Written for the New York Times of Foreign Affairs and the new republic and other publications of that sort. Hes also an emmy nominated producer of a documentary series on showtime. Viewing in march. Its called the trade and its about International Human trafficking. William is a graduate of Columbia UniversityInternational Affairs and also abhe lives in new york and is a frequent contributor to the discourse around several hot button issues around the world. Please join me in welcoming William Wheeler to our discussion tonight. Thank you guys for coming out. Im going to read a little bit to give you a flavor of what we are talking about and then the two of us will talking conversation for about and a half hour then we will open up to questions. Be thinking about any probing insightful questions you want to ask. This passage comes from when i tried to do this book is look at the cycles of Foreign Policy of the u. S. That are behind entrance themselves across south america and are a big part of the equation driving so many people from the region to a seven borders. Its really trying to understand some push factors behind our border crisis so in the process i started reporting in the los angeles origins of ms 13 and 12 18 street and i followed them in time so this passage comes from one of the first salvadoran born gang members that find themselves swept up into ms 13 energy is a good fit for why these gangs from such fertile terrain in Central America. What became the ms stronghold of our statement will join the gang in 1989 when he was 11 years old the world was entering his 10th and bloodiest years with what he grown up with. Waiting for his father to come home because they were torching buses on the road hiding under the bed while battle raged in the local cemetery. His family left in waves while manwell remained behind with his mother. The neighborhood already fed its shares of sons to the conflict including soldiers like ernesto smokey miranda who played abbecame founding members of ms13. Manwell had been introduced to the game by his cousin whose parents sent him back to el salvador to get away from the trouble in los angeles. Strictly to the neighborhood under the wing of this tall tattooed gangster he felt strong. The older kids who would bully him looked at him differently a few months later manwell found a few deported gang members to jump him in he told himself he didnt need to fear the gunfire anymore now he could shoot back. He jumped in two friends he talked about how this will be Something Big and leave a mark. Years later he would see abas a monster he helped create a cancer he spread but the time he wanted to be the bravest gangster, the most tattooed liberal symbol, all of it. Like the young foot soldiers at sanchez and the other deported gang members were recruiting to their banner manwell as part of a new generation of wheelbarrows that would soon surpass the processes and sophistication and brutality. At the time joining again was neither a way to make a living, nor yet a fake one born into along with his neighborhood. Manwell and the rest were selling with his family there was a young homeless man in the neighborhood his mother worked as a prostitute and he would go around barefoot and ragged clothes first they offered him food they decided to recruit him they warned him of the dangers but little devil replied he is nothing to lose. He told he was not alone anymore and they would love him and protect him. One day an older boy beat him up in the park they gave little devil a knife and returned en masse to confront him. Manwell and the others proclaimed that little devil was part of the morrow now and the young boy stabbed his attackers in front of his new brothers food, protection, baloney, and a poor shellshocked country jewett out as part of a powerful a i think its a very powerful passage. It really does illustrate lot about whats going on as far as people on the ground who have to not just navigate the politics but also the extra judicial actors that are in el salvador. I think it would be very good for us as an audience here to really take a step back, take a step back and talk about the history of why this happened, some of the critical events that led up to the current situation. I think most americans probably know of el salvador from president Donald Trumps rhetoric about it. About how it is a dire threat to the United States and they are exporting violence in the United States. As your book illustrates, history is not anywhere near so need to the story. I feel like its important to go back, at least a little bit generally, go back to 1979 when the celebratory and silver civil war basically exploded onto the scene. Could you tell us a little bit about how that happened, what were the people fighting about and what were some of the foreign interventions that started happening once the civil war started . 1979 el salvador is like a lot of latin america like a lot of Central America sort of driven by its inequalities. There was basically 14 landowning families that had been in charge had all the power was awash with civil insurgencies. Its a cold war and you got right on the heels of 20 years earlier in cuba the cuban revolution 1979 in nicaragua very similar leftist revolution that they rose updike the cuban revolution and inspired a sort of revolt from the countryside that caused the regime to fall. And 79 you actually have the right wing who do empower and what sort of widely credited with sparking the civil war was the assassination of the catholic archbishop named oscar romero. He was given mass in church run hospital in the capital of san salvador. An unknown assailant, presumably later prudent from the right wing takes a rifle, walks in the entryway of the hospital and shoots him dead. A fourth Million People turn out to this catholic priests funeral and he had been sort of a staunch critic a rightwing government that was using torture and disappearances and widespread death squads regime that was characterized by terrorism and hed been really speaking out as a voice of