September 29, 2022 • 64 mins
In the wake of a horrific civil war, El Salvador found itself confronted with enormously pervasive, deadly gang activity -- it seemed the official law enforcement channels were often incapable of fighting back against the flood of crime. Until, that is, a new organization came out of the shadows -- unaccountable to authorities, unstoppable, and brutal. Today's question: What is La Sombra Negra? They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul
Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know quick. But let's get into this with some
questions today, fellow conspiracy realists, have you yourself ever witnessed injustice?
(00:50):
Have you ever regrettably seen the law fumble the ball
of what is right and good? And if so, how
are would things have to escalate before you decided to
take matters into your own hands. These are questions we're
tackling today, and perhaps most importantly, at the very top,
(01:13):
here you have to establish This episode may not be
appropriate for all listeners, as it contains at times graphic
descriptions of violets, but here are the facts in an
earlier episode episodes. In fact, we've established a long history
of drug cartels and gang activity throughout Latin America. And
(01:36):
in many cases these organizations have essentially almost replaced the
official authorities become this almost kind of like extra military,
extra governmental force UM, imposing their own sort of lawless
rule of law, or at the very least paying off
officials to the point of rendering them completely douthless. Uh.
(02:00):
It's very often very scary place to live if you're
not playing ball with these cartels. And this can happen
for several reasons, due to corruption, threats, shows of force,
you know, UM making examples out of anyone who dare
not play ball with the cartels, and brutal displays of
horrific violence. But almost always UM it is one or
(02:22):
all of these three things. And we also established that
these organizations can function in a lot of different ways,
not just some kind of lawless entity, or at least
maybe that's a a portion of it or a segment
of it. The other parts often can provide things that
a government cannot or will not, like everything from education
(02:45):
and organizational education systems to like positive things for a community,
which is it's a very weird thing to wrap your
head around, though that is not always the case. Sure, Yeah,
and we see this in other organized criminal enterprises. Around world. Uh,
the Mafia has provided disaster assistance before, as has the Alcuza.
(03:07):
Of course. You know, you can make a pretty valid
argument that in many cases those positive actions are kind
of a pr push. I mean they they help people
for sure in the short term, but they also inculcate
the criminal element further into the community. It in trenches
(03:33):
deeper and deeper, and often there is a profit motive there,
you know what I mean, they're always strings attached. Uh. Look,
it's also even if something isn't at that level, if
it's not quite an organization that's reached you know, cartels
corporation level. There are certain areas or neighborhoods where the
(03:57):
police simply will not to go. Now, in the US,
it's not uncommon for there to be parts of parts
of a city or a town where police response is
typically gonna be less reliable. Right, that's a common complaint.
But it may surprise people who haven't travel to different
(04:19):
parts of the world that there are there are some
places that pretty much do not have rule of law
unless there's a show of force level situation like uh,
like before the Pope visits Brazil, having the militarized police
roll through the favelas and just go to town cleaning
(04:42):
the place out. We also see that to your point, Matt,
there are there are Look, they're they're just really dangerous
parts of the world, and um in many and there's
not a ding against the people living there. Actually most
people are really really nice. But if you if you travel,
(05:05):
what you'll see is that often there are also places
where law enforcement seems uninterested in helping you or unable
to help protect civilians. And you know, I'm sure, I'm
sure many of us listening to have a story about
this low level graft. Right. Sometimes, you know, it's often
(05:26):
been said the police can be their own kind of gang.
That will be interesting for today because I've been in
different countries in Central America specifically, where bribery is not uncommon,
and if you make a stink about it, then you're
just gonna make it worse. Who are you gonna like
a police officer ask you for a bribe? Right? Who
(05:50):
who are you going to report them to the police? Right?
That doesn't work at every country, news flash. And if
if you're someone who can corrupt law enforcement for stuff
like that, then odds are you're already a fairly powerful individual,
which means the police in some cases may already work
(06:11):
for you. You know, you're just bribing him a different way.
So with all this together, we see a mix, a sinister,
dangerous mix of this stuff in the Central American nation
of El Salvador. Um. If anybody has been to El Salvador,
then you know, one of the first things to say
(06:32):
about it before we talk about the story, is that
it is a beautiful It's a physically beautiful place. Uh.
It's been called the Land of Smiles, and it's been
through a lot of terrible things in recent decades. Yeah,
in particular the the civil war that occurred there and
(06:55):
lasted for twelve years. It started in and until so
not that long ago, when a massive civil war occurred there. Uh,
and you know it as a civil war, there were
a ton of casually seventy five thousand I think it's
estimated people who died during the civil war. That's both
(07:16):
combatants and non combatants. And on top of that seventy
five thousand, there's another eight thousand that the u N
estimates or that number is an estimate from the UN
They estimate those people just disappeared. So eight thousand people
that just vanished, which we can imagine what happened to them, Yeah, exactly,
(07:36):
and a lot of like many many people fled the insanity,
and that plays another big part in the story. We're
laying groundwork. These were terrifying days. Okay, there's no other
way around it. Child soldiers, Uh, mass torture, mass murder,
(07:58):
sexual assault, you name it. Looking back, estimates landed on
some some ballpark numbers. So this is a war between um.
A series of groups of resistance would be probably best
known as f m L in the Federal Bundo Barti
(08:19):
National Liberation Front. They apparently committed and estimated five percent
in the murders against civilians, and the Salvadoran armed forces
and paramilitary death squads were responsible for at least another
eight percent. The other ten percent remains unknown today. That's
a sense of perspective. We're not choosing good guys or
(08:42):
bad guys here, um, even though I do think some
of the responsibility for these actions lays at the door
of the US and will also be important to remember this.
So this mass exodus, uh, you know, it's not as
if for much of the war, it's not as if Uh,
(09:03):
family in El Salvador could just go to Guatemala, an
adjacent country. Because around the same time, Guatemala is in
the midst of a civil war, one that doesn't end
until nineteen So many people did whatever necessary to escape
the chaos and try to protect their loved ones, and
(09:23):
a lot of them ended up in the United States,
in Los Angeles in particular. The descendants of some of
these families would go on to form street gangs for
their own protection, and these would evolve into groups like
MS thirteen. Then there's also eight Street sometimes called like
(09:45):
Kaya teen or Baryo eighteen. Uh these groups have become
bitter rivals. I do want to point out one thing
that sometimes gets missed when talking about uh Mada Sava
or MS thirteen is that they started out as just
a bunch of kids who liked heavy metal music and
(10:06):
getting high together and just smoked weed and hung out.
And you know, a lot of the a lot of
the things that happened that played a role in the
evolution of this group were thrust upon them by the
hostile environment of of Los Angeles, which has always been
pretty brutal to the disadvantaged. Yeah, we'll think about that.
(10:28):
You've got this max mass exodus from El Salvador. A
lot of these people who are showing up our young
men who uh are not allowed to get a job
unless you go through this arduous process and then you
can only get a job for a certain amount of time.
Maybe they don't have the skills they need to get
the jobs that are available. These guys faced, as you said,
been the problems that already existed in Los Angeles when
(10:51):
it comes to the economy and just the laws that
they were subject to now being in the United States. Yeah,
and also there this is not a pop reference. They're
also the new kids on the block. They're going into
areas where there is some existing gang activity, right, and
they're going into those areas as the other right. It's
(11:15):
not it's not as if there uh and this this
is a shame, it's a reality. It's not as if you,
as a kid from El Salvador going into a neighborhood
that is largely Mexican. It's not as if you are
necessarily going to be welcomed with open arms. Is one
of the in group you will be seen as coming
(11:37):
from Afar and a lot of their There are tons
of really powerful and really effective nonprofit groups that have
have fought against the structural weaknesses that helped create gangs
and have fought to unify society in a in a
more productive way. But this doesn't stop the elpment of
(12:00):
these gangs we're talking about. Throughout the nines, MS thirteen
expands with the help of other prominent gangs, and they
do gang stuff. You know, they go gangland. We're talking
about protection, rackets, extortion, you know, uh, gang crime. Right,
Like everybody wants respect, no one's willing to give it,
(12:22):
So people end up shooting each other. And you can
see some documentaries that are pretty granular about what becomes
about the causes behind the great rivalry which is MS
thirteen and the street gang. I just want to put
out there. Also, they get into things that you know
(12:43):
are it's the black markets, right, So since they can't
operate legally, the larger groups once once they have capital
or money that they've made in some way, or they
pull money and they have capital, rather than being able
to invest that money or put it into a business
or anything like that, they have to just take that
money and find a way to make more money out
of it. So they they there's a necessity to resort
(13:06):
to the black market sector, which are things like drug
trafficking and sex work. Uh. And it's just it's it's
so weird to look at it from that forty thou
foot view and see that it's it was inevitable that
that was going to happen unless there was some kind
of program specifically designed or in place when you have
a bunch of people coming in like that, um like
(13:28):
to to help them almost get started on a pathway
a transition plan. Yeah, yeah, I know, it makes sense.
So so one of the key things to remember, and
you don't see it when a lot of the current
activities of groups like MS their tier reported. One of
the key things to remember said in the beginning, this
was a matter of self preservation for these people. And
(13:52):
then there's another thing that occurs, and this is all
there's a lot of history we're throwing at you, but
promise it matters. So the US has cyclical immigration scares, right,
and these immigration scares often occur when a politician wants
to distract from another problem or when they need to
(14:14):
kind of uh whip up and foment some discord, give
people something to be angry about. Uh, it's cynical, but
it's true. And as crime is escalating and as the
Clinton administration is looking for looking at the big picture
political numbers, UH, they come up with this plan to
(14:36):
deport a lot of these folks. If you get caught
commanding gang activity and you know you've got the MS
thirteen or the eighteen tattoos they're uh, then they will
just escalate your deportation. So over um let's starts in
the middle late nineties and then it kind of continues
(15:01):
and estimated twenty thousand criminals were deported back to Central
American countries between two thousand and two thousand and four,
so thousands of people come back. In the case of
El Salvador, many of them are returning to a country
that has pretty recently survived the horrors of a civil war,
right the same one that their parents UH fled, And
(15:25):
now the infrastructure is trashed in many places, there aren't
transition plans, there aren't job opportunities, things like that. So
the UH, these gang organizations continue what they were doing before.
They take the lessons learned and they franchise out and
they find no shortage of kids who are good material
(15:50):
to be recruited. MS thirteen actually struggles a little bit
because Body of eighteen, the eighteenth Street Gang is a
little more open about membership, like it's okay if you
are a different um, if you have different racial characteristics,
or if you're from a different country something like that. So, uh,
(16:11):
they tend they start spreading throughout Central America, and MS
thirteen is spreading as well, just in a different way.
