorney for

Children and Adolescents, the media transmit the stigma in their zeal to sell their products.

As a result, they pass it on to whole families, very often violating the Code for Children and

Adolescents, which prohibits the publication of details of cases involving detained minors.

The Special Attorneys Office feels impotent when it comes to stopping the media, as

attacking them could wreck the image of the institution and its officials and thus undermine

its work.

In the context of a weak state apparatus, the community takes revenge into its own

hands, as El Bibern so rightly put it. The culture of the traido is in open opposition to the

culture of the rule of law or of legality that the National Police and the Ministry of

Government are trying to introduce. But the traido has a greater capacity to impose itself, to

produce multiple shoots and to resist repressive treatment.


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Traido: A resistant forcein the neighborhoods collective memory

Just as it has been shown that social capital is the only form of capital that doesnt diminish

or become exhausted with use, but rather propagates its own growth, it is also evident that

the traido, as one of the mechanisms, expressions and devices of the youth gangs social

capital, perpetuates and multiplies itself through the very actions it provokes. The gangs

associations and sense of group belonging serve the traido, multiplying and reactivating it.Although the Ministry of Government and the National Police propose disseminating

non-violent forms of interaction and the de-stigmatization of rehabilitated adolescents and

young people through the active participation of community associations, the traido is so

strong that it resists all attempts at making a fresh start. This is because it almost

permanently fractures trust, while the distrust it generates not only has social and economic

costs, but can also influence the future of people and groups over a prolonged period of time.

The community participates by keeping a mental file of all of the traidos, keeping the stigma

alive in the neighborhoods collective memory.

Jos Luis Rocha is a researcher for Nitlapn-UCA and member ofenvos editorial committee.

ANALYSIS - El Traido - J.L. Rocha-Julio2005

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Transcript of ANALYSIS - El Traido - J.L. Rocha-Julio2005