social conscience to get people to stop obeying the orders. When ramirez killed the quarter Million People turned out to his funeral and turns into a massacre. Rightwing forces start shooting down on the mourners, their snipers, explosions, 42 people died in this televised address that had drawn a fourth Million People. And very quickly in rapid succession you have the outbreak of the civil war that pitted five video groups leftists across the leftist spectrum. The initial hope was that they would do it it happened in nicaragua, cuba and be able to ignite a popular aand bring the regime down. They were particularly trying to do this very quickly because they knew that Ronald Reagan was going to office and they were worried that he would take sides. That initial uprising was unable to bring down the regime. As reagan came into office he did in fact double down and back to rightwing government and for a period of a couple years you had a bottle that was playing out of the country saw between these groups and the a aforces. As of about 1982 in 1983 it looked like the getty as had the upper hand. They were probably going to win. They had control of about a fourth of the territory of el salvador. The right going government was stealing about a thousand people a month at this point. They were doing it with u. S. Trained troops and supplies and they were unable to wage sophisticated counterinsurgency so most often they would go into these remote villages and try to drain the sea to get the fish. They would sort of scorched campaign. Some of these battalions were implicated as in the case of almost all day the mascara for about thousand people mostly children some of the worst abuses known to man it looked like the gideons were going to win the world but that u. S. Double down under reagan its a started supplying particularly air support and at that point the nature of the conflict shifted into war of attrition that dragged on for the better part of a decade. It was in this period of time that he had 80,000 people die you had a Million People displaced half of them internationally. A lot of them they mostly fled to los angeles and settled a lot in the area around macarthur park. In that time period to him or early 80s, the sort of aba los angeles yet African American gangs, latino gangs, the salvadorans sell themselves at the bottom of the pecking order in this area. Started to as they got swept up first they were banding together started in a group of stoner kids that smoke pot and listen to black metal music. As they started to get creative on the gains they circulated through the hall and came out looking like very much an american again. I think thats the first big misconception of the trump rhetoric messages that its framed as something the u. S. Imported from el salvador but really its just sort of very american byproduct of the realities in los angeles. The war goes on until about 92 and 192 comes becomes a lot easier to make the case that people who dont have a regular immigration situation here are to be sent back if they want to follow the law, bill clinton starts the first mass deportation of salvadorans with criminal records and start sending back these products of the la gang environment. Where they have a little criminal network and gain tactics like extortion and sends them back to these countries like el salvador, guatemala, basically they have very little connection and the environment in which they land and they fall back on their survival skills of gay members. But they find is that a lot of the orphans of this war talk to their banner. Thats the beginning of the Central American phase of the gang war. Whats really interesting to me right now is that we have a product that originated in Central America and due to the fact that there are refugees in my understanding approximately 500,000 people actually fled to el salvador during that time period and many of them did end up here in los angeles, but as time goes on as Technology Develop some of that problem is no longer just corded off here in los angeles. This isnt just from a personal level but actually a governmental level. The war ends in 1992 but i think its kind of interesting to look at whats happening in el salvador in terms of their political policies toward some of these gang members. The american deportations began, thats my understanding and lots of members or former members of ms13 or deported back to el salvador. Then there is a rise in crime, from what i understand. Then the government response in a particularly heavyhanded way, tell me about this model deborah policy they implement it in 2002 and the subsequent super model duro they implement in 2006. They actually say that when i went looking to el salvador, i had been in europe and middle east and looking at how the european political system was being shaken up by refugees from libya, syria and i watch some of the first far right populist scripps form in greece and hungary and the groups trying to use this sort of refugee crisis as a way to galvanize largely fascist groups and concerns among voters so when i looked at what was happening on our own border with el salvador in the southern border crisis i was really interested in how this was going to affect our political system. Thats kind of what drove me down there. I went down there i think the other question i was concerned with was the u. S. Really responsible for Latin Americans gain crisis . We deported these gangsters into these countries still reeling from the civil wars, what does that mean for the largescale deportations happening right now in our own government . Was academic this problem worse . So when i got down there in the evidence i found was kind of mixed. One of the first things i found was that el salvador in government had its own complexity of this problem. Primarily that came in the form of this war that the salvadoran state waged against the gangs. For 20 years u. S. Have been supporting salvadoran governments from both sides of the political spectrum they use a very sort of heavyhanded military response