Editor’s Note: This article is the second of a two-part series on the gang culture and violence in Guatemala. Read Part I. GUATEMALA CITY — A few days after arriving in Guatemala City, we receive an offer to meet with members of MS-13, the notoriously violent international gang with active factions in countries across Central, South and North America. Photographer Angela Catlin and I came in October 2006 to document the escalating violence and lawlessness in a nation desperately struggling to overcome the legacy of a 36-year civil war that ended some 10 years ago. To coincide with the 10th […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is the first of a two-part series on the gang culture and violence in Guatemala. Read Part II. GUATEMALA CITY — The ambulance arrives with its siren wailing and a team of medics runs to the emergency room entrance. The doors of the vehicle burst open and a trolley is lowered down with a young man lying on it groaning. It is 2:19 in the morning and Gersen Armando Ramirez Santus, a tattooed gang member, has just been shot twice in the chest on the crime-teeming streets of this city. Guatemala is a nation still traumatized […]