1. A Double-Murder in Beaumont
One of the biggest rifts within the Mara Salvatrucha-13, one that changed the course of the gang in the United States, was triggered by a man who refused to take “no” for an answer. His name is Juan Carlos Rivas Moreira, and his gang used to know him as Stoky.
From the very beginning, Stoky cut his criminal teeth in internal gang disputes. It all began in 1995 in the department of San Miguel, eastern El Salvador, when gangs were just emerging on the scene. He took his first gang steps in the Coronados Lil Cychos (pronounced “Lil’ Psychos”) clique, a cell that had spread from Los Angeles. But he grew disaffected, believing the founders —who had been deported from the United States— were abusing their power. So he asked to be desbrincado: uninitiated, by way of beating, so that he could leave and create his own clique within the same gang: Sailors Locos West Side. His new clique excluded deportees from its ranks. At the helm of the Sailors, he soon ran afoul of a veteran Mara Salvatrucha outfit: the Normandie Locos. Members of Normandie raped his girlfriend, and a bloodbath ensued. They killed his brother “Big Foot,” so, in revenge, he gunned down two Normandie homeboys. That war within MS-13 was the reason Stoky fled El Salvador for the United States in 1998, just six years after El Salvador’s own civil war had ended.
All this to say that Stoky was known to take care of business in bloodshed, regardless of whether conflicts flared up within or outside his own gang.
By the summer of 2000, he was living in Maryland, in the Langley Park area. There, he reestablished the Sailors Locos, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the first MS-13 gang members to establish a 100 percent Salvadoran clique anywhere in the United States, he showed little mercy and great dedication to building criminal ties with El Salvador. The Sailors Locos spread throughout Maryland, Virginia, and New York, to the point of forming an independent transnational “program,” according to an internal document from the Transnational Anti-Gang Center. A gang “program” refers to a group of cliques that communicate with one another most frequently and answer to a leader, or corredor. This structure is a hallmark of the MS-13 in El Salvador.
Stoky used to ink up his fellow homeboys with tattoos. One of those bearing Stoky’s handiwork would later become infamous across the region. He was a young man from San Marcos, El Salvador, who passed through Los Angeles and Maryland in the summer of 1999 in search of prestige, joining the Hollywood Locos clique. His name is Élmer Canales Rivera, better known by his alias “Crook.” Crook spent a few months in Maryland, enough time for Stoky to etch “MS” in Gothic letters across the back of his head.
In 2003, Stoky murdered a fellow gang member because he thought the man was incapable of keeping the secret of a separate homicide also committed by MS-13. The next year, he took another life. As a result, the gang faced its first RICO case in the United States. And he kept making headway: he was one of the first gang members sentenced to life in prison in Maryland, a candidate for the death penalty, and one of the first to be incarcerated in a federal prison.
On January 30, 2022, while doing time at the Beaumont Federal Prison in Texas, he eagerly awaited a response from the leaders of the Mexican Mafia (eMe).
The eMe is a prison gang founded in 1957 in California, operating within the state and federal prison systems. It provides protection to thousands of members of Latin American descent against other racially based gangs in exchange for loyalty and money. It enforces codes of conduct so that gangs who are enemies on the street —such as MS-13 and 18th Street—can coexist peacefully in prison and act as a single unit against their rivals from Black, Asian, or white supremacist gangs. This non-aggression pact, called Southern United Raza, or “SUR,” again, is led by the Mexican Mafia. Its adherents, Sureños.
How Los Angeles Taught the Mara Salvatrucha to Hate
The eMe’s power extends to the streets, where they act as a criminal referee. They establish each gang’s turf and regulate the activities of hundreds of gangs operating in Los Angeles. They prohibit, for example, drive-by shootings, the rape of women, or attacks on gang members in the presence of family. In exchange for these regulatory services, they collect a monthly fee.
Any gang daring to disobey these rules becomes a target for all the others operating under the SUR: the eMe can give the green light to all members of a gang for relentless harassment, including daily beatings or stabbings. Both on the outside and in prison, it is in the best interest of all Latino gangs to submit to the eMe’s rules. From the moment a gang member is imprisoned, he is at the mercy of the Mexican Mafia.
The leaders of the eMe, respectfully addressed as señores or carnales, are in reality a handful of veteran gang members within the prison system. Becoming a carnal is the highest station a gang member can aspire to, aside from securing a comfortable financial position. To do so, over the years one must demonstrate obedience, intelligence, and a taste for blood.
According to a former Department of Justice official, Stoky put in “a lot of work” in the service of the carnales, becoming “much loved by the eMe.” Over twenty years in prison, he earned his stripes enforcing discipline, selling drugs, and bloodletting. In Texas, he became the head of his gang at the United States Penitentiary Beaumont. The former federal agent, linked to the case, said that Stoky maintained contact by phone with Ray Martínez, alias “Cisco,” an MS-13 member who had risen to the rank of carnal in the eMe. The agent overheard them discussing whether the Mara Salvatrucha-13 in the United States should submit to the authority of the eMe, which governs MS-13 on the West Coast, or to the authority of the Ranfla Nacional in El Salvador, which at the time controlled the East Coast.
