MS-13: America's Most Notorious Gang - Steven Dudley | Modern Wisdom Podcast 316

That's another reason why they have never become this very sophisticated criminal organization, because they're really bad criminals.

(laughs)

You know? I mean, it's, it, it comes down to that. And like -- and if you are managing a very sophisticated criminal organization, why would you align yourself with them? They're totally visible. They, they fall on the radar of, of law enforcement non-stop. They're all tattooed up, and they're really bad at what they do, and there's so many possible leaks of information, and it just doesn't make sense on so many levels to align yourself with them. (wind blowing)

How would you describe what you do for work?

I would say I find human stories about organized crime and corruption, mostly in the Americas, where I live, and I try and tell those human stories to illustrate institutional or systematic problems that we face as societies, as countries. Um, and, you know, for me, the most exciting thing is getting to and telling those human stories. That's, that's the part that gets me up in the morning, and that's what I spend most of my time doing. So, a lot of it is kind of finding these people, getting them to talk to you, and then reconstructing their stories, hopefully in the most accurate way possible. We, as humans, are incredibly complex. Um, we are, we're gray. There's no black and white. So, that's what I aim to tell, is that gray area. I love that gray area.

That's where the interesting stuff is.

Yes, absolutely. So, I'm a specialist in the gray area.

(laughs) Yeah, I get that. You've been focused on MS-13 for quite a while now. What is MS-13?

MS-13 is a gang that was born, really, from refugees that were fleeing a civil conflict in El Salvador and other parts of Central America, eventually, in the 1980s, and they landed in spaces like Los Angeles, in the deep heart of Los Angeles, and found themselves in the midst of hundreds of street gangs, and they formed one of their own. Initially, it's a gang that is grouped together, or at least their, uh, l- their, their, their sort of common bond was initially heavy metal music, of all things. Um, so, that's, I guess, innocent enough, and, um, that evolved, uh, evolved for a lot of reasons, perhaps most of all because of the environment in which they were living, and it became this international or transnational gang over the last 40 years. It is an incredibly notorious gang, even if it's not the most violent, mostly because of these very gruesome ways in which they go after and often kill their rivals or perceived rivals. They use blunt instruments like machetes, knives, those sorts of things, and they kill in groups. Um, so they act as a group, and they often kill in numbers. So, you know, three to four victims, what would be considered sort of a massacre in international standards. You know, those sorts of things, and very often in public. So, they have this, you know, fearsome reputation. But they're really kind of a, a, a, they're a haphazard, loosely knit network. They're grouped under this umbrella, the MS-13, but they're, they're linked, they're, they're, they're more linked, more closely connected to what, what are called cliques, or their sort of personal cells, where they grew up. So, it's a very ... You know, while it's international, most of their activities are very much local. So, that's, that's where it comes from. And then the fascination around them comes from just mostly, I would say, this gruesome way in which they go after their rivals or perceived rivals.