You don’t come out alive from an El Salvadorian gang

In El Salvador, two gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the MS-18 have a vicious cycle going: funeral, revenge, murder. Funeral, revenge, murder.

A photojournalist was brave enough to document this. His name was Christian Poveda.
La Vida Loca (This crazy life) is his last film. It follows a group of MS-18 gang members so closely it’s like you’re living with them. That’s because you almost are. For over a year, Poveda was as close to the gang as one could possibly be without becoming a member.

It’s assumed that’s what did him in. One night last September in El Salvador, Poveda was ambushed while on his way home. He was shot multiple times in the head.
The investigation is ongoing, and local authorities suspect the MS-18 or the Mara Salvatrucha are behind it. As one Salvadorian photojournalist put it in regards to Poveda, “If you stick your head too far down the lion’s throat, you get eaten.”
Cinema Poltica presents La Vida Loca next week. The film shows a form of gangsterism that’s excruciatingly tragic. These kids join gangs for life, but the gangs bring them no form of success or prosperity. They just put them in a cycle of revenge killings that have no end other than their own young deaths.

Three of the film’s main subjects die during the hour and a half documentary. A total of eight kids in the town died during the making of the film. At the funerals, remaining MS-18 members chant “you will die, but MS-18 lives on” over and over, and any hope for change in their lives becomes ever more futile.
The gang members are tattooed all over – women included. This ink puts them at odds with any other form of existence. Who would hire someone with “18” tattooed across their face? Such displays are just examples of the fanatical allegiance that the MS-18 demands – which some kids join around the age of 15.

Although La Vida Loca is a unique experience, it suffers in that it’s too objective. There is no editorial content, rather this is true Cinema Varieté except for when it comes to cutting the film. It can be imagined that Poveda had so much footage that editing was nightmarish, not only because he was there so long, but also because the footage is repetitive and depressing – the same stories, but different days. MS-18 members repeat themselves over and over and follow the same destructive routine with no end in sight. It’s hell on earth.

The Mara Salvatrucha and the MS-18 aren’t El Salvadorian creations. The origins of both gangs can be traced to the streets of Los Angeles, where illegal Latino immigrants toiled in the ghetto. When former President Bill Clinton deported these refugees back to El Salvador, their gang mentality was exported along with it – back to a land where there was even less hope for change and even more reasons for desperate behaviour.
Poveda’s murder could have been out of spite, La Vida Loca is a film a little too close to its subject matter for comfort. But his murder could have just as easily been one more senseless killing in a country that sees nine gang-related deaths per day.

Check out La Vida Loca at Cinema Politica next Monday in H-110 at 7:30.

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