And you know, of course Salvador had a violence problem.
It didn't disappear just because the war officially ended. I mean,
I know, history textbooks kind of painted like that for
a lot of students, Like you hear about the Emancipation
(16:33):
Proclamation when you're in school in the US, but you
don't read probably about the prison system that came right after.
You probably don't read about the people who were uh,
who had restricted information access, who didn't learn they were
free until you know, years or decades later. The paperwork
(16:54):
is nice and it's important, but it's not the same
thing as the reality on the ground. So for several decades,
Al Salvador has become and maintains the reputation of being
the most violent country in the world that wasn't currently
officially at war. In fact, the US State Department reported
(17:14):
El Salvador had the highest rates of homicide up until
and that's in the entire world, correct, correct, Yeah, And
that's uh. You know, whenever you hear these kind of
numbers whipped out on a global scale, you have to
ask for the source. Yeah, the U. S State Department
has some agendas of its own, but also the problems
(17:36):
are are clear. Right, there is not a war, and
this is the most violent place where there is not
currently a war. The streets become overrun in different areas
by violent gangs that are ruling through murder, torture, widespread
sexual crime, and more. And when we say ruling this way,
(18:00):
you have to understand there are parts of like um
part of our story takes place with the sun, Miguel,
there are also parts of sense solved, or where people
going to work, like to get on the bus would
pass a kid and they would have to give this
kid the equivalent of a dollar. Not because the kid
was a really great beggar. He was the little tax man.
(18:22):
He's the lookout. He's a trainee for eighteenth Street or
MS thirteen. And if you don't give him that dollar,
then the people he works for will come ruin your life,
and you also have to pay a protection racket unless
you can pay for your own pretty top notch bodyguards.
I'll think about how horrifying that situation is, because it's
(18:44):
not like that kid in that moment. Besides, he's going
to kill you for not you know, paying the money
to him. That little kid goes in reports to somebody,
Oh you know, here's a list of the people that
didn't pay me today, right, Uh, or you know this
is what that's what. Oh, that's the guy that didn't
pay me, and just pointing someone out right. I mean,
(19:05):
you just imagine like this is a child that is
basically going to snitch on everybody for not paying, and
a gang is like it may murder you for not paying,
or at least beat you up, or may hurt someone
close to you to get you to pay. Uh, And
in there may I just I'm imagining all the instances
(19:26):
of mistaken identity in that system where you know, you're
just trusting one a child essentially to decide or figure
out who's paid and who hasn't. Right, Honestly, similar to
the way authoritarian regimes enlist children to spy on parents.
It's it's messed up. So another group emerges amidst all
(19:50):
this chaos, and police and civilians and gangs like start
to recognize some signs. It starts with warnings graffiti spray
painted places, things like gangs are animals. And then the
graffiti is near scenes of violence unattributed and people don't
(20:11):
recognize the signs yet just yet. Uh. It starts near
known gang run areas. Then the pamphlets come and then
sophisticated brutal hits targeting gang members. This group, which is anonymous,
highly trained, and so far officially at least untraceable, had
(20:35):
a message for MS thirteen and the eight Street Gang alike,
The Sambra Negra, the Black Shadow has returned. Will pause
for word from our sponsor and return ourselves. Here's where
(20:55):
it gets crazy. The Sambra Negra inning English, the Black Shadow.
This group has a history, They have a past. They
first get mentioned in nine towards the close of the
Civil War. Yeah, if you want to think about this group,
(21:16):
imagine maybe ex soldiers. Uh like, maybe that's that's a
good way. It's not all. They're not all ex soldiers,
but imagine an ex soldier and their identities. They're not proven.
We gotta say that, Yeah, exactly, I just imagine it
highly trained individual right in the art of war and death.
(21:39):
Uh that that's an individual member of this group. But
they are. When they operate. They don things like balaclava's,
you know, maybe some kind of armor, black clothing. They
operate with military tactics, whether they're ex military or not. Uh.
They perform all kinds of surveillance, intense and sophisticated surveillance
(22:03):
on the people that they're going to target. And I
don't admit I just imagined them as a a fully
paramilitary group. Yeah, I mean they have, they have ops set.
They also incorporate, uh, incorporate gang tactics. So so the
people who are conducting operations on behalf of the Sandra
(22:27):
are they've definitely learned from somewhere. At least in my opinion,
this all points to professional training. It's not just a
bunch of civilians who got mad and took out, you know,
the pistols and shotguns and put on stocking caps. No,
they're also using assault weapon. They're using stuff that the
(22:48):
average resident of El Salvador would probably have a have
a tough time getting right in an organized way and
it's almost like they went to a school somewhere. Ben. Yeah,
well let's see, we'll we'll get to it later. Yes,
but yes, that's excellent foreshadowing, So agreed, paramilitary they seem
(23:10):
to have been taught somewhere, which we'll get to But second,
why call it a death squad? Well, to be honest, Uh,
it's called a death squad because from the jump, Las
Sombra has never really been out to just arrest people,
and they're not exactly in the parking lot ticket game still, um,
(23:30):
they are always targeting new members. So for some civilians,
as we had mentioned at the top of the show,
this can be a very complicated proposition by Sombra. Negra
had stated that it killed seventeen individuals, all gang members
or other criminals, so essentially vigilante action um, which would
(23:55):
appear to be unaccountable to anyone but other members of
of this criminal organization Le Sombre. After a time, the
organization took a step back into the shadows and didn't
come back out for several years. Um. During that time,
they quickly became, as far as anyone could tell, essentially
(24:18):
just the top of the food chain. Apex predator in
the criminal underworld of El Salvador. Yeah, it was quite
a bit of time, wasn't it been when they were
like gone or not active, or they they at least
weren't putting out their calling card if they were active, right.
And it's confusing because there were multiple especially as gang
(24:42):
violence escalates, there were multiple death squads. There were multiple
death squads in the time of the Civil War. Uh.
You will see reports of suspected or proven gang members
being targeted by a number of groups, and they may
later claim responsibility or they may, you know, sombre style
(25:06):
have like graffiti or some other indicator, but it looks
like Lo Sambra Negra itself went went away, got into
the shadows. But again, because it's a bit of a
black box, it is also possible that that group may
have splintered, right, they may have gone and done their
(25:27):
own things. But anyway, every so often this thing hauling
itself Lo Sombra Negra would re emerge, and authorities were
more likely to believe these groups, these murderers or vigilantes
when they claimed to be La Sambra, because Le Sambra
(25:52):
had signature techniques which were also have a bit of
providence behind them when impossible impossible. They didn't really do
super quick hits. Part of it was about sending a message,
so the opportunity was right, they would take their time,
(26:13):
like you said, Matt, they would case. They had pretty
good surveillance. They were pretty good at maintaining anonymity. Balaclava's
dark windowed, unregistered, unmarked cars, you name it. And when
they get their victims, and of course these gang members
(26:35):
had multiple victims of their own, right, let's remember that.
But when they got ahold of their victims, they would
blindfold them and they might bind their feet at the ankles.
They would always tie either the hands or the thumbs
behind the person's back. Here you might ask why tie
(26:58):
the thumbs? If you're on YouTube, I'm doing this, it's
like a very lazy Wu tang sign. Why why tie
the thumbs instead of just binding the hands at the wrist. Well,
it's a little bit easier to do some stress positions.
And look at me panicking, like me trying to panic. Here,
Look how my hands splay out. And that's eight different
(27:20):
questions you can ask. And you can see what they're
doing there when they're interrogating somebody that they've caught, right,
what what do you think they're getting out of that person?
Probably information about their next hit, right yep. Or it
may simply be retaliation because they have proof of something.
(27:42):
A scary thing to happen during an interrogation is for
ordering a torture. H situation is for the torturer or
interrogator to say, just as you know, I don't really care,
I don't care what you're gonna say, we have the
information in the next couple of hours, or just for us,
(28:04):
thanks for coming. Uh. That kind of stuff does happen,
but this does like to be part interrogation, part torture. Yeah,
they're gathering more intelligence, which is again is kind of
a signature move. But this torture, which must stress, has
never been proven in a court of law. It's just
evidenced on the bodies that have been found. This includes
(28:25):
stuff like the removal of tongue, teeth, fingers, toes, hands, genitalia.
And then the final move the sign off. One of
the sign off, it's not quite a calling card because
those are the messages they leave, but the move they're
known for that really identifies it to the authorities as
(28:47):
lessambra is something called the Tiros de Gracia, the shots
of Grace. So after this torture, the victim is shot
in the base of a skull, and it's gonna be
pretty messy because they're using like M sixteens, using machine guns,
assault rifles, um. And it's, you know, quite believable at
(29:11):
this point, without having spoken to anyone who survived that,
because none of them did, it's quite believable at that
point that it is seen as an act of mercy
by the person who's finally getting this horror show ended well.
And it's also a way to show like it was us, right,
and that's not the only way they show it was us.
Besides the torture and that final shot, they also leave
(29:35):
like written messages, often on a wall nearby, and they
say things from like ranging from just the name Assambra negra,
something else about the shadow, or often a very specific
message about the person that's like derogatory, calling that person,
you know, stupid, idiotic, other other things like that what
(29:58):
was that you found a specific one? This idiot suffered
a slow death. There are a couple of ways who
interpret it. Maybe the body through that person was an
idiot because they were involved in in a gang. Oh.
By the way, even at some point, if you're a
reformed gang member, you still have the tattoos, you're still
(30:21):
in trouble, right. But also idiot could have just meant
that they said, look, will kill you quickly if you
tell us what we need to know, and they said,
I'm not telling you anything, and then just made everybody's
night a little longer. Yeah, definitely rain of terror. UM.
So where are they now? Where have Lessambre gone over
(30:45):
the decades since the Civil war? UM, They've made a
few sporadic appearances, almost seeming to respond to specific gang
activities or just to maintain their presence in the minds
of their victims. I m s. Thirteen and eighteenth Street. UM.
I don't want them to get too comfortable. Right. And
(31:07):
while many folks assumed UH that they were working with
the National Civil Police or PNC, there still were a
few arrests of Les Ambre members UM, and the United
States UH takes this view, UM, saying quote in a statement.
In July nine, sixteen alleged members of the Sombra Negra
(31:30):
were arrested in San Miguel, including four ranking PNC officers
in that department. UH. In November, seven were set free,
including two of the police officials, by a San Miguel court,
which said there was a lack of evidence. In June,
six more were cleared of murder charges, including the other
two police officials. The remaining three were tried and found
(31:51):
innocent of murder in April nineteen ninety seven. Wow, so arrested.