According to Smiley, a seasoned gang member in Boston, “the mission was to make Stoky a mano negra [carnal], so he would be in charge of the East Coast and Cisco of the West Coast.”
For Stoky, the prospect of becoming a card-carrying member of the Mexican Mafia meant power over a vast base of Sureños. But in January 2022, the eMe informed him of its decision: no. He would not be accepted into its ranks. An old grievance —one the eMe found unacceptable— resurfaced. In 2005, Stoky was charged in a case, along with 27 homies, for participating in the gang rape of two minors. The eMe believed that Stoky had covered up a rape and disobeyed one of the eMe’s oldest rules.
A “no” from the eMe is final. His hopes for promotion were gone. His criminal career was on ice.
Stoky was on the verge of a very costly outburst for MS-13, so he sought the backing of someone with authority. He grabbed his contraband cell phone and called the man whose name he had tattooed on his skull more than two decades earlier: Crook.
Stoky’s rage might not have reverberated throughout the entire U.S. prison system if, 1,850 kilometers away in El Salvador, the government of President Nayib Bukele had not illegally released Crook from a maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca in November 2021, when he was serving a 40-year prison sentence for a violent string of crimes and was wanted for extradition by U.S. authorities. One of the most prominent historical leaders of MS-13, imprisoned since June 2000, Crook negotiated with multiple government administrations in El Salvador.
That phone call set off a crisis within both the U.S. federal prison system and the Mara Salvatrucha-13 itself, a crisis that remains unresolved to this day.
But it also ended up making the world’s most notorious gang —the one Donald Trump has spoken of countless times and labeled as terrorist— a pariah among U.S. gangs. Decades after young people fleeing the Salvadoran civil war founded the Mara Salvatrucha in the 1980s, the gang is embarking on a long journey back to its origins. The center of gravity of the leadership, for many years based in El Salvador, is returning to Los Angeles, to its old ways.
Over the three years it took to piece this story together, more than ten gang members were interviewed across Mexico, Honduras, and the United States, both in U.S. prisons and outside them. U.S. officials were consulted, along with court records, classified reports from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, emails from El Salvador’s National Civil Police obtained through Guacamaya Leaks, newspaper clippings, official reports, public information requests, and internal MS-13 messages.
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When people talk about the Mara Salvatrucha-13, they often think of a single monolithic gang, but that is hardly the case. The organization shares characteristics, rituals, structures, and aesthetics across Central and North America. But in each country it operates and organizes itself differently and autonomously. MS-13 does not have a single global chain of command.
In the United States alone, there are two systems: the original Los Angeles branch, where it was founded in the early 1980s; and the Salvadoran-influenced branch, primarily based in East Coast states such as New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. MS-13’s L.A.-based outfit receives protection inside California prisons and regulates conduct by way of the eMe. In contrast, the East Coast operation used to obey orders from the Ranfla Histórica: the Salvadoran leadership, most of whom are incarcerated at the maximum-security prison in Zacatecoluca, El Salvador.
Gangsters and Suits: The Most Murderous Mafia of Postwar El Salvador
Crook was one of the founders and top leaders of the Ranfla. But the Salvadoran leadership lost all clout after the Bukele administration broke its pact with their gang and others in March 2022. Yearslong secret negotiations with the government collapsed when MS-13 carried out a massacre of 87 Salvadorans in a single weekend. The gang carried out the killings in protest of the sudden and unforeseen arrest of a group of gang members who in theory should have been in prison, but who were being transported outside of prison in a car with government license plates.
Over four years later, the East Coast cliques no longer answer to any Salvadoran authority. Leaderless, they are undergoing a complex realignment of power.
By early 2022, within the U.S. federal prison system, members of the two coastal factions were coexisting peacefully, though not in complete harmony: many of those initiated in El Salvador and on the East Coast eyed their counterparts from Los Angeles warily because their behavior in prison was completely different from what they were used to.
Those from the East Coast moved freely through state prisons in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, and elsewhere, without taking orders from the eMe. In the federal system, everything was different: there were gang members from both coasts with differing ways of doing things. But peace still reigned — that is, until Stoky couldn’t take no for an answer.
On January 31, 2022, around 11:30 a.m., gang members Dimas Alfaro Granados, alias “Toro”; Héctor Ramírez, “Cuervo”; and Raúl Ernesto Landaverde Girón, “Decente,” entered the A-A security unit of the Security Housing Unit (SHU), which Latinos call el hoyo, the hole, or el zapato, the shoe. They were prohibited from being there.
