By Traci Carl, The Associated Press
Crackdowns force removal of insignia
SAN SALVADOR - It’s a sweltering day in San Salvador, and sweat beads on Freddy Monterosa’s face, but he keeps his long-sleeved shirt on.
He doesn’t want police to see his gang tattoos.
As Central American officials fight increasingly violent gangs, many current and former members are responding by hiding their tattooed insignia, getting rid of them or discouraging recruits from getting visible body art.
A cottage industry of private clinics has grown up in El Salvador around tattoo removal. Some charge hundreds of dollars, but a few nonprofit organizations will do it for a token sum. The U.S. Embassy even gave a local program $85,000 for a laser tattoo-removal machine.
Tattoos have become synonymous with gangs and violence: tombstones and crosses remembering fallen members, skulls that often signify drug use, elaborate drawings of other gang members, necklacelike inscriptions across the collarbone saying “Forgive me, mother, for my crazy life.”
Salvadoran police say newer gang leaders are forgoing body art altogether to avoid drawing attention. Those still with tattoos complain of being refused jobs or school admission.
Monterosa, 26, a father of two with another on the way, says he wanted a job as a bus driver, but no one would hire him because MS-13, the name of one of El Salvador’s most infamous gangs, is printed on his forearms.
He says he still gets stopped by police suspicious of his tattoos and his activities, even though he now works with an AIDS prevention group that helps gang members and has chapters in both San Salvador and Los Angeles.
Monterosa has begun to remove the tattoos, paying a nonprofit clinic headed by a Roman Catholic priest a few dollars for each treatment, and undergoing mandatory counseling.
Three treatments have almost removed the green teardrop by his eye that signifies his year in prison on weapons charges. But the MS-13s are a bigger job. Some tattoos take more than a year to remove.
Some clinics use the relatively painless but more expensive laser, which pulverizes the ink and causes the tattoo to slowly fade away. Monterosa’s tattoo was removed with infrared light treatments, which require anesthesia and slowly burn off the tattoo with the intensity of a lit cigarette. The procedure leaves some discoloration.
Others choose a very painful abrasion method, which scrubs the affected area and leaves a noticeable scar.
Police use the tattoos to identify gang members, especially in Honduras and El Salvador, which have enacted tough laws against maras, as gang members are known in Spanish.
Police say action is needed against escalating gang violence that includes beheadings and mutilations copied in part from El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992.
Many Salvadoran gang members grew up in the United States, where their families had fled to avoid the war. Deported for committing crimes, many are sneaking back into the United States.
U.S. law enforcement officials are working with their Salvadoran counterparts to find solutions.
“From the top on down, you can see they are really focusing on this,” said Tom Freeman, executive officer for the sheriff’s department in California’s Riverside County.
Both former and current gang members complain that police take them into custody simply for having tattoos, sometimes forcing them to remove clothes to reveal hidden body art.
Geovany Hernandez, who gave up gang life after being deported to El Salvador after a lifetime in California, says that has happened to him several times.
Hernandez still has faded gang lettering on the back of his shaved head and the remains of the letters LA, for Los Angeles, on his arm. But he said he was in the process of having them removed when he was stopped by police and threatened with a gun.
“There’s a lot of discrimination here,” he said. “People, they are really scared of you when they see you with tattoos. It’s not like the States.”