Alex Chávez got off the plane from the United States in August and stepped onto the land of his birth. Yet after 15 years of living in Los Angeles, he felt strange to be "back home."
     "Then I found my homies from the MS, and I felt okay," said Chávez. "They're my people."
     Although his homeland didn't feel like home, Chávez felt security and familiarity with fellow gang members from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) street gang, the Salvadoran branch of a major Los Angeles street gang. The gang's structure and violent ways have been brought home to El Salvador by hundreds of youth deported from the U.S. 
     If the MS and other street gangs offer Chávez security, they serve many other Salvadorans as a convenient scape goat for rising crime indices that have placed this post-war city ahead of places like Medellín and Washington in the rankings of criminal violence.  
     Yet Sigfredo Rivera believes the gangs aren't responsible for San Salvador's violent image. "Eighty percent of crime is committed by people who aren't gang members," said Rivera. "And the crimes that gangs commit are mostly misdemeanors, throwing rocks, making a show, gaining reputation and fame. The serious, organized crime, the bank robberies, the extorsion, the giant frauds--the gangs have nothing to do with these. It's easy to wash your hands of the problem of crime by blaming the gangs, but the gangs aren't the ones behind the serious crimes, the true violence."
     Rivera is vice president of Homies Unidos, an association of gang members working for alternatives for deported youth like Chávez. 
     The organization, which was founded in late 1996, is pushing immigration authorities to be allowed to open an office in the airport where deported gang members can be received by people who appreciate the particular stress of returning home. 
     "Within a week, a lot of the people who get deported back here are dead or they're a prisoner," stated Rivera. "Yet it's not because they come with a desire to commit crime. They arrive tired, disoriented, many can't speak the language well, they've got no family here, and they've got no opportunities, no one to give them a hand. That's what Homies Unidos was created to do, offer them a hand."
     Homies Unidos offers workshops in self-esteem and a variety of vocational training courses. "When an employer sees youth who are covered with tattoos, the employer probably won't trust them, and won't give them a job," said Rivera. "So we've got to form our own micro-enterprises."
     The organization is also looking for university scholarships for gang members, according to Deborah Rodríguez, the organization's secretary. Rodríguez said the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) recently offered five scholarships, and she's shopping for more. She said the group is also pushing the Ministerio de Educación to approve an "accelerated high school" degree for deported youth similar to one that was designed for former combatants after the end of the civil war in 1992.
     Rodríguez says women make up about a quarter of the group's members. When the organization was first formed, it took the name "Homeboys Unidos," but changed after a few months to the more generic "homies" in order to reflect the presence of women in the organization.
     Working with gangs has become fashionable among churches and non-governmental organizations, yet Rivera insists Homies Unidos has a different approach than most. "We don't try to pull the youth out of the gang. We give them a hand, and some other options. When they're ready to leave on their own, then we're here for them," said Rivera.
     "Before you can take the tattoos off your arm, you've got to take them off your soul," Rivera said.
     Homies Unidos eschews the label of "ex-gang members," according to Rivera, who was deported from the U.S. in January after serving several years in jail for gang-related violence. "We don't reject everything about gangs. A gang member has a lot of values that other people could do well to copy, such as loyalty, respect, discipline, and honor. If you're going to try to force a youth to leave a gang, are you going to tell them that these are values they should be ashamed of? We don't want to change people's identity, we just want to give youth options other than violence."
     Homies Unidos has tried to carve out a space in which gang members can breathe freely in El Salvador. Rivera and other leaders give regular workshops to members of the Policia Nacional Civil, whose Unidad del Mantenimiento del Orden--formed two years ago in response to growing gang activity--makes regular sweeps of areas where youth hang out.
     "Many police have a prejudice that if you have tattoos you're a gang member and they've got to put you against the wall," said Rivera. "They're going to arrest you more easily, and they'll search you in a different manner than they'd search a regular person." Rivera said the training sessions with police are designed to help the cops "stop seeing us as extraterrestrials."
     At the same time, Homies Unidos is helping gang members lose their fear of the police. "You've got to look at them as someone with a job to do, and respect them," said Rivera.
     Along with investigators from the UCA, Homies Unidos helped survey 1,025 gang members late last year, revealing attitudes about family life, violence, and drug use. The survey results show that just over one-fifth of those surveyed said they joined the gangs because of family problems. Almost half said they entered "por vacil"--what Rivera defines as "hanging out with people I like, with people who like how I look, how I cut my hair, how I think. It's my style, hanging out with my homies."
     Rivera said many churches and other organizations that want to work with gangs don't understand the reasons youth join street gangs. "Some form football teams so the gang members can play on Sunday. That's fine. But what happens on the other days of the week? I've got to be occupied, otherwise I'm going to go back to the streets," said Rivera.
      "We're a good business at the moment," says Rodríguez. "There are many NGOs that are talking about the problems of the gangs, but in reality they're not doing anything except getting money. They've got economic resources, but they don't have the people. You can't go to work with gang members if you haven't lived the life."

Sidebar: Gangs one part of civil society

     According to Mirna Perla, a children's judge in Santa Tecla, the growth of gangs is a symptom of an increasingly violent society. "Since they're small, the children feel the aggressiveness of those around them, such as car and bus drivers, who don't respect them, who treat them as if they weren't worth anything. So they develop a defensive attitude, they join together with others to defend themselves."
     Earlier this year Perla mediated a dispute between youth gangs and bus owners in San José del Pino, a neighborhood of Santa Tecla. The bus owners had complained to the police that their buses were painted with graffiti and their drivers harassed and robbed by gang members.
     "We asked the two sides to sit down and talk with each other," Perla said. "and the youth came ready. They said the bus drivers didn't give change, didn't help people with heavy bundles, didn't observe the posted schedule, took off before old women had been seated--they presented a whole list of complaints."
     Perla agreed that the gangs had a legitimate point. "The bus owners generate disrespect because they themselves didn't respect their clients."
     A peace treaty was hammered out. The gang members promised to behave themselves and the bus owners agreed to provide better service. Perla said it worked well for several weeks, then the bus employees began sliding back into their old behavior. The gang members, in turn, returned to their old behavior.
     Perla suggested that gangs be seen as an important part of civil society, though she admits that's not a concept that's accepted by the majority. "Yet some have seen the benefit of having the gangs serve as an interlocutor with certain groups that generate fear," the judge said.
     With Perla's help, the gang members in San José del Pino recently painted two public murals. The youth chose religious themes, a choice Perla said surprised many residents. "There's even more respect for the gangs now that people see they can make beautiful things," Perla commented. Besides better public relations, the mural project helped the gang members' image of themselves. "Giving importance to them helps them be more responsible," said Perla.