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[Exile20]

Adam Hinton has photographed the most dangerous places in the world, none more so than El Salvador, where the MS-13 gang welcomed him gladly into their community and their private prison.

But when he heard on the BBC World Service that the two big rival gangs in El Salvador – Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18 Street (Barrio 18) – had agreed a truce, he hoped it would give him space to understand the reasons behind the shootings; to see the people, not the guns.

Until he went there, Hinton had avoided documenting gang culture. “Everyone does gangs,” he says, “and my idea was to show that 95% of the people in favelas are normal people.” But when he heard on the BBC World Service that the two big rival gangs in El Salvador – Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18 Street (Barrio 18) – had agreed a truce, he hoped it would give him space to understand the reasons behind the shootings; to see the people, not the guns.

The truce is now over and the violence deadlier than ever, but in that brief lull, Hinton spent a week in the Las Victorias district of San Salvador, the country’s capital, and visited Penal de Ciudad Barrios – a prison exclusively for members of MS-13. It is guarded outside by the army, but inside, the 2,600 inmates (in a prison built for 800) have free run of the squalid facility, because the guards are too scared to enter. The prisoners have their own bakery, workshops making furniture and toys, and even a rudimentary hospital that they staff themselves.

In Las Victorias, Hinton had lunch with a gang leader who had just had a young informant killed; attended the wake for a stillborn child who had died because his mother, in prison on a drugs charge, was not allowed to go to hospital in time for the delivery; and witnessed the funeral of a man, not a member of MS-13, who was shot by Barrio 18 just because he lived in an MS-13 district. “I found it shocking that here I am, in a truce, in this community for a week, and they have two gang-related deaths.”

It’s not the violence he wants to emphasise, but the suffering and humanity of most of the residents of Las Victorias. “Rather than seeing these places as threats and full of bad people, my idea is to say: here’s a family; they want the same things as we do; they want a job, a decent home, a better life for their kids. There are basic human needs that everyone has the right to. A lot of my sympathies are with these gang members. They’re there; they’re trapped; there’s nothing else they can do.”

http://www.theguardian.com/artandde...nton-el-salvador-ms-13-gangs-prison-portraits

 

[harSon]

Reminds me of Mel Gibson's movie Get the Gringo...

 

[Kaako]

Reminds me of Mel Gibson's movie Get the Gringo...

First thing that popped to mind as well after reading the OP. It's basically an enclosed turf protected guarded by the Army lol.

 

[The Faceless Master]

so it's like ... i dunno how i would even spoiler text what i want to say