where they go into the gang neighborhoods, they arrest these kids who look like they might be gang members, they throw them in jail on very little option without very little grounds often they dont have a case, the case is thrown out. The coldest plan Moe Baddourah on the iron fist. It backfired down there. Its actually by putting gang members and with each other what used to be neighborhood gangs neighborhood groups have become National Gangs and National Groups by fighting a military response, a lot of the gang members had sort of responded in kind and become little armies. At the same time they are doing that, theres a lot of abthe gay members have learned to barter and fight against the government and every time the military the stick has been used without the carrot, it lunges more and more people into what looks more like a ab in some segments of society. I was trying to make sense of what the salvadoran government had done to make the problem worse. I interviewed one of the first, the architects he was the former National Police chief from el salvador and he said to me can we call it plan Moe Baddourah but it wasnt a plan it was a plan. It was a publicity exercise. There wasnt a well thought through criminal philosophy behind this. It was basically a way to win but max. We had elections coming up and our party was had done really nothing to turn the tide in the country economically we had these pr announcements where the president was on tv there were these troopers coming down the walls and we announced we were going to go after the gangs. It was politically successful but everyone has agreed in the country that it backfired tremendously. I think anyone who reads like any part of this book will definitely wonder how you actually got access to some of these accounts. You are interviewing current and former members of not just ms13 but also government officials and other informants. Could you maybe let us know a little bit how that process works. When you show up in a country like el salvador, as a foreigner, how to get people to talk to you . I was working at with a photojournalist on the commit site anywhere you moved to a new city can be your friends but you together with friends, they take you out for a beer you kind of go from there. It would put the photojournalist, hes really talented down there named juan carlos. Hed been covering a gang issue for a long time so he could make some introductions but i also found i was in honduras honduras is horrific and aba hitman who had told me how he killed 150 people. He was a little bit concerned about who i was. He took me out for many beers in the effort to find out if i was a spook or cop or an arc. I remember having to twerk on the dance floor with him one night to enlighten his concerns. Sometimes you have to go the extra mile. In el salvador there was almost a abover the whole thing. Gang members were very reluctant to talk. I come on the heels of this truce. People were very tightlipped. We kinda go fishing i went out the first day i was out there the book opens with the scene where i was out with this selftaught csi crime scene investigator sort of guy. Hes a very bizarre and sort of eccentric figure. He has this real passion about digging up these bodies and giving closure to the victims families. He very much sees whats happening in el salvador as a war in which the poor are the victims. He introduced me to an informant from ms13 who tells me the story of the grant we are excavating its pretty beautiful brutal, the gangs use violence as a way of branding and a respect so i can read a little bit from a section where people talk about why they use a machete to kill and the logic behind that choice. Going to see the police and finding informants was one of the ways i talk to people. I found some of those people to be very very frank. Very frank about what they had done in the sins they carried with them on their shoulders and i felt that they needed to be understood. I also felt that they wanted it to be known that one of these guys said and probably end up ive turned informant and he was from the gang barrio 18 and he had turned informant and the only place he could go to high because the gangs control large swaths of the country was to go to the territory of his enemies that he was actually living in marcella tricia territory and he got a civilian job and nobody knew what his back story was. Nobody knew he had killed seven people nobody knew that his tattoos were all hidden. But he said he had recently been recognized by two former gang members on a bus. The reality is you cant hide forever in this country, somebody defined in public and end up the same way my victim did. He said thats fair. I didnt have any right to do what i had done. He was open to honest accounting about that. He also said, it really stuck with me, the other thing that i realized in this society its really easy to blame gang members for everything. I think thats the thing he wanted me to understand is that the society there was some form of what people might call narco democracy happening. Highlevel collaboration between drug traffickers and members of the political elite for both parties. He was trying to help me understand that while gay members had done these horrible things and things he really regretted there was also the public conception of the gangs and something that salvadoran elites behind the maduro trafficking and trump as well and various other american Law Enforcement officials is that this idea of ms13 as the scary monster beneath your bed theres a real danger to doing that because it gives the gangs a lot more capital in recruiting power it also hides or serves as foil for a lot of the other problems i dont have easy solutions in the societies were the gang members find traction. One of the things that you point out in the book is that the el salvador in government is certainly not a clean player in this entire situation. In your reporting, did you feel like there was ever a threat to you . And did you feel like there was more pressure from either th