No one gets convicted of Eventually, despite this lack of convictions,
the National Civil Police the p n C say, okay,
the Black Shadow has been dismantled. Wink uh. And also
(32:12):
we have to indicate, you know, there's for for some locals, uh,
the the Black Chadow is tremendously popular. It's seen as
doing what the police either can't or won't do, which
is protected the public. Uh. And then, as we said,
(32:34):
in the years that follow after this, other anti gang
death squads claim responsibility for various hits. They're not considered
the work of the Sandra but um. But maybe maybe
there was a different name or different branding because of
things like that court case. At least this is the
(32:56):
lay of the land until twenty team. That's when everything changed.
We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors
and we'll return. There are a couple of gang members
(33:18):
together in in a suburb and there it's seven of them,
and they're not having a wild gang banger night. They're
not planning to maybe like do a hit. They're not
engaged in some sort of trafficking thing. Get this, They
got together for a movie night. It's seven seven gang
members who are just at a house and they decided, yeah,
(33:42):
to have some bro time and watch a movie. When
some unmarked cars are quietly rolling up, a group of
armed men masked up dressed in black, armed with him sixteens,
pops into the home and then instantly begins firing. Three
escape the four others are bound, beaten and executed, ultimately
(34:06):
with that shot of grace at the base of the skull.
A few days later, the flyers returned as well. The
message was clear las Umbra was back. Yeah. And when
they put those flyers out, it wasn't like, hey, look
what we did. It was a list where it included
a list of other known gang members in the area.
(34:28):
Like it was a message we're coming for you. Like
that's that's that's scary. Uh, that's really scary, and it's
it's purposefully that way. Yeah. In some cases, I heard,
so this tactic was applied multiple times in some reports.
Uh I had heard there would just be flyers posted
(34:49):
that didn't say anything. It's just the list of names.
And if you're and you would know that these are
gang members, if that you had lived in the community
for a long time, or if you yourself wory gang
mem but for everybody else, imagine you are walking somewhere
right in your neighborhood and you probably wouldn't clock it
(35:12):
when you see the first flyer and it's just a
list of like twelve names. But then you see the
second one, you know, and then you you see a
third one, and you stop, maybe on the third or
fourth win to look and it's the it's just the same,
no explanation, just a list of names and boom, your
(35:33):
names on that list. That's spooky, right, Yeah. Well, and
a lot of the people's names that were on the
list were were people who had gone to the United
States or have been in the United States following the
Civil War. And then we're deported back to El Salvador.
So it's some of the you'd think. And I can't
(35:54):
confirm this, and I couldn't been looking through it, but
it seems to me that those are likely many of
the early originators of maybe MS thirteen, at least within
El Salvador, or at least early uh influential members. Yeah,
I mean I think there are. I think it's targeting.
I think honestly, it could even go deeper than that,
(36:17):
because it appears to imply, not proved, but imply the
existence of communication between the sambre and the officials because
they you know, if you are a normal person, a civilian,
(36:37):
you're going to have a tough time getting a list
of here a gain a list that reads, here are
the people getting deported to this country, now they're coming
to your town. Also, here are the ones that are
specifically in gangs. And here's how we've documented that. It's proven,
we've done the work. You don't usually get that. You
(36:59):
don't get that info az a civilians. So uh, there
there are different accounts of people who had kind of reformed, right,
But even if you're reformed and you get deported, you
still have the tattoos. You are visibly a member of
of the gang. One guy only escapes because he one
(37:24):
of his friends, a local in the community tells him like, hey,
they know you're here, who La Sambre Negra, which is
you know, often reported as the only group MS thirteen
and eighteen street fear and you you'll be given something
like forty eight hours to five days two g t
f O. And it's pretty clear what happens if you stay,
(37:48):
because they're saying they already know your location, right. And
there are also cases of people getting getting popped getting
off the bus or after they the plane lands, like
not making it the full, not not even making it home. Um,
this this is real stuff. And now there's you know,
(38:09):
another another important tactic there is that they also allegedly,
again not provably, but allegedly took the social media through
things like Facebook pages and fairly recently Twitter allegedly again yes,
massive emphasis on allegedly. We we looked through some of
(38:30):
those feeds just to see and who knows. We there's
no way to tell if it's if it's real or not,
or at least if it the person or person's posting
are actually in Los amber Nicra, right. And and then
another evolution is occurring here because just like the criminals
they're tracking, La Sandra is spreading across borders from El
(38:53):
Salvador and the capital San Salvador to Honduras and Guatemala,
which are you know, adjacent bordering countries. So they're bleeding
over into the border. Defining these people. It reminds me
of the idea um and this is not a ding
on anyone, but it's it's an observation from the Nolan
Batman movies. They say that Batman has no jurisdiction, right like,
(39:18):
if you are if you are military of El Salvador,
or you are police El Salvador, then legally a lot
of other stuff has to happen for you to get
over the border. That's not your jurisdiction. That's a completely
different country. But that only counts if you obey the law.
(39:39):
So there and from their perspective, you can see older,
older reports from people who have claim to anonymously speak
for Los Ambre, again hard to prove. They don't see
what they're doing as criminal activity. They think they are
doing what they call social cleansing, and for them it's
(39:59):
a problem the law seems unable or unwilling to solve
through official channels. We should also point out a ton
of people in El Salvador, a very large part of
the population are in some ways associated with gangs, such
the estimates like UM sixties seventy thousand or whatever that
(40:21):
that would mean they outnumber Salvador and law enforcement pretty significantly.
Oh yeah, there's reason to fear the gangs as authorities
in several of the countries, including Wamala, Honduras and uh,
surrounding countries that were these gangs operating, not just in
El Salvador. But I want to talk about one of
(40:42):
the main reasons, ben I think that Los amber and
Negra formed or at least came back, and it's because
of an issue with the prison system there. The prisons
in El Salvador are absolutely filled with gang members, but
because there's so much violence between the different gangs, what
(41:03):
they've done is separate the gangs into different facilities. So
there's an m S thirteen facility or facilities, and there's
a Baro eighteen set of prisons. And the major issue
is that there are so many concentrated members of the
same organization in one prison that they can organize and
(41:25):
they can still operate to a certain extent even though
they're all incarcerated. Uh. And you know, you just have
to have enough corruption within that system to get messages
in and out or just through regular channels to get
messages in and out. Uh, it's a real problem. So
to my mind, Ben, this is or at least began
(41:45):
as a group of disgrunt old either police officers or
military officials who saw that major problem and just thought, well, what,
we're just gonna imprison more of these guys and they're
just going to continue operating. No, we're gonna fix it
our away, right, like the like President Buke said recently,
(42:07):
we're going to stop feeding your people in prison. Yes,
that's a recent development, but I think it speaks to
the historical aspecture outlining. You're absolutely right, and not to
mention the fact that who that's the is that the
official who declared war on the gangs essentially like open war.
(42:28):
So then there have been a lot of casualties on
the police and military side. You can imagine that every
time that occurs, you're fullmenting more of a desire to
just eliminate gang members rather than incarcerat right or or
even reform and retaliation by police forces is not something
that should sound alien to anyone. Unfortunately, in a lot
(42:52):
of areas of the world, it is far from uncommon.
Even even if it's like ethnically who who didn't happen?
It is far from uncommon for colleagues of law enforcement
members two visit their own retaliation right instead of waiting
(43:13):
for the courts. And you see this depicted in fiction,
but that fiction is based on factual events. And again,
of course we're not saying every single member of every
single law enforcement organization in the world is doing any
of that stuff. Far from it. But I do think
(43:33):
that we're asking who la sombre is? We have to
we have to introduce some factors that don't get reported,
and they're easy dots to connect. Yes they try to
hide identities. Yes they're using unmarked vehicles and masks and
so on, and yeah, for sure, the tactics alone are
enough to persuade some people that these individuals are maybe
(43:57):
veterans of the Civil War, maybe their ex military, maybe
their X or even current police. Several have been taken
a court, arrested, then let free. Why does the p
n C seem so lenient? How were these tactics learned?
These are things that don't get improvised on the fly,
and you don't have to be the you know, like
(44:18):
some You don't have to have attended West Point to
to recognize when some some group is moving with cohesion
and training. A lot of a lot of the really
notorious officers of the El Salvadoran military during the Civil War,
they spend time right here in Fort Benning, Georgia, in
(44:41):
the home state of the stuff they don't want you
to know podcast at a school is now closed down,
officially called the School of the Americas. There it is there,
it is. Watch our video on YouTube just search School
of the Americans. Well quick and unless we got old
quicken dirty, what what is the What is the School
(45:03):
of the Americas? Is it like a geography program? Yeah,
that's that's exactly what it is. Uh, it's a training
grounds a pretty large area there where it's been alleged
in some cases, and it's also been proven in other cases,
where guerrilla tactics often are taught. Two people who end
(45:26):
up going and fighting, let's say, in a pre war.
Is that a good way to put it, ben They
fight a pre war in a place before the Civil
War begins, often in South America or Central America. They're
cuckoo for coco puffs. Wait, they're cuckoos. Were cuckoo puffs
(45:48):
as long as we're describing coups, yeah, yeah, exactly. And
there are coups that are often they're coups that are
often support it by the US, and the US is
supporting the far right side of the political spectrum, at
least in Latin America as far as we've seen historically.
(46:09):
So just check out School of America's tell us what
you think, uh, and also recall that that Uncle Sam
has sent in uh its own members and allies to
deliver other training. Right. So the School of America is,
in a very real way took the show on the
(46:32):
road at times. And I don't know, like okay, So
none of this is absolute proof the identities of the sambre.
None of this is absolute proof of the evolution right
or the providence of their training. But if you look
at this, it's easy to imagine how a trained keeper
the law might grow disillusion like you were saying, uh,
(46:55):
they might get tired of the corruption. They might have
that Serpico moment where they go to THEEF and they say,
have got proof they did this, we can get them
and the chief is being paid off. So slides it
to the left. It's dangerously easy to think that. But
with all that mind, I have to reiterate, we cannot
prove this yet, but I think we can say it
(47:19):
would be pretty in surprising if this was not the case.
Is that fair? I think you're it's almost fair, Ben.
