Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)
MS-13 formed in the 1980s when hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled the civil war in El Salvador for the United States, settling in and around Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., among other areas. The end of that civil war, coupled with MS-13's own growth and deportations from the United States, contributed to an expanded MS-13 presence in Central America. Some authorities attribute as much as half the violent crime in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to MS-13. In October 2012,...