They encountered Larry Navarrete, alias “Nica,” and Jorge Parada, “Rama,” members of the Pinos Locos clique, founded in the department of San Miguel, El Salvador. These latter two men handed the group bits of sharpened metal. Toro pulled a knife hidden in his shoe —as captured by video surveillance cameras— while, at the other end, Sergio Sibrián, alias “Anytime,” made his way to Stoky’s cell. Seconds later, Anytime and Stoky emerged. Stoky, carrying a rolled-up newspaper, approached a couple of inmates and drew a handmade dagger from within the newspaper.
The day before, Stoky called Crook, who was on the loose in Mexico. He told him that the eMe intended to levy a tribute on all the gangs in the United States, including those on the East Coast, which would affect the flow of criminal remittances to El Salvador and, downstream, his own pocketbook. He wanted Crook’s endorsement to resolve the situation. In short, Stoky lied to gain Crook’s approval.
“It all came from the bottom up,” said a veteran who asked to be identified only as a member of the Normandie Locos clique. “He [Crook] voted for it.” According to witnesses, Crook responded to Stoky’s request with the question, “Well, which side are you on?” To which Stoky replied, “I’ll show you the photo so you can see which side I’m on.” El Faro spoke with four gang members —one of whom had learned of the plot hours before the attack took place— as well as a federal official linked to the case, all of whom confirmed that conversation.
After Stoky drew the shank from the newspaper, he stabbed eMe representative Guillermo Riojas twice in the chest before he could even react. Riojas collapsed, and the rest of the gang members finished him off with more stab wounds to the head, heart, and lung. Next they lunged at Andrew Pineda, a Sureño inmate, cornering and stabbing this second man more than 45 times. Insatiable, they wounded two other inmates who happened to be passing by, as collateral damage.
They had embarked on a war of no return. The attack lasted three minutes, according to the Eastern District of Texas.
Those three minutes were enough to shatter an order maintained for decades. The rampage left a lasting mark on the U.S. federal prison system and unleashed chaos within the Mara Salvatrucha-13.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sprang into action, ordering a nationwide prison lockdown across 134 federal facilities while authorities assessed what to do with such a large gang. That sweeping measure, unseen since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, inflamed a population of more than 100,000 inmates across the federal system. The BOP designated MS -13 as a Security Threat Group (STG) posing a high risk to the prison system. As a result, the gang became a target of the eMe and all the gangs subject to the SUR pact —estimated at more than 500— and thus had to be segregated into a single prison.
The Mara Salvatrucha had fallen from grace: not just those affiliated with the Salvadoran Ranfla, but the entire gang. For the first time in U.S. federal prison history, one facility was designated exclusively for members of a single criminal organization.
In El Salvador, when authorities segregated the gangs into exclusive prisons in 2003, it actually strengthened them, allowing them to create nationwide command structures and refine their internal hierarchy. In the United States, however, this measure fractured MS-13. Their members no longer mingled with the thousands of Sureños or received protection within the federal system. They no longer shared cells, nor did they enjoy the benefits of affiliation with an army of thugs with business contacts. Attacking the SUR meant an automatic and irrefutable order to attack the gang.
To prevent them from being attacked, all MS-13 members were immediately segregated without any explanation in each of the federal prisons where they were being held. At the time, Smiley —the gang member from Boston— was at Louisiana’s Federal Correctional Institution, Pollock. “By three in the afternoon, we were all in the SHU,” he recalled. He and his fellow inmates were placed in the COVID quarantine unit without knowing what had happened. “Everyone was like, ‘What the hell? What’s going on?’” They spent seven days completely locked up, sparking complaints from the general prison population. When the system reopened, MS-13 members were kept in their cells while authorities figured out what to do. Uncertainty reigned, and the gang members waited for an explanation from the outside to know how to proceed. Without any information from the outside world on what had happened, gang members were “really pissed off”; they were taking relentless heat and most had no idea why.
Gang members incarcerated in the California state system, who had historically lived under the SUR’s control, were equally confused. They didn’t know whether the “green light” against their gang affected them or not, since it was an issue at a federal prison. No-one was being singled out or attacked. “It was critical. The cops were really on our case. They’d pull us aside and ask if we could run with the SUR, if there was any problem with being in that yard and all that. So, they were just waiting for the right moment for the Sureños to let us go,” recalled Pedro López, alias “Funny,” an MS-13 member incarcerated at Solano County Jail in California.
In the wake of this crisis, MS-13 was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution, Lewisburg, in Pennsylvania. There, the gang was cordoned off in a wing with retired gang members who were no longer part of the gang hierarchy.
The coexistence of hundreds of members from different U.S. cities created more division than unity. The two branches of the Mara Salvatrucha on U.S. soil were at odds. The resulting chaos in their attempts at self-governance led to the largest mass defection in the memory of several of its members. “Many became pecetas,” said a Honduran member named Nahún Obed Urbina Pineda, alias “Dangerous,” who was there at the time.
Pecetas are incarcerated gang members who decide to separate themselves from both their gang and the general prison population, opting to be placed in protective custody. “I couldn’t give you a number, but I can tell you there were many, many of them,” he added.