I think either School of the America's or a similar
training of some sort that that's exactly like that and
what you're describing, just maybe from a different source. That's
all I would say, because I haven't seen anything with
(47:41):
School of the America's specifically, but it is the thing
that does the thing we're talking about, right, So it's
I mean, we're not saying the School of America's specifically
created the SAM right, A lot of the School of
America has accidentally did a lot of stuff there. There
you go, it was an unhappy accident. Not jeez, well,
(48:05):
this gives us, h This gives us an opportunity to
talk about the controversies here, moral dilemmas like you've seen
it before in uh in Man on the Street interviews
about a vigilante action. Right, there's always gonna be people
who say, well, good, you know what I mean. Even
(48:27):
if there was a guy I think it was in
the United Kingdom, there was a guy who would dress
up as a superhero to hide his identity, and all
he did was go to cars that had been booted,
you know, and they put the little boot on the
back tire, and he would take like a saw, like
power saw and cut off the boot. That's all. That's
(48:48):
all he did. And there were interviews where people were like,
this guy's great. Yeah, it's so interesting to to just
have the phrase boot uh in in the context of
you said in the United Kingdom, right, yes, that's mood. Yeah. Well,
I would just imagine the boot of a car, right,
which is the trunk, And I just imagine somebody cutting
(49:10):
off the trunks of cars all over the city as
an act of good. They usually like in the front
to chaos. Okay, Well, in the interests of time, folks,
I'm gonna have to uh, we're gonna have to come
back and update maybe later in the week on that
(49:31):
on that real life vigilante thing with the parking the
parking guy. Um, I swear it's real. It's not a
fever dream. I like barely sleep, so okay, uh, this
but this does show a dilemma, right, there's a dilemma
inherent in any conversation about vigilantes. The dilemma is ultimately this,
(49:52):
do their actions result in more good or more harm?
Should they be stopped? If you live in an area
where it's terrorized by gangs constantly, to the point that
they have become your local government right and you have
to pay protection for your own little shop which is
already struggling because you probably live in a poorer area
(50:13):
of town, and you know the police will not and
have not done did Ley Squad for you, would you
still be mad at a group like Losandra, as brutal
as they are. I don't know, I don't know. Yeah,
I mean, it would definitely be based on the personal
situation and experience. Right If you've got a family member
(50:34):
that was killed. There's so many stories of the two
degrees up to zero degrees of separation with a family
member who was either killed or beaten up by one
of these groups because simply because they didn't pay or
they didn't you know, pay enough, or something like that.
Then there's an article we should shout out from I
(50:56):
think Crisis Group something like that that has a lot
of personal experience stories that you can read right now
if you want Yeah, International Crisis Group has a piece
called life under Gang Rule in El Salvador and it's
very much worth the read. It came out in November November,
(51:16):
so you can see the experiences that people are having
in in this country due to this violence. And oh
we should also note, uh, you'll see this when you
look up the p n C or legitimate police activity
in El Salvador, they're already masked up pretty often pre
(51:37):
COVID by the way, yep, because they have to hide
their identities or risk being hunted down themselves. Yeah, and
now we we have a little bit of a of
a bigger picture here, but we have to ask, you
know about these dilemmas. The other thing is these these
(51:59):
victims tard at it by the black shadow. They're all
at some point associated with criminal activity, right, but they
have not been given a day in court. In many cases,
they're not being arrested. They're being targeted, tortured and executed.
The controversy is similar to something in Colombia during the
(52:19):
heyday of the drug wars. The group that was known
as Los Peppes for short, uh, persecuted by Papulo Escobar.
They operated a low level war against the Meddaene cartel
up until Escobar died in what was that? When it
was that? Okay? Yeah, and that's a fascinating story, right
(52:41):
about a group forming like that and willing, like just
willing to go to war with a cartel like that
because you were scorned or because you were hurt or
were you know, damage was done to you or a
loved one. But the thing is, you can't find much
about that group, at least I couldn't. Yeah, not a
not a ton in English. But also they were they
(53:05):
were supported by another cartel, which goes to another theory
about l Sambra. You know, did someone did someone take
over the Lessandra title and use it in a convenient way?
Like are they run by a cartel? From everything that
Lesambra has appeared to publicly say, I'm thinking the answers
(53:25):
no and don't particularly want to piss them off. It's
a possibility that one of the other rival gangs, or
even an up and coming rival gang, is operating as
Losambra Negra to just instill fear or to break up
you know, small parts of let's say MS thirteen's business
in certain parts of the country. That's a possibility though
(53:47):
I don't think it's very high and probability. Yeah, And
of course we're just giving you the publicly available information
as it stands, and we hope you're being clear about
what has been alleged and what has been proven. Uh.
The government links of Los Peppes were confirmed, right, even
(54:10):
when they were working with Cartel's Les Sambre maybe trying
to give its side of store and social media. You
can check out something that alleges to be their Twitter account.
I looked at it, and they're reporting on actions of
the p n C often, right, and they're thanking people
for tips occasionally. But if you if you go there
(54:32):
now again, I'll Salvador very beautiful place, you'll you'll see
that it's still struggles with gang violence, with violence in general,
but primarily gang violence. The current president launched that crackdown
that you have mentioned, Matt. This resulted in mass arrest,
like a drag net. That's kind of tough to imagine
(54:53):
because it was physical, tens of thousands of people getting
locked up. Uh. And this was in response to the
murder rate hitting a record high in March of this year.
Sixty two murders were recorded in a single day, across
the nation. And that's a population around like six point
five million, So it's not it's not a huge, huge country.
(55:17):
That's a lot of deaths. Uh. And the government announced
a thirty days state of emergency. They suspended constitutional rights.
As we record, that thirty day period has been extended
five times. Uh, and you don't really have a recourse here.
From March to September of this year, the month we record,
(55:40):
security forces have arrested almost fifty one people in counting,
mostly young men, mostly from poor neighborhoods. And uh, they've
arrested them often just for being young men in poor neighborhoods.
Starts to feel like a quota system at some point,
doesn't it. Yeah, But it's so messed up to imagine
(56:01):
it's a it's a reaction to a serious threat of violence.
I mean, you know, it's tough because how do what
what are the right moves to make? Do you spend
money you don't have as a country on systems of
helping out those in need to prevent people from joining,
(56:25):
you know, the organizations that you're trying to fight against.
If you don't have the money, how do you get it?
You borrow it from another country and then go into
a bunch of debt which may lead to another civil
war down the road. Yeah, deal with the I m
F for the World Bank or something. Well yeah, and
in a larger picture too, I am not persuaded that
(56:47):
the US has always been a good faith actor. Well
I know it hasn't been a good faith actor. But
even now, you know, the reality is, say what it wants.
The United States does not really geo politically have a
problem with Latin American states being riddled with corruption and
(57:10):
and have it, you know, anything to prevent them from
becoming regional and then possibly world level hedgemons. Right there.
There are reasons Venezuela is a pariahs state that are
absolutely valid, and there are other reasons that aren't being
talked about because it doesn't make the global economic order
(57:31):
look particularly cool. And I think whenever we talk about
this sort of stuff, we have to realize that that
is a piece of the conversation. And maybe that's a
story for a different day. Maybe that's a series of
episodes on all the work the US has historically put
into keeping Latin America divided and uh try trying its
(57:57):
best to make them vassal states. Uh, I don't know. Yeah,
it is a response to a serious threat. Though it's
not like an excuse to just It's not like the
president is who's pretty young, by the way, It's not
like the president is just going is an excuse I
need to do a thing. He is trying to prevent
this violence where so many people have often been forced
(58:21):
to become members of gangs. And wasn't there a president
who tried a softer hand like uh, like the attempted
to at least while they were in we're in office
to um do more reforming rather than just jailing and prosecution.
Am I wrong? I believe you're correct. Um, I believe
(58:44):
you're correct. But that the thing with those but it
wasn't supported right by the people like that was not
really And the issue with those programs is that they
don't provide an immediate solution. They take time, right, It
takes time to heal a community, right, and often often
(59:08):
beneficial actions take longer to implement than destructive or violent actions.
That's just this reality. And uh, this is why you
know a lot of people El Salvador support this crackdown,
but a lot of people who were in the neighborhoods
they're being cracked down upon. Are saying, this is unfairly
(59:30):
targeting the poor. We are barely getting by. How do
you think we're gonna afford a lawyer? How can we
pay two fifty dollars uh, you know, a month or
whatever to make sure our kid gets food to eat
in prison on top of the money we have to
pay to go see them, right on top of the lawyer, Like,
(59:51):
where are we going to find this cash? And these
people are just being detained. Often they're not sentenced, they're
just stuck. By the way, I still have to pay
the taxes to my local gang as well as the
taxes to you and your government. It's not ideal, I mean,
and as these are the people too that have the
least say so, you know, it's like I was staying
(01:00:13):
at the top of the show, like if you if
you don't play along with you know, the gangs, then
you're a target. If you do, then you're a target.
And it's all just because of where you happen to
be born geographically, you know. And then and then if
you try to leave, you're you're you're you're in quote
illegal you know. It's just it's a real rocket, a
(01:00:37):
hard place. It is. It is a Gordian not right,
and some of now analysts have called it, you know,
part of a feedback loop. I mean, the president of
a country saying push me and I'll let I'll let
your colleagues starve in jail, I'll let them that that
(01:01:02):
that's pretty extreme. But also, oh, that's what the other
president did. Ben, I'm so sorry. I just I have
just I have to get this out. But don't wanna
get it out. I'll be upset with myself. Um it
was former president um Mauricio Funes and the term that
term where he reduced the murder rate down about half.
That was right before Los Ambre Negra re emerged in
(01:01:27):
so you can almost see how it could have been,
or at least seen could have been seen as a
reaction to those policies of improving conditions for the game members.
It's interesting, well, it's yeah, it's important to know that
this also, this crackdown approach isn't coming out of nowhere.
The government tried other stuff and at this point, with
(01:01:50):
all these factors mixed in, you can see how people
might support a group like the Sombra Negra you know,
even even if it's just implicitly, you can imagine how
members of the National Police, even if they're not members
(01:02:11):
of Le Sambre, you can imagine how they might look
kindly upon those actions. Because the violence is touching so
many people in the country, and at this point we
want to pass the mic to you, folks. Thanks for
tuning in. Let us know what you think about about
the situation in El Salvador, or about the moral dilemma
(01:02:35):
of vigilante ism in general. We don't I don't even
want us to tip the scale by influencing influencing you
too much. Just those questions we cannot wait to hear
from you. We try to be easy to find online.
That's right. You can find us on Facebook, and you
can find us on Twitter and also on YouTube with
a handle Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff show.
(01:02:58):
If you'd prefer to reach out to us in a
more analog way, yes, there's you know, it's analog, digital whatever,
Brave New World. Give us a telephone called Yes, you
can call one eight three three std w y t K.
It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes say whatever
you'd like. Call yourself something not your real name, preferably,
and uh, just let us know if we can use
(01:03:19):
your voice and message on the air. Hey, if you
don't like either of those things, social media or phones.
Do you like books? We've got one coming out ben.
