Adios Tatuajes

Clinic that erases gang tattoos treads a risky path
Some ex-members use acid, hot irons to burn symbols off

N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post
Friday, December 8, 2006

San Salvador - The first patient of the day was a plump 16-year-old
wearing sparkly barrettes, Mary Janes-style shoes and a shy smile.

But there was nothing girlish about the tattoo that Abelina Orellana
had come to get removed: a giant "18" scrawled across her back in
crude, Gothic numerals.

The emblem signified membership in the vicious 18th Street, or
Eighteen, gang that, along with rival Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has
terrorized communities across Central America for nearly a decade.

As long as she was marked with the symbol, Orellana's hopes of building
a new life apart from the gang were slim. Employers would be fearful of
hiring her. Members of MS-13 could mistake her for an active member and
attack her. And police might jail her under a 2003 law that makes gang
membership a crime -- with tattoos the only evidence required.

Indeed, so strong is the stigma of a gang tattoo in El Salvador that
some former members who can't afford professional removal have resorted
to burning their skin off with battery acid or a hot iron.

This health clinic in the basement of the concrete-block San Judas
Tadeu Catholic Church in northeast San Salvador offers one of the few
alternatives. Olga Morales, coordinator of the clinic's Adios Tatuajes,
or "Goodbye Tattoos," project, estimates that since the program began
in 2002, she has helped more than 1,000 patients.

At first, all were former MS-13 or Eighteen members -- including
Salvadorans deported from Washington and other U.S. cities where the
gangs are also active. These days, more than half of Morales' patients
are people seeking to get rid of ordinary tattoos they fear could be
mistaken for gang symbols.

Now Morales cast her practiced eye on Orellana's back. The challenge,
she explained, would be to avoid leaving behind a scar in the same
shape as the tattoo she was about to erase.

"OK, don't worry. I have the solution," announced Morales, an
anesthesiologist by training. "I'll burn some extra skin next to the
top and bottom of the '1' so the scar will just look like a rectangle."

Orellana nodded her agreement. Then she climbed onto a metal table
topped by a thin, plastic mattress and lay on her stomach.

This working-class enclave, known as Mejicanos, is considered such a
stronghold of MS-13 that cabdrivers will not bring passengers here
after dark. Last year, neighborhood gang leaders accused the Goodbye
Tattoos project of trying to lure away their members and threatened to
shut the clinic down.

At least five of Morales' patients have been shot dead -- she presumes
in retaliation for trying to leave their gangs.

Three weeks ago, local MS-13 leaders sent word that they wanted the
clinic to start paying $400 a month in "renta," the gang's term for the
protection money it charges everyone in the neighborhood, from bus
drivers to pupusa vendors.

Each time, the parish priest managed to defuse the crisis by personally
meeting with the gang leaders.

"But the truth is we're very vulnerable," Morales said with a nervous
smile. "We have no security. We are at their mercy."

Lately, few former MS-13 members dare come for tattoo removal for fear
of being recognized by someone on the street. "I would say we get one
MS member for every 10 from the 18th Street gang," Morales said.

"This is not the job I was praying to God to find for me," she
confessed.

"But it is very gratifying. I know that I am making a mark in my
patients' lives that neither of us will forget." From:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGCHMRQOF1.DTL


Making a mark? No pun intended, I'll assume.

--
Curt
http://curtjames.com/