The mark of a true gangster
QUESTION
What is the origin of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) international criminal gang? THE Mara Salvatrucha gang — machetewielding thugs infamous for morbid tattoos on their faces and torsos — emerged in the early Eighties as a refuge for immigrants to Los Angeles who had escaped El Salvador’s civil war.
Young men who had left their family behind found solidarity in gangs. Hardened by their experiences in the civil war that raged throughout the decade, they helped make the Maras the most fearsome criminal outfit in LA, superseding Mexican outfits such as Barrio 18.
The evolution of the name has, bizarrely, been traced to a Charlton Heston movie. His 1954 film The Naked Jungle was popular in El Salvador, where it was called
Cuando Ruge la Marabunta or literally When The Ants Roar (but titled in English The Naked Jungle).
Salvadorans took the name Mara to mean a group of friends who, like ants, protect each other. Salvatrucha may be a combination of Salvador and trucha, meaning trout in Spanish, but also slang for cunning or street smart.
Many members of Mara Salvatrucha were sent to prison, which became a rite of passage. In order to survive jail, the war-hardened Maras became enforcers for La Eme, the Mexican mafia.
The Mexican mafia uses the number 13 (M is the 13th letter of the alphabet), so the Maras became the Mara Salvatrucha 13 or MS-13.
The gang has grown rapidly and has more than 70,000 members. It is involved in extortion, drug dealing, prostitution and theft, and has links to Mexican transnational drug cartels.
MS-13 has entered the popular imagination thanks to their distinctive tattoos, which identify them as gang members, but also strike fear into people.
Many of the tattoos use the emblem MS-13, refer to their rank in the gang and the number of people they claim to have killed. However, following crackdowns on gangs in the U.S., these identifying tattoos are falling out of favour with new recruits. President Donald Trump has a particular loathing for MS-13 and has vowed to destroy them.
Andy Day, Bristol.
QUESTION
What was the fate of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s son from his first marriage? DURING World War I, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was involved with Ida Dalser, who sold her Milan beauty salon to enable him to start his newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The People of Italy).
He had been editor of Avanti! (Forward!), the Italian Socialist Party’s newspaper, but split with the party as he favoured Italy’s participation in the war.
In 1915, Ida gave birth to a son, Benito Albino, but Mussolini had already left her, marrying Rachele Guidi, the peasant daughter of his father’s mistress.
Ida and Mussolini may have been married, though documents relating to this were later destroyed by the fascist government. She persisted in claiming to be Mussolini’s wife and publicly denounced him as a ‘traitor’.
She was interned in a psychiatric hospital in 1926, a year after Mussolini abandoned any pretence at democracy and set himself up as the country’s dictator or Il Duce, meaning leader.
Benito Jr was abducted by government agents and later adopted as an orphan by Giulio Bernardi, a fascist party official. Cruelly, he had been told his mother was dead. In fact, she lived until 1937.
Benito Jr joined the Italian navy and remained under close surveillance by the government. He persisted in stating Mussolini was his father and was eventually forcibly interned in an asylum, where he died on August 26, 1942. Some say that he was killed with coma-inducing injections, others that it was due to electric shock treatments.
In a final attempt to erase him from history, he was given a pauper’s funeral and buried in an unmarked grave.
The story of Mussolini’s son was uncovered in 2001 by journalist Marco Zeni. Before Dalser was arrested, she gave records of her relationship with Mussolini to her sister, who hid them.
Dalser’s 88-year-old niece gave Zeni the papers and he produced a TV documentary in 2005. Vincere, a biopic on Dalser’s life, was screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Alexandra Campbell,
Pangbourne, Berks.
QUESTION
Are there more women than men in university in Iran? UNLIkE Saudi Arabia, Iranian women are allowed to drive and have relative freedom. There are no restrictions on female education and women students are in the majority in the universities.
According to a Unesco world survey, Iran has the highest female to male ratio of third-level students in the world, with a girl to boy ratio of 1.22:1.00.
In September 2012, women made up 60 per cent of all university students in Iran and 70 per cent of science and engineering students.
However, it’s when women leave university that their problems begin. Under article 1117 of the civil code, an Iranian man can ban his wife from working if he believes it ‘incompatible with the interests of the family or with his or his wife’s dignity’.
Businesses may freely discriminate between sexes. The Iranian Central Bank advertised 47 positions for university graduates of which 36 were for men only and 11 were available to both sexes.
J. S. Lund, Leicester.
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