What do you think the most aproposed chapter is in
our book? Stuff they don't want you to know for
this episode Assassinations, But hey, we get it. If you
(01:03:41):
don't want to pre order or order our book, that's fine,
that's okay. You can send us an email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com m H. Stuff
(01:04:08):
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul
Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know quick. But let's get into this with some
questions today, fellow conspiracy realists, have you yourself ever witnessed injustice?
(00:50):
Have you ever regrettably seen the law fumble the ball
of what is right and good? And if so, how
are would things have to escalate before you decided to
take matters into your own hands. These are questions we're
tackling today, and perhaps most importantly, at the very top,
(01:13):
here you have to establish This episode may not be
appropriate for all listeners, as it contains at times graphic
descriptions of violets, but here are the facts in an
earlier episode episodes. In fact, we've established a long history
of drug cartels and gang activity throughout Latin America. And
(01:36):
in many cases these organizations have essentially almost replaced the
official authorities become this almost kind of like extra military,
extra governmental force UM, imposing their own sort of lawless
rule of law, or at the very least paying off
officials to the point of rendering them completely douthless. Uh.
(02:00):
It's very often very scary place to live if you're
not playing ball with these cartels. And this can happen
for several reasons, due to corruption, threats, shows of force,
you know, UM making examples out of anyone who dare
not play ball with the cartels, and brutal displays of
horrific violence. But almost always UM it is one or
(02:22):
all of these three things. And we also established that
these organizations can function in a lot of different ways,
not just some kind of lawless entity, or at least
maybe that's a a portion of it or a segment
of it. The other parts often can provide things that
a government cannot or will not, like everything from education
(02:45):
and organizational education systems to like positive things for a community,
which is it's a very weird thing to wrap your
head around, though that is not always the case. Sure, Yeah,
and we see this in other organized criminal enterprises. Around world. Uh,
the Mafia has provided disaster assistance before, as has the Alcuza.
(03:07):
Of course. You know, you can make a pretty valid
argument that in many cases those positive actions are kind
of a pr push. I mean they they help people
for sure in the short term, but they also inculcate
the criminal element further into the community. It in trenches
(03:33):
deeper and deeper, and often there is a profit motive there,
you know what I mean, they're always strings attached. Uh. Look,
it's also even if something isn't at that level, if
it's not quite an organization that's reached you know, cartels
corporation level. There are certain areas or neighborhoods where the
(03:57):
police simply will not to go. Now, in the US,
it's not uncommon for there to be parts of parts
of a city or a town where police response is
typically gonna be less reliable. Right, that's a common complaint.
But it may surprise people who haven't travel to different
(04:19):
parts of the world that there are there are some
places that pretty much do not have rule of law
unless there's a show of force level situation like uh,
like before the Pope visits Brazil, having the militarized police
roll through the favelas and just go to town cleaning
(04:42):
the place out. We also see that to your point, Matt,
there are there are Look, they're they're just really dangerous
parts of the world, and um in many and there's
not a ding against the people living there. Actually most
people are really really nice. But if you if you travel,
(05:05):
what you'll see is that often there are also places
where law enforcement seems uninterested in helping you or unable
to help protect civilians. And you know, I'm sure, I'm
sure many of us listening to have a story about
this low level graft. Right. Sometimes, you know, it's often
(05:26):
been said the police can be their own kind of gang.
That will be interesting for today because I've been in
different countries in Central America specifically, where bribery is not uncommon,
and if you make a stink about it, then you're
just gonna make it worse. Who are you gonna like
a police officer ask you for a bribe? Right? Who
(05:50):
who are you going to report them to the police? Right?
That doesn't work at every country, news flash. And if
if you're someone who can corrupt law enforcement for stuff
like that, then odds are you're already a fairly powerful individual,
which means the police in some cases may already work
(06:11):
for you. You know, you're just bribing him a different way.
So with all this together, we see a mix, a sinister,
dangerous mix of this stuff in the Central American nation
of El Salvador. Um. If anybody has been to El Salvador,
then you know, one of the first things to say
(06:32):
about it before we talk about the story, is that
it is a beautiful It's a physically beautiful place. Uh.
It's been called the Land of Smiles, and it's been
through a lot of terrible things in recent decades. Yeah,
in particular the the civil war that occurred there and
(06:55):
lasted for twelve years. It started in and until so
not that long ago, when a massive civil war occurred there. Uh,
and you know it as a civil war, there were
a ton of casually seventy five thousand I think it's
estimated people who died during the civil war. That's both
(07:16):
combatants and non combatants. And on top of that seventy
five thousand, there's another eight thousand that the u N
estimates or that number is an estimate from the UN
They estimate those people just disappeared. So eight thousand people
that just vanished, which we can imagine what happened to them, Yeah, exactly,
(07:36):
and a lot of like many many people fled the insanity,
and that plays another big part in the story. We're
laying groundwork. These were terrifying days. Okay, there's no other
way around it. Child soldiers, Uh, mass torture, mass murder,
(07:58):
sexual assault, you name it. Looking back, estimates landed on
some some ballpark numbers. So this is a war between um.
A series of groups of resistance would be probably best
known as f m L in the Federal Bundo Barti
(08:19):
National Liberation Front. They apparently committed and estimated five percent
in the murders against civilians, and the Salvadoran armed forces
and paramilitary death squads were responsible for at least another
eight percent. The other ten percent remains unknown today. That's
a sense of perspective. We're not choosing good guys or
(08:42):
bad guys here, um, even though I do think some
of the responsibility for these actions lays at the door
of the US and will also be important to remember this.
So this mass exodus, uh, you know, it's not as
if for much of the war, it's not as if Uh,
(09:03):
family in El Salvador could just go to Guatemala, an
adjacent country. Because around the same time, Guatemala is in
the midst of a civil war, one that doesn't end
until nineteen So many people did whatever necessary to escape
the chaos and try to protect their loved ones, and
(09:23):
a lot of them ended up in the United States,
in Los Angeles in particular. The descendants of some of
these families would go on to form street gangs for
their own protection, and these would evolve into groups like
MS thirteen. Then there's also eight Street sometimes called like
(09:45):
Kaya teen or Baryo eighteen. Uh these groups have become
bitter rivals. I do want to point out one thing
that sometimes gets missed when talking about uh Mada Sava
or MS thirteen is that they started out as just
a bunch of kids who liked heavy metal music and
(10:06):
getting high together and just smoked weed and hung out.
And you know, a lot of the a lot of
the things that happened that played a role in the
evolution of this group were thrust upon them by the
hostile environment of of Los Angeles, which has always been
pretty brutal to the disadvantaged. Yeah, we'll think about that.
(10:28):
You've got this max mass exodus from El Salvador. A
lot of these people who are showing up our young
men who uh are not allowed to get a job
unless you go through this arduous process and then you
can only get a job for a certain amount of time.
Maybe they don't have the skills they need to get
the jobs that are available. These guys faced, as you said,
been the problems that already existed in Los Angeles when
(10:51):
it comes to the economy and just the laws that
they were subject to now being in the United States. Yeah,
and also there this is not a pop reference. They're
also the new kids on the block. They're going into
areas where there is some existing gang activity, right, and
they're going into those areas as the other right. It's
(11:15):
not it's not as if there uh and this this
is a shame, it's a reality. It's not as if you,
as a kid from El Salvador going into a neighborhood
that is largely Mexican. It's not as if you are
necessarily going to be welcomed with open arms. Is one
of the in group you will be seen as coming
(11:37):
from Afar and a lot of their There are tons
of really powerful and really effective nonprofit groups that have
have fought against the structural weaknesses that helped create gangs
and have fought to unify society in a in a
more productive way. But this doesn't stop the elpment of
(12:00):
these gangs we're talking about. Throughout the nines, MS thirteen
expands with the help of other prominent gangs, and they
do gang stuff. You know, they go gangland. We're talking
about protection, rackets, extortion, you know, uh, gang crime. Right,
Like everybody wants respect, no one's willing to give it,
(12:22):
So people end up shooting each other. And you can
see some documentaries that are pretty granular about what becomes
about the causes behind the great rivalry which is MS
thirteen and the street gang. I just want to put
out there. Also, they get into things that you know
(12:43):
are it's the black markets, right, So since they can't
operate legally, the larger groups once once they have capital
or money that they've made in some way, or they
pull money and they have capital, rather than being able
to invest that money or put it into a business
or anything like that, they have to just take that
money and find a way to make more money out
of it. So they they there's a necessity to resort
(13:06):
to the black market sector, which are things like drug
trafficking and sex work. Uh. And it's just it's it's
so weird to look at it from that forty thou
foot view and see that it's it was inevitable that
that was going to happen unless there was some kind
of program specifically designed or in place when you have
a bunch of people coming in like that, um like
(13:28):
to to help them almost get started on a pathway
a transition plan. Yeah, yeah, I know, it makes sense.
So so one of the key things to remember, and
you don't see it when a lot of the current
activities of groups like MS their tier reported. One of
the key things to remember said in the beginning, this
was a matter of self preservation for these people. And
(13:52):
then there's another thing that occurs, and this is all
there's a lot of history we're throwing at you, but
promise it matters. So the US has cyclical immigration scares, right,
and these immigration scares often occur when a politician wants
to distract from another problem or when they need to
(14:14):
kind of uh whip up and foment some discord, give
people something to be angry about. Uh, it's cynical, but
it's true. And as crime is escalating and as the
Clinton administration is looking for looking at the big picture
political numbers, UH, they come up with this plan to
(14:36):
deport a lot of these folks. If you get caught
commanding gang activity and you know you've got the MS
thirteen or the eighteen tattoos they're uh, then they will
just escalate your deportation. So over um let's starts in
the middle late nineties and then it kind of continues
(15:01):
and estimated twenty thousand criminals were deported back to Central
American countries between two thousand and two thousand and four,
so thousands of people come back. In the case of
El Salvador, many of them are returning to a country
that has pretty recently survived the horrors of a civil war,
right the same one that their parents UH fled, And
(15:25):
now the infrastructure is trashed in many places, there aren't
transition plans, there aren't job opportunities, things like that. So
the UH, these gang organizations continue what they were doing before.
They take the lessons learned and they franchise out and
they find no shortage of kids who are good material
(15:50):
to be recruited. MS thirteen actually struggles a little bit
because Body of eighteen, the eighteenth Street Gang is a
little more open about membership, like it's okay if you
are a different um, if you have different racial characteristics,
or if you're from a different country something like that. So, uh,
(16:11):
they tend they start spreading throughout Central America, and MS
thirteen is spreading as well, just in a different way.
And you know, of course Salvador had a violence problem.
