by photographer Donna DeCesare
1999 FiftyCrows PhotoFund Winner

Since 1993 I have been documenting the spread of Los Angeles gang culture to El Salvador. My photographs explore the shadow dreams, gang affiliations and dislocated lives of youth who are forming a new “stateless” class of migrant outlaw. My slideshow FROM CIVIL WAR TO GANG WAR, about children and teenagers growing up as urban gang warriors on the mean streets of Los Angeles and San Salvador, has focused the attention of international non-governmental organizations like The Pan American Health Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank on the devastating social costs of neglecting youth. It has inspired Salvadoran programs working with impoverished children to put adolescents on their agendas and to take the spread of youth gangs seriously. Last year, an Alicia Patterson grant made it possible for me to photograph the impact that deported young offenders and gang members from the U.S. are having in Belize and Haiti. I was also able to begin documenting some of the fledging violence prevention programs that are aiding in their social adjustment and helping them to construct new visions and dreams. But youth violence in the region continues to grow at alarming rates. The public in the U.S. and Central America must see that there are non-repressive solutions that work. A Mother Jones grant would enable me to return to Central America and Haiti where I will photograph and tell stories about the work that Homies Unidos in El Salvador, The Conscious Youth Development Program in Belize, and Chans Alternativ in Haiti are doing to stop youth violence.

My sense of urgency about this work has increased as the provisions of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and anti-terrorism legislation passed in 1996 began to be enforced last year. Now one brush with the law “one strike” can result in deportation for one time juvenile offenders. Even legal immigrants who have spent almost their entire lives in the United States are being deported to countries like El Salvador and Haiti whether or not they have relatives there or speak the language. Ironically there is a real danger that an unintended effect of the U.S. laws will be to undermine local efforts to protect the human rights of street children and marginalized adolescents in Central American and Caribbean societies. Nations as distinct as El Salvador and Haiti are already burdened by a legacy of violence and injustice. By greatly accelerating the deportation of youths with U.S. gang affiliations and criminal histories, current U.S. immigration policy is spreading a violent “global underclass” throughout the region. The peacetime homicide rate in El Salvador is now even greater than that of Colombia and far exceeds the average yearly death toll during 12 years of civil war. The temptation for Central American and Caribbean societies and for the media to blame violent crime almost exclusively on unwanted youth from the United States is being marshaled in defense of vigilantism, authoritarianism and vengeful law enforcement strategies. My photographs neither shy away from nor sensationalize the violence and alienation of gang life. I seek to strip away the macho veneer that masks their hopes and fears. With the support of a Mother Jones grant I will make photographs and tell stories about programs that are nourishing hope and transforming lives. These photographs will provide evidence that rehabilitation works, that compassion is not foolish, and that there is no justice without respect for all human rights. My goal is to provoke more enlightened public discourse about how to ameliorate youth crime in the U.S., Central America and the Caribbean.

Shadow Dreams and New Youth Visions

The fetid grey sludge that on drier days creates mucky lanes throughout the Haitian slum of La Saline, swells into a knee-high filthy river outside the cramped quarters where Touche Caman, his girl friend and their two children huddle. ìIf you think this is bad,î he shouts above the metallic din of raindrops pelting his leaky roof, ìjust wait till I take you to see the sewage flowing through Cite Soleil. ìThey say it takes a germ the size of an elephant to kill a Haitian,î he laughs sardonically.

Caman, a 28-year-old street tough who left Haiti at age five and grew up in Stamford Connecticut, is one of my guides through the nether world of youth gangs in Prt-au0Prince slums. A founding member of Chans Altenativ, a Haitian support group for U.S. criminal deportees, Caman is no angel. He spent 3 1/2 years in U.S. prison on a drug charge before being deported to Haiti five years ago. He alternates between hip homeboy banter and glib efforts to shock me with P.T. Barnum visions of the bizarre. But behind all his defensive theatrically Camanís African ìAmericanî eyes offer a complex and poignant vision of Haiti and of his immigrant American childhood.

