Read Online This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha by Samuel Logan - Free Book Online
Authors: Samuel Logan
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questioning during both interviews, but she still had doubts about being an MS member. She had been a member for less than a month when she witnessed Javier’s murder. After less than four months in the gang and just weeks before she turned sixteen, Brenda had become a prime suspect for capital murder in Texas. This was not what she had signed up for. The time span between her two radically different lives, from beloved daughter to gangster wanted for murder, had passed too quickly, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
After her second meeting with Oseguera, Brenda realized that she had to run. She couldn’t trust the cop, and she couldn’t go to her family in California—the MS might follow her and harm them. She couldn’t go back to her sour uncle, Rafael, or to Honduras. Her only option was to do what Veto had told her to do in a letter from prison: go to Virginia and find Denis Rivera, a trusted homie Brenda had met briefly when he came down to Dallas to help Veto take care of a rival gang member. Veto was in prison, and the other guys at Calzada’s murder were leaving the state. Without Veto, she had no direction, no stability in Texas. She needed another anchor to keep her street life stable, so she placed Denis in her sights and traveled to Virginia to find him.
On March 23, 2002, Brenda turned sixteen. It was a lonely birthday. When she’d turned fifteen in Honduras, she had been surroundedby friends and family. This time, she was on the run from a murder rap in Texas and a member of a violent street gang. What a turn her life had taken.
Through the spring, Brenda traveled with some of her homies from Texas throughout the Southeast and connected with other MS cliques in Tennessee and North Carolina. They traveled by day and squatted in hotels, living rooms, and garages by night. Brenda began to understand that her gang had a real presence all over the country. She had no problem finding a place to stay or making money. There were many parties, new faces, and stories to tell. She reveled in the experience, the good side of gang life, yet she continued to feel very conflicted about being a member of the Mara Salvatrucha. Javier’s murder weighed heavily on her conscience. On the outside, Brenda had permanently affixed the mask of a gangster, but she needed something more to harden herself against the fearful possibility that she would let the mask slip at the wrong time, in front of the wrong person. This gang was serious. There was no room for maybes or doubt. She was hanging with true-to-life gangsters. If she didn’t match their fervor, there would be serious consequences, so she lied to protect herself.
She told new acquaintances on the road that her dad was an MS member and that she was jumped in when she was thirteen in Los Angeles. She knew enough about MS history and Los Angeles to back up the story. Each lie boosted her credit among the MS members she met. Brenda was still a second-class member simply because she was female in a macho gang world, but her affiliation with the Normandie Locos, combined with her lies about her MS origins, generated respect everywhere she went. Doors opened for her.
The combination of real power and street credit were heady drugs for a girl her age. They kept her alive and propelled her forward, away from Texas and toward an unknown future. Surrounded by gangsters and protected by her lies and a tough outer shell, Brenda kept the doubts and fears of a normal adolescent girl away from the men. She learned more than she should have, and remembered everything she saw and heard, just like a video recording.
Once Brenda decided to head toward Virginia, she knew exactly where to go. Through Veto, she had strong connections with gang leaders in northern Virginia, particularly with Denis Rivera. Denis and Brenda had met in passing before her arrival in Virginia. Veto knew he wasn’t getting out of prison anytime soon, so he wrote in a coded letter to Denis that he
After her second meeting with Oseguera, Brenda realized that she had to run. She couldn’t trust the cop, and she couldn’t go to her family in California—the MS might follow her and harm them. She couldn’t go back to her sour uncle, Rafael, or to Honduras. Her only option was to do what Veto had told her to do in a letter from prison: go to Virginia and find Denis Rivera, a trusted homie Brenda had met briefly when he came down to Dallas to help Veto take care of a rival gang member. Veto was in prison, and the other guys at Calzada’s murder were leaving the state. Without Veto, she had no direction, no stability in Texas. She needed another anchor to keep her street life stable, so she placed Denis in her sights and traveled to Virginia to find him.
On March 23, 2002, Brenda turned sixteen. It was a lonely birthday. When she’d turned fifteen in Honduras, she had been surroundedby friends and family. This time, she was on the run from a murder rap in Texas and a member of a violent street gang. What a turn her life had taken.
Through the spring, Brenda traveled with some of her homies from Texas throughout the Southeast and connected with other MS cliques in Tennessee and North Carolina. They traveled by day and squatted in hotels, living rooms, and garages by night. Brenda began to understand that her gang had a real presence all over the country. She had no problem finding a place to stay or making money. There were many parties, new faces, and stories to tell. She reveled in the experience, the good side of gang life, yet she continued to feel very conflicted about being a member of the Mara Salvatrucha. Javier’s murder weighed heavily on her conscience. On the outside, Brenda had permanently affixed the mask of a gangster, but she needed something more to harden herself against the fearful possibility that she would let the mask slip at the wrong time, in front of the wrong person. This gang was serious. There was no room for maybes or doubt. She was hanging with true-to-life gangsters. If she didn’t match their fervor, there would be serious consequences, so she lied to protect herself.
She told new acquaintances on the road that her dad was an MS member and that she was jumped in when she was thirteen in Los Angeles. She knew enough about MS history and Los Angeles to back up the story. Each lie boosted her credit among the MS members she met. Brenda was still a second-class member simply because she was female in a macho gang world, but her affiliation with the Normandie Locos, combined with her lies about her MS origins, generated respect everywhere she went. Doors opened for her.
The combination of real power and street credit were heady drugs for a girl her age. They kept her alive and propelled her forward, away from Texas and toward an unknown future. Surrounded by gangsters and protected by her lies and a tough outer shell, Brenda kept the doubts and fears of a normal adolescent girl away from the men. She learned more than she should have, and remembered everything she saw and heard, just like a video recording.
Once Brenda decided to head toward Virginia, she knew exactly where to go. Through Veto, she had strong connections with gang leaders in northern Virginia, particularly with Denis Rivera. Denis and Brenda had met in passing before her arrival in Virginia. Veto knew he wasn’t getting out of prison anytime soon, so he wrote in a coded letter to Denis that he
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