It didn't disappear just because the war officially ended. I mean,
I know, history textbooks kind of painted like that for
a lot of students, Like you hear about the Emancipation
(16:33):
Proclamation when you're in school in the US, but you
don't read probably about the prison system that came right after.
You probably don't read about the people who were uh,
who had restricted information access, who didn't learn they were
free until you know, years or decades later. The paperwork
(16:54):
is nice and it's important, but it's not the same
thing as the reality on the ground. So for several decades,
Al Salvador has become and maintains the reputation of being
the most violent country in the world that wasn't currently
officially at war. In fact, the US State Department reported
(17:14):
El Salvador had the highest rates of homicide up until
and that's in the entire world, correct, correct, Yeah, And
that's uh. You know, whenever you hear these kind of
numbers whipped out on a global scale, you have to
ask for the source. Yeah, the U. S State Department
has some agendas of its own, but also the problems
(17:36):
are are clear. Right, there is not a war, and
this is the most violent place where there is not
currently a war. The streets become overrun in different areas
by violent gangs that are ruling through murder, torture, widespread
sexual crime, and more. And when we say ruling this way,
(18:00):
you have to understand there are parts of like um
part of our story takes place with the sun, Miguel,
there are also parts of sense solved, or where people
going to work, like to get on the bus would
pass a kid and they would have to give this
kid the equivalent of a dollar. Not because the kid
was a really great beggar. He was the little tax man.
(18:22):
He's the lookout. He's a trainee for eighteenth Street or
MS thirteen. And if you don't give him that dollar,
then the people he works for will come ruin your life,
and you also have to pay a protection racket unless
you can pay for your own pretty top notch bodyguards.
I'll think about how horrifying that situation is, because it's
(18:44):
not like that kid in that moment. Besides, he's going
to kill you for not you know, paying the money
to him. That little kid goes in reports to somebody,
Oh you know, here's a list of the people that
didn't pay me today, right, Uh, or you know this
is what that's what. Oh, that's the guy that didn't
pay me, and just pointing someone out right. I mean,
(19:05):
you just imagine like this is a child that is
basically going to snitch on everybody for not paying, and
a gang is like it may murder you for not paying,
or at least beat you up, or may hurt someone
close to you to get you to pay. Uh, And
in there may I just I'm imagining all the instances
(19:26):
of mistaken identity in that system where you know, you're
just trusting one a child essentially to decide or figure
out who's paid and who hasn't. Right, Honestly, similar to
the way authoritarian regimes enlist children to spy on parents.
It's it's messed up. So another group emerges amidst all
(19:50):
this chaos, and police and civilians and gangs like start
to recognize some signs. It starts with warnings graffiti spray
painted places, things like gangs are animals. And then the
graffiti is near scenes of violence unattributed and people don't
(20:11):
recognize the signs yet just yet. Uh. It starts near
known gang run areas. Then the pamphlets come and then
sophisticated brutal hits targeting gang members. This group, which is anonymous,
highly trained, and so far officially at least untraceable, had
(20:35):
a message for MS thirteen and the eight Street Gang alike,
The Sambra Negra, the Black Shadow has returned. Will pause
for word from our sponsor and return ourselves. Here's where
(20:55):
it gets crazy. The Sambra Negra inning English, the Black Shadow.
This group has a history, They have a past. They
first get mentioned in nine towards the close of the
Civil War. Yeah, if you want to think about this group,
(21:16):
imagine maybe ex soldiers. Uh like, maybe that's that's a
good way. It's not all. They're not all ex soldiers,
but imagine an ex soldier and their identities. They're not proven.
We gotta say that, Yeah, exactly, I just imagine it
highly trained individual right in the art of war and death.
(21:39):
Uh that that's an individual member of this group. But
they are. When they operate. They don things like balaclava's,
you know, maybe some kind of armor, black clothing. They
operate with military tactics, whether they're ex military or not. Uh.
They perform all kinds of surveillance, intense and sophisticated surveillance
(22:03):
on the people that they're going to target. And I
don't admit I just imagined them as a a fully
paramilitary group. Yeah, I mean they have, they have ops set.
They also incorporate, uh, incorporate gang tactics. So so the
people who are conducting operations on behalf of the Sandra
(22:27):
are they've definitely learned from somewhere. At least in my opinion,
this all points to professional training. It's not just a
bunch of civilians who got mad and took out, you know,
the pistols and shotguns and put on stocking caps. No,
they're also using assault weapon. They're using stuff that the
(22:48):
average resident of El Salvador would probably have a have
a tough time getting right in an organized way and
it's almost like they went to a school somewhere. Ben. Yeah,
well let's see, we'll we'll get to it later. Yes,
but yes, that's excellent foreshadowing, So agreed, paramilitary they seem
(23:10):
to have been taught somewhere, which we'll get to But second,
why call it a death squad? Well, to be honest, Uh,
it's called a death squad because from the jump, Las
Sombra has never really been out to just arrest people,
and they're not exactly in the parking lot ticket game still, um,
(23:30):
they are always targeting new members. So for some civilians,
as we had mentioned at the top of the show,
this can be a very complicated proposition by Sombra. Negra
had stated that it killed seventeen individuals, all gang members
or other criminals, so essentially vigilante action um, which would
(23:55):
appear to be unaccountable to anyone but other members of
of this criminal organization Le Sombre. After a time, the
organization took a step back into the shadows and didn't
come back out for several years. Um. During that time,
they quickly became, as far as anyone could tell, essentially
(24:18):
just the top of the food chain. Apex predator in
the criminal underworld of El Salvador. Yeah, it was quite
a bit of time, wasn't it been when they were
like gone or not active, or they they at least
weren't putting out their calling card if they were active, right.
And it's confusing because there were multiple especially as gang
(24:42):
violence escalates, there were multiple death squads. There were multiple
death squads in the time of the Civil War. Uh.
You will see reports of suspected or proven gang members
being targeted by a number of groups, and they may
later claim responsibility or they may, you know, sombre style
(25:06):
have like graffiti or some other indicator, but it looks
like Lo Sambra Negra itself went went away, got into
the shadows. But again, because it's a bit of a
black box, it is also possible that that group may
have splintered, right, they may have gone and done their
(25:27):
own things. But anyway, every so often this thing hauling
itself Lo Sombra Negra would re emerge, and authorities were
more likely to believe these groups, these murderers or vigilantes
when they claimed to be La Sambra, because Le Sambra
(25:52):
had signature techniques which were also have a bit of
providence behind them when impossible impossible. They didn't really do
super quick hits. Part of it was about sending a message,
so the opportunity was right, they would take their time,
(26:13):
like you said, Matt, they would case. They had pretty
good surveillance. They were pretty good at maintaining anonymity. Balaclava's
dark windowed, unregistered, unmarked cars, you name it. And when
they get their victims, and of course these gang members
(26:35):
had multiple victims of their own, right, let's remember that.
But when they got ahold of their victims, they would
blindfold them and they might bind their feet at the ankles.
They would always tie either the hands or the thumbs
behind the person's back. Here you might ask why tie
(26:58):
the thumbs? If you're on YouTube, I'm doing this, it's
like a very lazy Wu tang sign. Why why tie
the thumbs instead of just binding the hands at the wrist. Well,
it's a little bit easier to do some stress positions.
And look at me panicking, like me trying to panic. Here,
Look how my hands splay out. And that's eight different
(27:20):
questions you can ask. And you can see what they're
doing there when they're interrogating somebody that they've caught, right,
what what do you think they're getting out of that person?
Probably information about their next hit, right yep. Or it
may simply be retaliation because they have proof of something.
(27:42):
A scary thing to happen during an interrogation is for
ordering a torture. H situation is for the torturer or
interrogator to say, just as you know, I don't really care,
I don't care what you're gonna say, we have the
information in the next couple of hours, or just for us,
(28:04):
thanks for coming. Uh. That kind of stuff does happen,
but this does like to be part interrogation, part torture. Yeah,
they're gathering more intelligence, which is again is kind of
a signature move. But this torture, which must stress, has
never been proven in a court of law. It's just
evidenced on the bodies that have been found. This includes
(28:25):
stuff like the removal of tongue, teeth, fingers, toes, hands, genitalia.
And then the final move the sign off. One of
the sign off, it's not quite a calling card because
those are the messages they leave, but the move they're
known for that really identifies it to the authorities as
(28:47):
lessambra is something called the Tiros de Gracia, the shots
of Grace. So after this torture, the victim is shot
in the base of a skull, and it's gonna be
pretty messy because they're using like M sixteens, using machine guns,
assault rifles, um. And it's, you know, quite believable at
(29:11):
this point, without having spoken to anyone who survived that,
because none of them did, it's quite believable at that
point that it is seen as an act of mercy
by the person who's finally getting this horror show ended well.
And it's also a way to show like it was us, right,
and that's not the only way they show it was us.
Besides the torture and that final shot, they also leave
(29:35):
like written messages, often on a wall nearby, and they
say things from like ranging from just the name Assambra negra,
something else about the shadow, or often a very specific
message about the person that's like derogatory, calling that person,
you know, stupid, idiotic, other other things like that what
(29:58):
was that you found a specific one? This idiot suffered
a slow death. There are a couple of ways who
interpret it. Maybe the body through that person was an
idiot because they were involved in in a gang. Oh.
By the way, even at some point, if you're a
reformed gang member, you still have the tattoos, you're still
(30:21):
in trouble, right. But also idiot could have just meant
that they said, look, will kill you quickly if you
tell us what we need to know, and they said,
I'm not telling you anything, and then just made everybody's
night a little longer. Yeah, definitely rain of terror. UM.
So where are they now? Where have Lessambre gone over
(30:45):
the decades since the Civil war? UM, They've made a
few sporadic appearances, almost seeming to respond to specific gang
activities or just to maintain their presence in the minds
of their victims. I m s. Thirteen and eighteenth Street. UM.
I don't want them to get too comfortable. Right. And
(31:07):
while many folks assumed UH that they were working with
the National Civil Police or PNC, there still were a
few arrests of Les Ambre members UM, and the United
States UH takes this view, UM, saying quote in a statement.
In July nine, sixteen alleged members of the Sombra Negra
(31:30):
were arrested in San Miguel, including four ranking PNC officers
in that department. UH. In November, seven were set free,
including two of the police officials, by a San Miguel court,
which said there was a lack of evidence. In June,
six more were cleared of murder charges, including the other
two police officials. The remaining three were tried and found
(31:51):
innocent of murder in April nineteen ninety seven. Wow, so arrested.