ìIíll never forget the day my father made me wear my older sisterís hand-me-down jeans to school,î Caman tells me raw emotion in his face. Caman was ridiculed by his school mates and then beaten by his father for being ungrateful. ìHe kept yelling, when I grew up in Haiti we wore rages,î Caman recalls. ìI didnít care about that stuff about Haiti. I just wanted to be accepted. But every time I tried to say how I felt I got beaten.î In his early teens things worsened and by the age of 15 Caman left home. A curious student and avid reader, he completed high school. But to survive Caman began living a street hustlerís life that eventually landed him back in his fatherís country.

Being sent to Haitióthe poorest, most deprived corner of the Western Hemisphereóafter having paid for whatever crime landed you in prisonóis a harsher fate than most criminal deportees face. ìItís a life sentence, like being sent to die in Hell,î Caman remarks. ìIused to see Haiti on TV and change the channelóall that poverty and violence. Who wants to go to Haiti? You want to go to Hawaii.î

Camanís fate is part of a trend. Every year the United States dumps large numbers of immigrant youths with diverse criminal pasts on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. U.S. frustration with crime and illegal immigration have changed rules for non-citizens. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 and anti terrorism legislation passed that same year now mean that one brush with the law, one strike, may put you out of the country.

In U.S. ghettos where struggling immigrant families live alongside Americaís jobless, public institutions from schools to libraries and courts are being eroded by funding cuts. Overworked judges and lawyers routinely process cases with plea bargains rather than the slower determination of guilt or innocence by jury trail. Often young criminal deportees have plea-bargain convictions for non-violent street drug offenses. Some are legal immigrants whose youthful misdemeanorsólike shoplifting or smoking marijuanaóhave been retroactively reclassified as more serious offenses. Others are adolescents who do not realize that their misdeeds bear harsher consequences than those of their American friends: a petty crime can result in deportation to a country where you never set foot, as happens to Haitians born in the Bahamas. And nearly all have paid for their crimes with U.S. prison time before the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) scoops them up and sends them ìhomeî.

Crime and punishment are big concerns not only in the United States, but throughout Central America and the Caribbean. The emergence of youth gangs beyond U.S. borders and rising rates of violent crime, in countries as culturally distinct as El Salvador and Haiti are routinely attributed in the press to the burgeoning numbers of U.S. criminal deportees and gang members who arrive in the region each year, El Salvador has responded by suspending rights of habeas corpus and reinstating the death penalty. In Haiti the government has recently begun imprisoning U.S. criminal deportees upon arrival, even though they have committed no crime there.

In El Salvador or Haiti you donít need as crystal ball to predict where demographics and economics are headed. Roughly half of both countriesí populations are under the age of 18 with most children living in abject poverty. Even if more impoverished Salvadoran youths could aspire to a maquiladora factory jobóthe fastest growing sector of the Salvadoran economyóthey would earn the Salvadoran wage of $4.00 a day. With the price of a pound of beansóthe Salvadoran staple foodóthe same as it is in the U.S., such wages barely ensure subsistence. In Haiti where the minimum wage is $2.00 a day, the situation is even more desperately Darwinian.

Since 1993, in photographs and text, I have been documenting the stories of Salvadoran children and adolescents who are forming part of an emerging ìstatelessî class of migrant outlaw. My photographic slideshow FROM CIVIL WAR TO GANG WAR tells the stories of the 90s generation of urban gang warriors growing up in El Salvador and Los Angeles. My photographs of the Salvadoran civil war and migrating refugees in the 80s provide a context for understanding the livbes of working-class Salvadoran immigrants in post0industrial Los Angeles and the destiny of their wayward ìAmericanizedî children being deported back to El Salvador in the 90s.

I am proud that my one hundred image, narrated slideshow has motivated international NGOís including the Pan American Health Organization, the Inter-American Development Bank, Save the Children, UNICEF and others to allot a bigger share of their programming funds to adolescents. But as we head into the next millennium vigilantism, authoritarianism and vengeful law enforcement strategies are threatening human rights gains made in emerging democracies like El Salvador and Haiti. By contributing to the spread of a violent ìglobal underclassî throughout the region, U.S. immigration policy is inadvertently adding to hysteria about crime, undermining human rights gains, and eroding faith in the democratic values and civil institutions that U.S. policy makers want to support.