The unrest coincided with El Salvador’s state of exception, which cut off all communication and influence from the United States. Members on the East Coast lost contact with their leaders, who were being held incommunicado in prisons, fleeing El Salvador, or were in hiding. All members of the Mara Salvatrucha paid dearly for Stoky’s outburst.
“It was truly a surprise attack and completely unexpected,” said the former federal official linked to this case. “He didn’t say anything to anyone,” agreed David Vásquez, alias “Gigante,” at the time incarcerated in Victorville, California. What he did “didn’t have the gang’s backing,” Gigante emphasized.
The Eastern District of Texas posited a different theory: that the crime originated in El Salvador as the relationship between MS-13 and the eMe deteriorated. “That symbiotic relationship recently began to fall apart as MS-13’s leadership in El Salvador, the Ranfla Nacional, sought to exert more control and independence of its own members while incarcerated in prisons within the United States,” prosecutors wrote. Acting U.S. Attorney Abe McGlothin, Jr., more pointedly asserted that “MS-13 leaders in El Salvador ordered and plotted these heinous murders from thousands of miles away.”
In any event, Stoky and his henchmen were shunned by their own homeboys. Stoky was transferred to prison in Houston, where he was sent to the SHU. While there, according to Smiley, several gang members sent letters stating that Stoky had requested solitary confinement. He cut ties with the Mara Salvatrucha and ended up at the supermax U.S. Penitentiary Florence in Colorado. His outburst not only cost him expulsion from the gang and a blacklist throughout the SUR; it also added yet another life sentence to those he was already serving.
2. A Prison for MS-13
National lockdown in federal prisons was called off on February 7, 2022, but not for MS-13. The BOP took extraordinary measures to designate a prison anywhere in the country as an exclusive facility for them as soon as possible. They could not keep the gang members in special units indefinitely, so the Department of Justice designated FCI Lewisburg to house the Mara Salvatrucha.
Lewisburg, a dilapidated medium-security prison in Pennsylvania built in the 1930s, is known for its extreme indoor temperatures. Once notorious for its brutality, by early 2022 the facility had been cleaned up. Its wings were filled with inmates considered traitors by their criminal organizations. Starting in mid-February, the prison had begun to be cleared to receive all the emeëses, or MS-13 members, locked up in federal SHUs. Lewisburg had beds available to transfer them promptly.
Thus began the U.S. prison system’s unprecedented decision to designate a single prison for a single criminal group.
The mass transfer took place two long months after the double murder. Gigante remembers the date with the calendar-like memory he has developed over 22 years in prison. In the early morning of March 17, 2022, a plane took off from a military base adjacent to FCI Victorville on a nearly two-hour flight with 19 gang members on board. They stopped in Texas to pick up more gang members, totalling nearly 200 who were taken to Philadelphia International Airport. Destination: Lewisburg.
Not all gang members boarded the plane. Some decided to pecetearse, declaring themselves retired from the gang during the roll call before boarding. “When they were about to group us together, they said they weren’t going, they didn’t want to come, so they were set aside,” recalled one gang member from Arkansas who boarded the plane in Texas. Upon arrival, Gigante noticed that fellow inmates from East Coast prisons such as Canaan, Hazelton, and Big Sandy had arrived a few hours earlier. “They were transported by bus,” he recalled. “They were the first homies to arrive at the prison.”
Smiley arrived on the afternoon of March 31 by truck along with nearly twenty other inmates, all cuffed at the feet, hands, and hips. They left the day before, from FCI Pollock in Louisiana, and traveled for 30 hours to Lewisburg without stopping, he said. Three buses, each with about 60 seats, picked up inmates from different prisons. The first stop was Beaumont, the epicenter. From there, they stopped at the prisons in Yazoo, Bennettsville, Ashland, and others.
The last mass transfers took place between April and May 2022. After that, those who had been sentenced at the county level arrived. Around 500 arrived in Lewisburg during those first transfers, according to estimates from four gang members who were there. With the arrival of gang members from all corners of the country, the U.S. government replicated the practice widespread in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala of concentrating one gang in one prison.
Upon arrival, they found the prison half-empty. In the intake area, they were identified, registered, vaccinated against tuberculosis, and tested for COVID. They were interrogated by officials from the Special Investigation Supervisor (SIS) on which faction each gang member belonged to, and whether they were Sureños or seeking to break away from the SUR. Since the attack on Stoky, they suspected that internal divisions in MS-13 had become more radicalized. On the first night, Smiley realized that four of his homies had become pecetas in order to be kept separate from their gangmates. From the very first day in Lewisburg, MS-13 began to crumble.
Of Lewisburg’s eleven blocks, the gang was assigned exclusively to Blocks G, I, and J, each consisting of three floors with an average of 15 cells. The authorities classified inmates’ dangerousness into three levels: high, medium, and low. Block I housed low-security inmates, Block J received medium-security, and Block G took high-security. Block A was reserved for MS-13 members who had turned themselves in, Block B was for inmates awaiting transfer, and the SHU was located in what they called Block Z. Those held there would never come into contact with inmates from the rest of the prison. Cells are designed for two people and lined with aluminum on the ceiling, walls, and floor, amplifying high and low temperatures alike. Very little air circulates through a tiny window, and the heat intensifies due to the proximity to the boilers that heat the prison; the heat travels through a pipe in Block G, running along the corner of several cells.