No one gets convicted of Eventually, despite this lack of convictions,
the National Civil Police the p n C say, okay,
the Black Shadow has been dismantled. Wink uh. And also
(32:12):
we have to indicate, you know, there's for for some locals, uh,
the the Black Chadow is tremendously popular. It's seen as
doing what the police either can't or won't do, which
is protected the public. Uh. And then, as we said,
(32:34):
in the years that follow after this, other anti gang
death squads claim responsibility for various hits. They're not considered
the work of the Sandra but um. But maybe maybe
there was a different name or different branding because of
things like that court case. At least this is the
(32:56):
lay of the land until twenty team. That's when everything changed.
We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors
and we'll return. There are a couple of gang members
(33:18):
together in in a suburb and there it's seven of them,
and they're not having a wild gang banger night. They're
not planning to maybe like do a hit. They're not
engaged in some sort of trafficking thing. Get this, They
got together for a movie night. It's seven seven gang
members who are just at a house and they decided, yeah,
(33:42):
to have some bro time and watch a movie. When
some unmarked cars are quietly rolling up, a group of
armed men masked up dressed in black, armed with him sixteens,
pops into the home and then instantly begins firing. Three
escape the four others are bound, beaten and executed, ultimately
(34:06):
with that shot of grace at the base of the skull.
A few days later, the flyers returned as well. The
message was clear las Umbra was back. Yeah. And when
they put those flyers out, it wasn't like, hey, look
what we did. It was a list where it included
a list of other known gang members in the area.
(34:28):
Like it was a message we're coming for you. Like
that's that's that's scary. Uh, that's really scary, and it's
it's purposefully that way. Yeah. In some cases, I heard,
so this tactic was applied multiple times in some reports.
Uh I had heard there would just be flyers posted
(34:49):
that didn't say anything. It's just the list of names.
And if you're and you would know that these are
gang members, if that you had lived in the community
for a long time, or if you yourself wory gang
mem but for everybody else, imagine you are walking somewhere
right in your neighborhood and you probably wouldn't clock it
(35:12):
when you see the first flyer and it's just a
list of like twelve names. But then you see the
second one, you know, and then you you see a
third one, and you stop, maybe on the third or
fourth win to look and it's the it's just the same,
no explanation, just a list of names and boom, your
(35:33):
names on that list. That's spooky, right, Yeah. Well, and
a lot of the people's names that were on the
list were were people who had gone to the United
States or have been in the United States following the
Civil War. And then we're deported back to El Salvador.
So it's some of the you'd think. And I can't
(35:54):
confirm this, and I couldn't been looking through it, but
it seems to me that those are likely many of
the early originators of maybe MS thirteen, at least within
El Salvador, or at least early uh influential members. Yeah,
I mean I think there are. I think it's targeting.
I think honestly, it could even go deeper than that,
(36:17):
because it appears to imply, not proved, but imply the
existence of communication between the sambre and the officials because
they you know, if you are a normal person, a civilian,
(36:37):
you're going to have a tough time getting a list
of here a gain a list that reads, here are
the people getting deported to this country, now they're coming
to your town. Also, here are the ones that are
specifically in gangs. And here's how we've documented that. It's proven,
we've done the work. You don't usually get that. You
(36:59):
don't get that info az a civilians. So uh, there
there are different accounts of people who had kind of reformed, right,
But even if you're reformed and you get deported, you
still have the tattoos. You are visibly a member of
of the gang. One guy only escapes because he one
(37:24):
of his friends, a local in the community tells him like, hey,
they know you're here, who La Sambre Negra, which is
you know, often reported as the only group MS thirteen
and eighteen street fear and you you'll be given something
like forty eight hours to five days two g t
f O. And it's pretty clear what happens if you stay,
(37:48):
because they're saying they already know your location, right. And
there are also cases of people getting getting popped getting
off the bus or after they the plane lands, like
not making it the full, not not even making it home. Um,
this this is real stuff. And now there's you know,
(38:09):
another another important tactic there is that they also allegedly,
again not provably, but allegedly took the social media through
things like Facebook pages and fairly recently Twitter allegedly again yes,
massive emphasis on allegedly. We we looked through some of
(38:30):
those feeds just to see and who knows. We there's
no way to tell if it's if it's real or not,
or at least if it the person or person's posting
are actually in Los amber Nicra, right. And and then
another evolution is occurring here because just like the criminals
they're tracking, La Sandra is spreading across borders from El
(38:53):
Salvador and the capital San Salvador to Honduras and Guatemala,
which are you know, adjacent bordering countries. So they're bleeding
over into the border. Defining these people. It reminds me
of the idea um and this is not a ding
on anyone, but it's it's an observation from the Nolan
Batman movies. They say that Batman has no jurisdiction, right like,
(39:18):
if you are if you are military of El Salvador,
or you are police El Salvador, then legally a lot
of other stuff has to happen for you to get
over the border. That's not your jurisdiction. That's a completely
different country. But that only counts if you obey the law.
(39:39):
So there and from their perspective, you can see older,
older reports from people who have claim to anonymously speak
for Los Ambre, again hard to prove. They don't see
what they're doing as criminal activity. They think they are
doing what they call social cleansing, and for them it's
(39:59):
a problem the law seems unable or unwilling to solve
through official channels. We should also point out a ton
of people in El Salvador, a very large part of
the population are in some ways associated with gangs, such
the estimates like UM sixties seventy thousand or whatever that
(40:21):
that would mean they outnumber Salvador and law enforcement pretty significantly.
Oh yeah, there's reason to fear the gangs as authorities
in several of the countries, including Wamala, Honduras and uh,
surrounding countries that were these gangs operating, not just in
El Salvador. But I want to talk about one of
(40:42):
the main reasons, ben I think that Los amber and
Negra formed or at least came back, and it's because
of an issue with the prison system there. The prisons
in El Salvador are absolutely filled with gang members, but
because there's so much violence between the different gangs, what
(41:03):
they've done is separate the gangs into different facilities. So
there's an m S thirteen facility or facilities, and there's
a Baro eighteen set of prisons. And the major issue
is that there are so many concentrated members of the
same organization in one prison that they can organize and
(41:25):
they can still operate to a certain extent even though
they're all incarcerated. Uh. And you know, you just have
to have enough corruption within that system to get messages
in and out or just through regular channels to get
messages in and out. Uh, it's a real problem. So
to my mind, Ben, this is or at least began
(41:45):
as a group of disgrunt old either police officers or
military officials who saw that major problem and just thought, well, what,
we're just gonna imprison more of these guys and they're
just going to continue operating. No, we're gonna fix it
our away, right, like the like President Buke said recently,
(42:07):
we're going to stop feeding your people in prison. Yes,
that's a recent development, but I think it speaks to
the historical aspecture outlining. You're absolutely right, and not to
mention the fact that who that's the is that the
official who declared war on the gangs essentially like open war.
(42:28):
So then there have been a lot of casualties on
the police and military side. You can imagine that every
time that occurs, you're fullmenting more of a desire to
just eliminate gang members rather than incarcerat right or or
even reform and retaliation by police forces is not something
that should sound alien to anyone. Unfortunately, in a lot
(42:52):
of areas of the world, it is far from uncommon.
Even even if it's like ethnically who who didn't happen?
It is far from uncommon for colleagues of law enforcement
members two visit their own retaliation right instead of waiting
(43:13):
for the courts. And you see this depicted in fiction,
but that fiction is based on factual events. And again,
of course we're not saying every single member of every
single law enforcement organization in the world is doing any
of that stuff. Far from it. But I do think
(43:33):
that we're asking who la sombre is? We have to
we have to introduce some factors that don't get reported,
and they're easy dots to connect. Yes they try to
hide identities. Yes they're using unmarked vehicles and masks and
so on, and yeah, for sure, the tactics alone are
enough to persuade some people that these individuals are maybe
(43:57):
veterans of the Civil War, maybe their ex military, maybe
their X or even current police. Several have been taken
a court, arrested, then let free. Why does the p
n C seem so lenient? How were these tactics learned?
These are things that don't get improvised on the fly,
and you don't have to be the you know, like
(44:18):
some You don't have to have attended West Point to
to recognize when some some group is moving with cohesion
and training. A lot of a lot of the really
notorious officers of the El Salvadoran military during the Civil War,
they spend time right here in Fort Benning, Georgia, in
(44:41):
the home state of the stuff they don't want you
to know podcast at a school is now closed down,
officially called the School of the Americas. There it is there,
it is. Watch our video on YouTube just search School
of the Americans. Well quick and unless we got old
quicken dirty, what what is the What is the School
(45:03):
of the Americas? Is it like a geography program? Yeah,
that's that's exactly what it is. Uh, it's a training
grounds a pretty large area there where it's been alleged
in some cases, and it's also been proven in other cases,
where guerrilla tactics often are taught. Two people who end
(45:26):
up going and fighting, let's say, in a pre war.
Is that a good way to put it, ben They
fight a pre war in a place before the Civil
War begins, often in South America or Central America. They're
cuckoo for coco puffs. Wait, they're cuckoos. Were cuckoo puffs
(45:48):
as long as we're describing coups, yeah, yeah, exactly. And
there are coups that are often they're coups that are
often support it by the US, and the US is
supporting the far right side of the political spectrum, at
least in Latin America as far as we've seen historically.
(46:09):
So just check out School of America's tell us what
you think, uh, and also recall that that Uncle Sam
has sent in uh its own members and allies to
deliver other training. Right. So the School of America is,
in a very real way took the show on the
(46:32):
road at times. And I don't know, like okay, So
none of this is absolute proof the identities of the sambre.
None of this is absolute proof of the evolution right
or the providence of their training. But if you look
at this, it's easy to imagine how a trained keeper
the law might grow disillusion like you were saying, uh,
(46:55):
they might get tired of the corruption. They might have
that Serpico moment where they go to THEEF and they say,
have got proof they did this, we can get them
and the chief is being paid off. So slides it
to the left. It's dangerously easy to think that. But
with all that mind, I have to reiterate, we cannot
prove this yet, but I think we can say it
(47:19):
would be pretty in surprising if this was not the case.
Is that fair? I think you're it's almost fair, Ben.
