On a Monday morning last November, police in this southern Mexican city received a tip that violent youth gangs, known as maras, were planning to invade a local junior high school to avenge the arrests of 20 of their members in a brawl at a school parade.
A patrol car was sent to the school, and within minutes, word of the threat had spread across the city like a brush fire. Thousands of parents, terrified of the tattooed, extremely violent gang members, rushed to pull their children out of class. Most schools in the city of 300,000 abruptly closed, and many stayed shut for a week.
"Everybody is scared," said Federico Perez Alvarado, president of the parents' association at the threatened school. "The maras are all over, even right here in this neighborhood. It's like having the enemy inside your own house."
The panic that paralyzed Tapachula illustrates how swiftly and deeply the maras — which originated in the Central American immigrant communities of California and then migrated to Central America as their members were deported — have moved into Mexico.
Several major gangs, particularly those involving Salvadoran youths, have also proliferated in Latino communities in Washington and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, where the number of gang-related murders, assaults and other crimes has grown over the past several years.
Moving northward
As Central American governments enact tough laws against the gangs, often empowering police officers to pick up suspected members on sight, authorities said, the hoodlum groups are increasingly moving northward.
The Mexican government, responding to public anger about growing gang activity, in November deployed 1,200 agents in a multi-region sweep that led to the arrests of about 200 gang members. Eduardo Medina Mora, head of the government's Center for Investigation and National Security, said nearly 1,100 gang members had been arrested in Mexico in the past two years.
The two major gangs are the Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13, and the Mara 18, which first appeared in the early 1990s in Los Angeles neighborhoods where Central American immigrants had settled. Over the past decade, U.S. officials have deported thousands of mara members to their native countries, where they are blamed for soaring crime rates.
In what officials suspect is the latest horror committed by the gangs, 28 people, including six children, were killed Dec. 24 when gunmen opened fire on a bus full of passengers near the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. A note left at the scene said the massacre had been carried out by an obscure revolutionary group, but suspicion immediately fell on the maras.
Rising numbers of gang members
Police have no solid count of youth gang members in Mexico, but they agree the numbers are rising. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the nation's top organized crime prosecutor, said recently that drug cartels based in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border were hiring gang members as assassins.
Tapachula, a tropical city near the Guatemalan border, has become a major new base for gangs, officials said. It is a traditional gathering spot for illegal immigrants -- and increasingly, for violent groups that prey on both travelers and residents.
After the schools shut down, more than 5,000 people marched through city streets protesting gang activity. Some carried signs demanding that Mexico, which does not have capital punishment, establish the death penalty for gang members.
"They're robbing us of our freedom," said Dulce Viviana Soto Martinez, 18. "You feel like you can't go out for a walk because something might happen to you on the corner, or in the park. It's like you're practically locked in your house."
Other teenagers in Tapachula said some young Mexicans, particularly those from poor or broken families, idolized the gang members' appearance and lifestyle. But Ireliz Trujillo Verdugo, 14, said the gangs were "horrible." Two years ago, she said, gang members strangled one of her friends and stuffed the girl's body in a well.
A 'society of fear'
Tapachula sits on the main railroad line that connects Central America with Mexico and, 1,500 miles to the north, the United States. Just after midnight every night, a slow moving freight train chugs north through the city, and scores of illegal immigrants emerge from the shadows to hop aboard.
Migrants, many of whom carry large amounts of cash for bribes and to pay smugglers, are an easy source of income for gangs. Police officials say gangs routinely charge smugglers to let their groups pass. Others charge protection fees to those involved in the drug and prostitution trades that thrive along well-worn immigrant routes.
"They provide security to the drug smugglers and human traffickers," said Moises Sanchez Lopez, a university professor who heads a human rights group in Tapachula. "They are the army of these people. They have created a society of fear."
Local newspapers add to public anxiety by featuring gory photos of migrants thrown off trains by gang members. Some are killed in the fall, and many have their arms or legs severed when they are crushed beneath the wheels.
Juan Carlos Cortez, 25, was waiting to hop a train in late August when he was approached by five gang members with tattooed faces and arms. Cortez, a Guatemalan bound for the United States, said they took his money and then bashed him with rocks until nearly every bone in his skull was broken.
Cortez now lives in a Tapachula shelter. His face is severely disfigured, his left eye is gone and heavy steel wire holds his jaw together.
"I haven't even told my family yet," he said. "I don't want them to see me like this."
Mexican and Central American authorities, already struggling to cope with the heavy flow of illegal immigrants trying to reach jobs in the United States, say they are ill-equipped to handle the problem of violent migrants as well.
Government struggles to cope
Magdalena Carral, Mexico's top immigration official, said her agency had about 300 immigration officers to patrol the entire 720-mile border with Guatemala. She noted that Mexico could not afford the kind of protection the United States has on its southern border, with nearly 10,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents, motion sensors and unmanned surveillance aircraft.
"No government can deal with this alone," Carral said.
One evening in December, a dozen heavily armed officers escorted David Gomez Gonzalez, 23, into a Tapachula police station. With flashlights, they checked his tongue and the inside of his lower lip, both popular spots for gang tattoos. Gomez, who had only a few tattoos on his arms and legs, said he had been drinking in a bar when police arrested him.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he said.
Oscar Armando Calderon, another suspected gang member being held under heavy guard, bore a more elaborate, telltale gang tattoo. His torso was marked with a huge "13," a symbol of the Mara Salvatrucha. A slogan in Spanish across his chest read, "When death catches up with me, it will be welcome." And inside his lower lip was a profanity in English.
Calderon, 25, said he was born in Honduras and emigrated with his family to Seattle when he was 13. He said he joined the gang in high school, then spent three years in a U.S. prison for drug dealing before he was deported last year to Honduras. He denied being in a gang now, saying he sold shoes in his family's shop.
"I'm not trying to kill anyone or anything," he said in English, speaking briefly outside a police cellblock. "I'm just trying to be cool."
Police said Calderon would likely be deported to Honduras again. But critics said such stopgap measures would do little to solve the larger problem of gang proliferation.
The Mexican police have "no experience dealing with maras," said Ariel Riva, the local representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. To deport them, he added, is just like saying, 'Okay, come back tomorrow.' "