Word that the gang would be crammed into Lewisburg stirred commotion at the notion of an exclusive prison. At first, “we all agreed that we liked the idea,” said Dangerous. Now, no other prison gang would tell them what to do. “We talked through the windows, but there was no physical contact,” notes Xavo, a former homie who served time there and asked not to be identified by name. The blocks were separated from one another, and each cell was allowed out at different times to get some sun. To communicate, they passed wilas —written messages— between sections of the same block.
The first few months were grueling. Confinement was constant and restrictions were harsh. They had barely an hour to shower and were allowed to get sun inside eight-square-meter cages. There were no educational programs, no authorization for medical checkups, no television, no visits, no library, no benefits whatsoever.
The cells were tiny: “I had to climb onto the bed and lie down so my homie could stretch out,” said Tine, incarcerated there at the time. Every 21 days, they were rotated to a different cell. They were taken to the bathroom in pairs, handcuffed. Some practices, deemed harsh, had been banned a few years earlier, but not for MS-13. Many could not endure them and gave up. “The Locos started filing lawsuits” over the conditions, said Smiley. On May 23, José Armando Rivera Bran, alias “Pantro” of the Sailor Locos clique, housed in Block G, took the initiative to represent 63 gang members in a civil suit against the U.S. government, the BOP, the SIS, the National Gang Unit, and an official from that unit.
In those first few months, no one knew who was who or what their circumstances were. “You didn’t know if a guy was clean or had talked,” recalled Smiley. In a sea of gang members, some were active, but others had backed out, whether as Christians, informants, or snitches. “A lot of them who arrived had unresolved issues. So, they went to the zapato [SHU], because they couldn’t be with us,” Smiley said. “After two weeks, the good stuff started:” the number of defections skyrocketed. “They started splitting off about two weeks after arriving. With everyone on the same level, they started leaving in droves,” added Xavo.
The incarceration at Lewisburg led to the largest mass defection of MS-13 members in U.S. history. Smiley and all those interviewed estimate that nearly half the gang’s membership left the organization after the first month at the facility — a clear sign that MS-13 was not as tightly knit an organization as its members often claim.
Prison authorities were concerned. They wanted a swift resolution to the conflict between MS-13 and the SUR. A few days after the mass transfers, agents from the National Gang Unit (NGU) traveled from Washington to Lewisburg to find a diplomatic solution. They asked blocks to designate spokespersons as intermediaries between the gang and the authorities. No-one wanted to take on that responsibility, but some ended up volunteering.
The authorities wanted to know what stance the gang would take: “Whether to go back with the SUR or break away from them,” said Smiley. The blocks agreed to reconciliation: they were willing to make amends for Stoky’s offense against the SUR. One significant faction was concerned about their situation vis-à-vis the Mexican Mafia: mainly the homies initiated in Los Angeles and those who had spent years in federal prisons.
The members of Block D wanted unconditional support for their decisions because many of them were vidales —“lifers,” meaning they would spend the rest of their lives behind bars— and the last thing they wanted was to suffer an eternity in prison without the benefits afforded by a gang governed by the eMe. “There was talk of asking the authorities to bring Mexican Mafia members to Lewisburg. It was left at that, that people wanted to talk,” reads a wila, or internal gang communication, received by Smiley and obtained by El Faro.
Everything pointed to a consensus within MS-13 to try to resolve the matter diplomatically, by submitting to the eMe and attempting to make amends for Stoky’s trespass. Between late April and early May 2022, the spokesmen met again with NGU agents. Block J tapped “Diablito” of Coronados Locos, a well-known homie initiated in El Salvador and with a year of gang experience in New York. “The mission was to get the whole barrio on the same page,” said Smiley. But Diablito told the authorities that, after consulting with his blockmates, the best course of action was to forget about the SUR. He said they thought it would be better to be placed in prisons where there were no Sureños, only emeëses. “The fucker changed his mind,” said Smiley. “He started stirring things up and telling the homeboys who were with him, ‘Screw the SUR and screw the Mano Negra [carnales].’” The abrupt change in stance infuriated the other two blocks: “All of us got angry,” said Smiley. “It was that son of a bitch’s idea.”
Despite the disagreement, Blocs I and G maintained their position of seeking reconciliation with the SUR, and the authorities promised to facilitate that process. The homeboys insisted that one solution was to transfer a carnal to Lewisburg to talk to him about the situation and reach a resolution. But the proposal was still under review by the authorities. Many wanted to return to the familiar dynamic where they could run their businesses, even if it was under the eMe’s watchful eye.
