How did you come across the Mara Salvatrucha gang?
They’re part of the environment. What took a long time was finding out exactly how they were involved and why. Because a racketeering gang exists to make money – a gang is not always for protection. So if there’s no money to be made it’s hard to figure out why they exist. So most of the time most members of the gang denied they had anything to do with immigration. It took about a year and a half before anyone would say, “This is how it works, this is how we make our money from immigration.” In southern Mexico the Mara control some drug dealing, some weapon smuggling, but they also control the train lines, so they are able to make money by taxing people on their territory. They tax the smugglers who are already charging the immigrants, so they are basically a middle level, another addition to the fee an immigrant pays to cross Mexico. You ensure none of the characters are one-dimensional, especially the gang members. I spent a lot of time asking the gang who bought things like toilet pa
