MALDITOS: STREET GANG SUBVERSIONS OF NATIONAL BODY POLITICS IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, street gangs known as maras have emerged as a new social entity in Central America. In Honduras, these informal organizations are repeatedly represented in various forms of media as an aberration that is clearly separate from populace and state. Such representations render mareros as entities that possess a radically alien ontology, which is the sole locality of intervention of anti-mara programs. This article analyzes popular media and ethnographic observations to demonstrate that a) rather than being an alien ontology, marero subjectivities are co-constituted through nation and class-forming practices and b) despite such representations, Hondurans of various walks of life routinely subvert attempts to create a tripartite body politic of state-populace-marero. Continued emphasis on the marero as the sole site of intervention and rehabilitation deals with the mara issue at a symptomatic level and fails to address the quotidian processes that give form to this phenomenon.

Key Words:

• Violence
• Central America
• gangs
• class
• nationalism