How do you portray the subject of violence? Is there a right way to cover something that's so fundamentally wrong? It was watching hard man actor Ross Kemp's foray into documentary making (of all places) that got me thinking about this.

He made a programme on gang violence in El Salvador as part of an ongoing series on the subject for Sky One. It was broadcast in November 2006- I was unfairly disparaging as it turns out. I think the programme he made was actually not as gung ho gratuitous a shock and awe exposition of the subject as I thought it was going to be.



It covers the main issues (apart from police corruption and immigration) fairly well. It particularly brings home the reality of the prison system. It doesn't really go into any solutions and apart from criticising Mano Dura, it doesn't really explore the options to combating gang violence. But on balance, it is educational. How often is this subject (violence in Central America) explored in the UK? Very, very rarely.







If you don't fancy sitting through the whole 45 minutes of the programme, I would recommend one snippet from it - if only to look at the expression on the face of Ross Kemp as he blurts out a, "So who are they?". It's as if a light suddenly switches on and Kemp suddenly understands that may be, just may be, gang violence is symptomatic of something much wider and more prevalent in Salvadoran and other societies.

However, to be fair it is preceded by one of Kemp's better and more interesting observations in the programme:

"All I do know is the local press have their pictures, a community is frightened and the police certainly look like they are doing their job. I can't help but feel that last night's show of force was exactly that- a show. With all the press and photographers running around, I wonder whether the publicity was more important than the arrests."

What follows this observation is a short clip from an interview with Lionel Gomez, a Salvadoran man who makes the point that although the gangs are blamed for the drug trafficking, they aren't actually the ones profiting from it. There are others in society who profit from the 570 odd tonnes of cocaine (quoted by Gomez in the documentary) shipped off to the States- and they wear shirts and ties, not tattoos.

WOLA produced a really good overview of the issues in gang violence across Central America in November 2006. In three paragraphs on page five it pretty much encapsulates what Kemp tells us in 45 minutes:

"Gang violence is only one of many serious security issues in the region. Organized crime, narco-trafficking, common crime, and family violence are widespread and threaten citizen security everywhere in the region. Gangs are often used as scapegoats for various other security problems and criminal activity for which they are not responsible. The majority of youth deemed to be "gang members" still belong to smaller, neighborhood gangs and are not involved in serious criminal activity. Unfortunately, the fear in communities with a gang presence is sometimes inflated by inflammatory media reports.

Governments have been quick to pander to these fears by implementing short term repressive measures that appear to offer immediate results. Additionally, they have seized these provocative reports as an opportunity to blame nearly all crime and violence on gangs. Most Central American government policies have treated gangs as enemy combatants to be eliminated rather than as the product of various societal problems that need to be addressed through comprehensive strategies that include smart law enforcement, combined with prevention and rehabilitation programs.

Specifically, the governments of Honduras and El Salvador have responded to youth gangs with repressive mano dura strategies in an attempt to control gangs and appease constituents. These laws make membership in a gang illegal. Thousands of youth, guilty of nothing more than having a tattoo or wearing baggy pants, have been indiscriminately arrested. Massive arrests have violated the rights of thousands of Salvadoran and Honduran youth and placed considerable pressure on the already overcrowded prison system. While Guatemala has not passed such legislation, police have implemented many of the same repressive policing strategies."

It kind of leaves you thinking that perhaps the more interesting subject of a documentary would be: who are the people benefiting from the gang violence- other than the gangs themselves.

Much is written about gangs, particularly the culture and the violence associated with it because they are so incredibly visceral. The culture which is a perverse sub culture of rules that often ultimately conflict with the rule of law hold a kind of fascination we have with anything unknown yet widespread. Social research in this area is common. For example, this is from an article Questioning the stage: Gang members and participation in Guatemala by Majella van der Werf:

"'Once you are in, no one can be less than anyone else, we share. You don't ever want to leave that family.' So I was told by one of the first ex-gang members I interviewed as a part of my research on the insertion and integration of ex-gang members into society. These male and female ex-gang members have made the decision to leave life in the gang and they describe the sophisticated structure that governs it.

Each clica protects a given neighbourhood and has three leaders. Voting, consensus, and the constitution which the gang upholds offer much more than the Guatemalan state and its corrupt rule of law. One interviewee spoke of the 'social security' that the girlfriends of gang members receive from the gang if the boyfriend is killed: clothes for her children, family outings and support while she is in mourning. Equality among members is a recurring concept in interviews, from salaries to rights within the gang."

In addition, gang violence provokes a just revulsion and reaction which varies from the crude ('16 malditas' home made montage about the violence and those responsible according to the film's producer) to the slick (media inspired campaign against violence in El Salvador).

Faced with this wide spectrum of interest in gang culture and violence from the morbid to the honest social research, it's easy to see why we, like Kemp, can take our eye off the ball.

There is though, undeniably a bigger picture. It a picture that includes the drugs traffickers, the politicians, the banks, the justice system, the State, foreign intelligence services and many more powerful players. Robert Parry is one of the few that writes about it in any significant detail today. Gary Webb was another but tragically committed suicide in 2004.

There is a political structure to this phenomenon and until this power structure is tackled at root- gangs will continue to be splattered all over the front pages both with and without good reason.