I think either School of the America's or a similar
training of some sort that that's exactly like that and
what you're describing, just maybe from a different source. That's
all I would say, because I haven't seen anything with
(47:41):
School of the America's specifically, but it is the thing
that does the thing we're talking about, right, So it's
I mean, we're not saying the School of America's specifically
created the SAM right, A lot of the School of
America has accidentally did a lot of stuff there. There
you go, it was an unhappy accident. Not jeez, well,
(48:05):
this gives us, h This gives us an opportunity to
talk about the controversies here, moral dilemmas like you've seen
it before in uh in Man on the Street interviews
about a vigilante action. Right, there's always gonna be people
who say, well, good, you know what I mean. Even
(48:27):
if there was a guy I think it was in
the United Kingdom, there was a guy who would dress
up as a superhero to hide his identity, and all
he did was go to cars that had been booted,
you know, and they put the little boot on the
back tire, and he would take like a saw, like
power saw and cut off the boot. That's all. That's
(48:48):
all he did. And there were interviews where people were like,
this guy's great. Yeah, it's so interesting to to just
have the phrase boot uh in in the context of
you said in the United Kingdom, right, yes, that's mood. Yeah. Well,
I would just imagine the boot of a car, right,
which is the trunk, And I just imagine somebody cutting
(49:10):
off the trunks of cars all over the city as
an act of good. They usually like in the front
to chaos. Okay, Well, in the interests of time, folks,
I'm gonna have to uh, we're gonna have to come
back and update maybe later in the week on that
(49:31):
on that real life vigilante thing with the parking the
parking guy. Um, I swear it's real. It's not a
fever dream. I like barely sleep, so okay, uh, this
but this does show a dilemma, right, there's a dilemma
inherent in any conversation about vigilantes. The dilemma is ultimately this,
(49:52):
do their actions result in more good or more harm?
Should they be stopped? If you live in an area
where it's terrorized by gangs constantly, to the point that
they have become your local government right and you have
to pay protection for your own little shop which is
already struggling because you probably live in a poorer area
(50:13):
of town, and you know the police will not and
have not done did Ley Squad for you, would you
still be mad at a group like Losandra, as brutal
as they are. I don't know, I don't know. Yeah,
I mean, it would definitely be based on the personal
situation and experience. Right If you've got a family member
(50:34):
that was killed. There's so many stories of the two
degrees up to zero degrees of separation with a family
member who was either killed or beaten up by one
of these groups because simply because they didn't pay or
they didn't you know, pay enough, or something like that.
Then there's an article we should shout out from I
(50:56):
think Crisis Group something like that that has a lot
of personal experience stories that you can read right now
if you want Yeah, International Crisis Group has a piece
called life under Gang Rule in El Salvador and it's
very much worth the read. It came out in November November,
(51:16):
so you can see the experiences that people are having
in in this country due to this violence. And oh
we should also note, uh, you'll see this when you
look up the p n C or legitimate police activity
in El Salvador, they're already masked up pretty often pre
(51:37):
COVID by the way, yep, because they have to hide
their identities or risk being hunted down themselves. Yeah, and
now we we have a little bit of a of
a bigger picture here, but we have to ask, you
know about these dilemmas. The other thing is these these
(51:59):
victims tard at it by the black shadow. They're all
at some point associated with criminal activity, right, but they
have not been given a day in court. In many cases,
they're not being arrested. They're being targeted, tortured and executed.
The controversy is similar to something in Colombia during the
(52:19):
heyday of the drug wars. The group that was known
as Los Peppes for short, uh, persecuted by Papulo Escobar.
They operated a low level war against the Meddaene cartel
up until Escobar died in what was that? When it
was that? Okay? Yeah, and that's a fascinating story, right
(52:41):
about a group forming like that and willing, like just
willing to go to war with a cartel like that
because you were scorned or because you were hurt or
were you know, damage was done to you or a
loved one. But the thing is, you can't find much
about that group, at least I couldn't. Yeah, not a
not a ton in English. But also they were they
(53:05):
were supported by another cartel, which goes to another theory
about l Sambra. You know, did someone did someone take
over the Lessandra title and use it in a convenient way?
Like are they run by a cartel? From everything that
Lesambra has appeared to publicly say, I'm thinking the answers
(53:25):
no and don't particularly want to piss them off. It's
a possibility that one of the other rival gangs, or
even an up and coming rival gang, is operating as
Losambra Negra to just instill fear or to break up
you know, small parts of let's say MS thirteen's business
in certain parts of the country. That's a possibility though
(53:47):
I don't think it's very high and probability. Yeah, And
of course we're just giving you the publicly available information
as it stands, and we hope you're being clear about
what has been alleged and what has been proven. Uh.
The government links of Los Peppes were confirmed, right, even
(54:10):
when they were working with Cartel's Les Sambre maybe trying
to give its side of store and social media. You
can check out something that alleges to be their Twitter account.
I looked at it, and they're reporting on actions of
the p n C often, right, and they're thanking people
for tips occasionally. But if you if you go there
(54:32):
now again, I'll Salvador very beautiful place, you'll you'll see
that it's still struggles with gang violence, with violence in general,
but primarily gang violence. The current president launched that crackdown
that you have mentioned, Matt. This resulted in mass arrest,
like a drag net. That's kind of tough to imagine
(54:53):
because it was physical, tens of thousands of people getting
locked up. Uh. And this was in response to the
murder rate hitting a record high in March of this year.
Sixty two murders were recorded in a single day, across
the nation. And that's a population around like six point
five million, So it's not it's not a huge, huge country.
(55:17):
That's a lot of deaths. Uh. And the government announced
a thirty days state of emergency. They suspended constitutional rights.
As we record, that thirty day period has been extended
five times. Uh, and you don't really have a recourse here.
From March to September of this year, the month we record,
(55:40):
security forces have arrested almost fifty one people in counting,
mostly young men, mostly from poor neighborhoods. And uh, they've
arrested them often just for being young men in poor neighborhoods.
Starts to feel like a quota system at some point,
doesn't it. Yeah, But it's so messed up to imagine
(56:01):
it's a it's a reaction to a serious threat of violence.
I mean, you know, it's tough because how do what
what are the right moves to make? Do you spend
money you don't have as a country on systems of
helping out those in need to prevent people from joining,
(56:25):
you know, the organizations that you're trying to fight against.
If you don't have the money, how do you get it?
You borrow it from another country and then go into
a bunch of debt which may lead to another civil
war down the road. Yeah, deal with the I m
F for the World Bank or something. Well yeah, and
in a larger picture too, I am not persuaded that
(56:47):
the US has always been a good faith actor. Well
I know it hasn't been a good faith actor. But
even now, you know, the reality is, say what it wants.
The United States does not really geo politically have a
problem with Latin American states being riddled with corruption and
(57:10):
and have it, you know, anything to prevent them from
becoming regional and then possibly world level hedgemons. Right there.
There are reasons Venezuela is a pariahs state that are
absolutely valid, and there are other reasons that aren't being
talked about because it doesn't make the global economic order
(57:31):
look particularly cool. And I think whenever we talk about
this sort of stuff, we have to realize that that
is a piece of the conversation. And maybe that's a
story for a different day. Maybe that's a series of
episodes on all the work the US has historically put
into keeping Latin America divided and uh try trying its
(57:57):
best to make them vassal states. Uh, I don't know. Yeah,
it is a response to a serious threat. Though it's
not like an excuse to just It's not like the
president is who's pretty young, by the way, It's not
like the president is just going is an excuse I
need to do a thing. He is trying to prevent
this violence where so many people have often been forced
(58:21):
to become members of gangs. And wasn't there a president
who tried a softer hand like uh, like the attempted
to at least while they were in we're in office
to um do more reforming rather than just jailing and prosecution.
Am I wrong? I believe you're correct. Um, I believe
(58:44):
you're correct. But that the thing with those but it
wasn't supported right by the people like that was not
really And the issue with those programs is that they
don't provide an immediate solution. They take time, right, It
takes time to heal a community, right, and often often
(59:08):
beneficial actions take longer to implement than destructive or violent actions.
That's just this reality. And uh, this is why you
know a lot of people El Salvador support this crackdown,
but a lot of people who were in the neighborhoods
they're being cracked down upon. Are saying, this is unfairly
(59:30):
targeting the poor. We are barely getting by. How do
you think we're gonna afford a lawyer? How can we
pay two fifty dollars uh, you know, a month or
whatever to make sure our kid gets food to eat
in prison on top of the money we have to
pay to go see them, right on top of the lawyer, Like,
(59:51):
where are we going to find this cash? And these
people are just being detained. Often they're not sentenced, they're
just stuck. By the way, I still have to pay
the taxes to my local gang as well as the
taxes to you and your government. It's not ideal, I mean,
and as these are the people too that have the
least say so, you know, it's like I was staying
(01:00:13):
at the top of the show, like if you if
you don't play along with you know, the gangs, then
you're a target. If you do, then you're a target.
And it's all just because of where you happen to
be born geographically, you know. And then and then if
you try to leave, you're you're you're you're in quote
illegal you know. It's just it's a real rocket, a
(01:00:37):
hard place. It is. It is a Gordian not right,
and some of now analysts have called it, you know,
part of a feedback loop. I mean, the president of
a country saying push me and I'll let I'll let
your colleagues starve in jail, I'll let them that that
(01:01:02):
that's pretty extreme. But also, oh, that's what the other
president did. Ben, I'm so sorry. I just I have
just I have to get this out. But don't wanna
get it out. I'll be upset with myself. Um it
was former president um Mauricio Funes and the term that
term where he reduced the murder rate down about half.
That was right before Los Ambre Negra re emerged in
(01:01:27):
so you can almost see how it could have been,
or at least seen could have been seen as a
reaction to those policies of improving conditions for the game members.
It's interesting, well, it's yeah, it's important to know that
this also, this crackdown approach isn't coming out of nowhere.
The government tried other stuff and at this point, with
(01:01:50):
all these factors mixed in, you can see how people
might support a group like the Sombra Negra you know,
even even if it's just implicitly, you can imagine how
members of the National Police, even if they're not members
(01:02:11):
of Le Sambre, you can imagine how they might look
kindly upon those actions. Because the violence is touching so
many people in the country, and at this point we
want to pass the mic to you, folks. Thanks for
tuning in. Let us know what you think about about
the situation in El Salvador, or about the moral dilemma
(01:02:35):
of vigilante ism in general. We don't I don't even
want us to tip the scale by influencing influencing you
too much. Just those questions we cannot wait to hear
from you. We try to be easy to find online.
That's right. You can find us on Facebook, and you
can find us on Twitter and also on YouTube with
a handle Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff show.
(01:02:58):
If you'd prefer to reach out to us in a
more analog way, yes, there's you know, it's analog, digital whatever,
Brave New World. Give us a telephone called Yes, you
can call one eight three three std w y t K.
It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes say whatever
you'd like. Call yourself something not your real name, preferably,
and uh, just let us know if we can use
(01:03:19):
your voice and message on the air. Hey, if you
don't like either of those things, social media or phones.
Do you like books? We've got one coming out ben.
What do you think the most aproposed chapter is in
our book? Stuff they don't want you to know for
this episode Assassinations, But hey, we get it. If you
(01:03:41):
don't want to pre order or order our book, that's fine,
that's okay. You can send us an email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com m H. Stuff
(01:04:08):
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com