The article is about stuff going in El Salvador, but it does affect us in the US too. There are two major/big Salvadorian communities in the US, a big mix of legals and illegals. I come from one of those areas and made a big lucky jump from shithole to upper middle class in my teenage years. MS13 and its rivals and imitators are no joke. They're a major force of stupid that always seems to come back and weasel its way into your life. Adult working Salvadorians can't catch a break sometimes. Either (A) A relative in the old country was discovered to have family in the US, so they get racketeered for protection money "renta" or (B) Your kids get encouraged to become banger idiots.

Basically, if you're from one of the poorer areas of Los Angeles or Arlington(DC area), when you're young the Salvi community puts a lot of pressure on you to act like them, to "rep your race, to be a man, to be hard", whatever. What's a young guanaco to do? here you have all these kids who look like you that make a game out of skipping class to go get high or fighting in school to get suspended, while mom and dad work 12 hours every day and have no idea how to turn you into a college-bound person who does extracurriculars. It's a recipe for disaster and you have scores of second generation Salvis who don't speak Spanish that well, don't finish school, have kids early, and don't have the same work ethic that their parents did so they end up in mediocre jobs like cell phone stores and fast food. It sucks to see that El Salvador is such a disaster and that the gangs there are almost as powerful as the government. It's a country with beautiful beaches and great surf that can rival Southeast Asian destinations like those in Thailand and the Philippines. Please get your shit together, El Salvador.