3. Civil War
Over time, a rift formed within the gang in Lewisburg between two massive factions with diametrically opposed views. On one side were those who wanted to remain allied with the SUR; on the other, those who wanted to chart their own course within the U.S. federal system.
Diablito’s stance within Coronados Locos began to gain traction, and several members took a stand. “We were practically enemies then,” explained Dangerous. “There was a lot of tension.” Those who had emigrated from El Salvador, who were part of cliques originating there, were the main contingent who opposed returning to the SUR, said Dangerous, who is from Honduras. In Block J, more than half thought that way, he added.
Many had never been in federal prisons; instead, they had come from county jails and were unfamiliar with the SUR. Tine is a prime example of this description: he got his start in El Salvador, emigrated to Maryland, and was imprisoned ten years ago in a facility where he detested living under the SUR’s rule. In his view, MS-13 endured “many injustices” under the Sureños. “That’s why he and almost all of the homeboys who were in [Block] J no longer wanted to run with the SUR. We wanted to break away from those people, and we saw an opportunity there,” he said in a federal prison. “We were demanding our own yards [prisons] and saying we no longer wanted to run with the Sureños.”
The other faction within MS-13 were those who had indeed joined the SUR, even strengthening their affiliation since years earlier, when La Mesa —a council of imprisoned leaders in California— and Cisco, the MS-13 member elevated to carnal status, sought to expand the Los Angeles Program nationwide.
This clash of ideas was the cornerstone of internal conflicts between the Salvadoran and Californian positions. In the absence of a strong leader, within a semi-horizontal organization, no-one was in charge internally; everyone felt powerful. Tensions were high, and the two factions sought to impose their competing visions of organizing the gang.
“There were several locos who wanted to stir up the neighborhood against the SUR,” said Smiley. “Fuck the SUR!” they shouted in Building J. “That caused a lot of tension in the block,” says Dangerous. The New York cliques and those from the Sailors Program were the ones most resistant to the SUR. These dissidents argued that Mara Salvatrucha should be written without the 13, asserting that the eMe forced them to include the number in honor of the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.
Tensions and rivalries drove many to continue leaving the gang. The number of defections continued to rise in Lewisburg, regardless of which side they were on. No-one seemed to want to take the initiative to fix things. From the prison in Sacramento, California, Cisco requested a poll within Lewisburg in which each member would answer a single question: return to the SUR or not? He intended to act as a mediator and “talk to the homeboys in federal prison, but when he sent word asking the homeboys if they could calm down, they told him no — to go fuck himself,” noted D, a gang member from the 20th Street Locos clique in San Francisco, California.
Caught up in the chaos was veteran Paul Cortez Jovel, alias Little Man, who helped build up MS-13 in the ’80s in California, then in the ’90s in El Salvador. While incarcerated at Lewisburg, he made a list of leading “revolutionaries” opposed to the SUR and sent it to leaders in Los Angeles who were outside of prison. The letter stated that if the issues with the Sureños were resolved and they were sent to prisons with them, the revolutionaries had to be enfierrados, “taken out.” He named Diablito on that list.
The Salvadoran contingent reached out to the Ranfla for support for their anti-SUR stance. The Ranfla was weakened in El Salvador and on the run in Mexico. The Salvadoran leaders responded by text message. Their response, which El Faro obtained, reached hundreds of gang members. The Ranfla stated that the problem wasn’t exactly with the SUR, “but with some homeboys from the USA LA” — that is, from Los Angeles. They made clear that MS-13 had been a Sureño gang since its origins and that this would not change, but they acknowledged that there were “different ways of seeing things” with their counterparts in Los Angeles. Even so, they added, “we’ll do everything in our power to ensure this doesn’t get any worse. We’re looking for a solution. Talking to people who have the authority to fix this. And while this is happening, we ask the members of our S-clique [El Salvador] to show respect for the SUR, to be patient. We’re working on it.”
Despite being under attack under the state of exception in El Salvador since March 2022, the Ranfla Nacional sought to mediate the conflict through José Wilfredo Ayala Alcántara, alias “Indio,” and —curiously— Crook, the historic leader whose unwitting endorsement of Stoky’s attack sparked the rift.
Both of these mediators were at large in Mexico. They spoke with members incarcerated in state prisons and concluded that someone from the eMe other than Cisco should also get involved to maintain objectivity. According to the message from the Ranfla, they chose Manuel Quintero, known as “Snuffy,” from the Paramount gang, as the intermediary. But in reality, he did little to restore peace. According to Gigante, the Ranfla “said everything was settled, but no-one had spoken with the señores [from eMe] in the federal system.” The truth is that the hit out on MS-13 members was in effect at the federal level, whereas the carnales incarcerated in state prisons had little influence there.
In Lewisburg, conditions began to improve with some benefits, despite the disagreements. The right to make phone calls was restored; inmates were allowed to purchase up to $50 worth of goods at the commissary, as well as spend a few minutes watching TV and accessing the legal library. These benefits were granted sparingly as the authorities’ investigations into MS-13 progressed. Consequently, calls were made to ascertain the gang’s stance on the streets and in state prisons. These calls were crucial in helping the authorities gain a deeper understanding of the problems within the gang — such as when they overheard in wiretapped calls that people close to Diablito, the “revolutionary,” were considering turning against him if they were sent to prisons with members of the SUR.
