The Surreal Reasons Girls Are Disappearing In El Salvador: #15Girls
This powerful NPR story helps explain why so many young woman and children are fleeing Central America.
In many countries, the decisions teens make at 15 can determine the rest of their lives. But, often, girls don’t have much say — parents, culture and tradition decide for them. In a new series, #15Girls, NPR explores the lives of 15-year-old girls who are seeking to take control and change their fate.
This picture shows Marcela, 15, who was assassinated in San Salvador in July. She was walking with her sister when a man approached them and shot her twice in the head.
The grandmother told NPR that Marcela’s boyfriend was a bus driver in a gang-controlled. Then Marcela started getting threats. And now this: Marcela’s body, lying on the ground, while people drive to work.
If you were standing at the U.S.-Mexico border two summers ago during the so-called “surge” of unaccompanied minors trying to come to the U.S., you would have seen thousands of young girls from El Salvador. If you had asked them why they came, they would have told you the answer is simple: gangs.
Back in the 1980s, during El Salvador’s civil war, many people migrated from El Salvador to the U.S. On the streets of cities like Los Angeles, they formed gangs. Then, many of them were deported back to El Salvador. And they brought the gangs with them. Now, El Salvador’s two main gangs — Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 — control much of the country. There is so much violence in El Salvador that someone dies there, on average, every hour. Much of the killing is over turf or revenge.
KJ