Doubts and speculation were rampant. There were conflicting accounts regarding MS-13’s status with the SUR. Some believed the relationship was under control and without repercussions; others maintained that the relationship, which had begun in 1993, had been severed.
MS-13 asked the NGU to bring some eMe leaders to Lewisburg for talks, but the agents instead decided some emissaries from the gang would travel to the high-security federal prisons in Victorville, California; Canaan, Pennsylvania; and Hazelton, West Virginia. The agents asked MS-13 to stand firm on their position of sticking with the SUR; they didn’t want any surprises or conflicting accounts like the ones heard in wiretapped calls, according to the former Justice Department official.
The gang selected six of its most experienced homies from Block G to go and negotiate. In early April 2022, under the Biden administration, the three peace missions set out for their destinations.
Canaan’s delegation didn’t find any homies to talk to. In Victorville, the legendary brother Raymond Shryock, alias “Huero Shy,” was there, but the authorities “didn’t let us talk to the brothers,” Gigante says. “It was the government that stopped us, because of rumors that they were going to pegar [launch an armed attack against] us, and the government panicked.” As the homies made their way to the facility, prison intelligence intercepted information that the Sureños were planning an attack.
In Hazelton, things went more smoothly. Upon arrival, they were taken to the SHU, where they spoke with Salvador Orozco Hernández, alias “Toro,” and Silvestre Rivera, alias “Chikali.” Everything seemed settled: they could return to federal prisons with a Sureño gang population. They were simply told that Stoky was no longer useful to the SUR, “that if we didn’t take him out, they were going to,” says Smiley. It was then agreed that MS-13 would have to get rid of him to secure the eMe’s acquittal, Gigante asserts.
That Monday in April, the MS-13 members were to be transferred from the SHU to the SUR population in an effort to demonstrate that everything had returned to normal. But a day earlier, a handful of SUR members revealed to the guards the plan to stab the MS-13 emissaries to death upon their release on Monday, thereby truly sealing the peace between the SUR and the Mara. The authorities prevented that attack by sending the gang members back to Lewisburg without any agreement. By then, Smiley had become one of the spokesmen for Block I, along with Tigre, and he heard when Tigre asked the NGU agents, “What’s next?” The authorities, annoyed by the Sureños’ deception, decided to strip the eMe of certain federal facilities and place the emeëses they despised there instead.
4. Relief
With reconciliation unlikely and Lewisburg divided, the pressure in the prison eased on December 19, 2022. That day, for the first time, the prison opened all units to operate normally. The doors of each block were left slightly ajar, and gang members began to mingle in the courtyards, hallways, library, chapel, dining hall, TV room, and bathrooms. “They’d already started giving us a little bit of freedom; they were opening doors for us in the same hallway, and we were already having some meetings. We put spokespersons in each hallway, and they would go out to another hallway and hold meetings, and there we’d all come together — we’d have meetings and all that,” explained Dangerous. Free movement was limited exclusively to within the prison blocks. There was no movement between one building and another; they communicated only by shouting from window to window.
After ten months of strict confinement, the prison granted greater freedom, and order within the gang was restored. Hostility among the homies subsided when a group of Salvadoran “ranfleros” arrived, which ultimately calmed tempers. “Toward the end of the year, we got a group from La Ranfla—from here in Mexico, from Crook, from Indio, all these guys,” Smiley recounts, “saying that the barrio is Sureño and therefore, whether we like it or not, we have to keep running it like a barrio sureño.”
The message, which El Faro obtained and which was sent by phone, reached the interior of Lewisburg, where it was read aloud. “The homies who are locked up in federal prison, once they’ve served the time the authorities are going to give them for what happened at the federal prison in Texas, are going to toe the line as Sureños. The carnales have investigated how and what led the homie Stoky to act in self-defense, since we asked them about the situation of the homies in federal prison, to set the record straight and be able to give you a concise explanation,” the message read.
They added that their desire to remain affiliated with the SUR stemmed from the fact that the gang’s founding Ranfleros had fought in the ’90s in Los Angeles to be considered Sureños: “As we know from the history of our barrio, there are many homies who have worked hard from the very beginning to become Sureños 13, and many of them are in the S [El Salvador], and some are part of the Ranfla de la S.”
While they underscored their affinity for the Sureños, La Ranfla insisted that their real differences were with Cisco and La Mesa. The rank and file should pay them no mind, they said; they could stick with the SUR in prisons and on the streets with complete freedom and continue initiating whomever they wanted into their cliques. Nobody could take their territory away “just because they won’t answer to La Mesa de Los Ángeles, since as cliques from El Salvador we’ll always be representing the SUR, both on the streets and in prison,” they wrote.
Between the lines, MS-13’s internal disputes were left in the Paramount intermediary Snuffy’s hands. The Salvadoran Ranfla agreed to return to the SUR.
As proof of the work that Snuffy was doing as an intermediary, the Ranfla stated that the Sailors Locos West Side clique, to which Stoky had belonged, was not under any sanctions and that all cells bearing that name scattered across U.S. soil were to report to El Salvador and not to the United States. “You will no longer report to the U.S. program,” they wrote. “Cisco from Fulton and the L.A. leadership have no say over the Salvadoran cliques in the U.S., regardless of which state they’re in.”
Finally, they urged their ranks not to have sex with minors, which in the U.S. is considered statutory rape, Stoky’s original trespass that led to his disowning by eMe and subsequent outburst. “To all homies in Salvadoran cliques, don’t make mistakes or get involved in street trouble, which, as Sureño homies, will make us look bad, and remember that there are rules and norms that we cannot break,” they wrote.
With word from El Salvador, in Lewisburg gang members had no choice but to close ranks with the SUR and resume using the number 13. The Mara Salvatrucha-13 became once again subordinate to the SUR. El Salvador’s stance prompted some of the revolutionaries to retire from the gang because they viewed the directive as intolerable. “Many of the older members left,” said Tine. Among them was Diablito, added Dangerous. By the end of December, there were 286 active members remaining in Lewisburg, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted to the Bureau of Prisons.
But as the months passed, the arrest of thousands of gang members under the state of exception in El Salvador curtailed the influence of the Ranfla Nacional within MS-13 in the United States.
In contrast, the influence of La Mesa in Los Angeles only grew —and their tone was much less conciliatory: “Anyone who doesn’t want to adapt to the SUR is on their own,” Dangerous summarized. The leaders of Mara Salvatrucha in the United States set out to kill the revolutionaries as soon as they were sent to prisons with Sureños. Not only were they threatened, but they were also forced to change tattoos. “They sent us a wila saying that any homeboy with the letters had to get the number (13) tattooed, and anyone with the code (503) had to have it removed.” 503 is El Salvador’s area code. La Mesa in Los Angeles took advantage of the low point for the Ranfla in El Salvador, with its leaders held incommunicado in prison and others in hiding. Only a few ranfleros were still at large in Mexico, wanted by U.S. authorities, among the 27 gang leaders sought by the U.S. justice system and charged with crimes including terrorism.
“In Lewisburg, basically the entire barrio came under the control of La Mesa de Los Ángeles nationwide in the United States,” said Smiley. Peace within the prison was compromised, and the tension in the atmosphere was palpable, but the resumption of prison visits eased hostilities. Having contact with people on the outside and loved ones calmed some anger and also facilitated the smuggling and illegal trafficking of drugs, cell phones, and other goods into the prison. “From then on, it was all a party; everything was like a celebration. Everyone was drinking and having a good time,” said Smiley.
As the months passed, the few leaders of the Ranfla Nacional who were at large in Mexico were gradually apprehended by U.S. authorities, including Crook. This led to the loss of the leadership exercised from El Salvador over states along the U.S. East Coast. Now La Mesa runs the gang throughout the United States. “We’re part of the Sur 13 program,” summarizes Clandestino, a gang member who used to live on the East Coast but currently resides in Mexico.
By mid-2024, NGU agents made good on their threat for the BOP to remove hundreds of Sureños and carnales from certain federal prisons to make room for MS-13 members and, in the process, clear out Lewisburg. The gang was confined to Lewisburg from March 2022 to April 2024. Members came and went over the course of two years, and many left the gang for good. Seven federal prisons were assigned to MS-13, according to the former federal official. At FCI Yazoo in Mississippi, which comprises three prisons, the gang was assigned to Yazoo City Low I and Yazoo City Medium, where there are about 40 gang members per security level. They were also assigned another low-security facility called Allenwood, in Pennsylvania; two medium-security facilities, Beckley, in West Virginia, and Schuylkill, in Pennsylvania; and two high-security facilities: Big Sandy, in Kentucky, and Cannan, in Pennsylvania. “MS-13 now has its own prisons, where they live far away from the Mafia and the Sureños,” the former official states.
Currently, MS-13 has no criminal alliances. It survives as it did in the early 1990s: isolated and under protective custody. It went from being a major gang in the SUR to a marginalized one. Stoky, who set it into motion, has been ousted by both MS-13 and the eMe.
“Right now, they must decide whether to return to the Mafia or not,” concluded the former official, adding that it will take years to find a solution. “The Mafia expects them to purge their own ranks, including those who are disloyal and those who commit sexual offenses. If they had members who attacked Sureños, those two would have to be eliminated. The eMe doesn’t need the MS. They were fine without them.” Until that peace is achieved, the Bureau of Prisons must “keep them all safe: the Mafia, the MS, and the Sureños.”
The story of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 is not yet over, but everything points to the next chapters being written where it all began: the United States.
*This publication was supported by the 2026 Grant Program of the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES).