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Columbia Global Reports
State of War: MS-13 and El Salvador's World of Violence
The story of MS-13 and its American roots
One of President Donald Trump’s favorite rhetorical motifs is stoking fear that members of the MS-13 gang from El Salvador intend to cross the U.S. border in force and wreak havoc on American society. It’s an inaccurate scenario, and in State of War , foreign correspondent William Wheeler tells the real In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the repressive Salvadoran government in a brutal civil war, and many Salvadoran families fled to America—especially Los Angeles, where teenagers in poor neighborhoods founded MS-13. A decade later, the U.S. responded to rising anti-immigrant sentiment by deporting many Salvadorans back home. Ever since, El Salvador has been one of the most violent countries in the world.
Wheeler interviewed gang members, frustrated intelligence officers, and crime investigators who give chilling insider reports of how corruption at the highest levels has helped the gangs become stronger, richer, and more influential than ever. State of War makes vividly clear why Salvadorans are fleeing their country, and why Trump’s harsh immigration and asylum policies may only empower the gangs more.
“A gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture.” —Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote
One of President Donald Trump’s favorite rhetorical motifs is stoking fear that members of the MS-13 gang from El Salvador intend to cross the U.S. border in force and wreak havoc on American society. It’s an inaccurate scenario, and in State of War , foreign correspondent William Wheeler tells the real In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the repressive Salvadoran government in a brutal civil war, and many Salvadoran families fled to America—especially Los Angeles, where teenagers in poor neighborhoods founded MS-13. A decade later, the U.S. responded to rising anti-immigrant sentiment by deporting many Salvadorans back home. Ever since, El Salvador has been one of the most violent countries in the world.
Wheeler interviewed gang members, frustrated intelligence officers, and crime investigators who give chilling insider reports of how corruption at the highest levels has helped the gangs become stronger, richer, and more influential than ever. State of War makes vividly clear why Salvadorans are fleeing their country, and why Trump’s harsh immigration and asylum policies may only empower the gangs more.
“A gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture.” —Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 14, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 4, 2025
This is a short book about the rise of gangs in El Salvador and the current state of gang warfare in the country. It talks about how the gangs arose and how they adapted over time to counter the efforts of law enforcement in both countries. Parts of the story are told through the eyes of some of the gangsters.
The book jumps around a bit moving back and forth between El Salvador and the US with less than seamless writing. I found the book to be informative but did not care for the presentation. I also have very little empathy for gangsters who hack people to death with machetes or shoot people because they cannot find the relative that they are looking for. Equally I have little sympathy for the American gangsters of the 1920s. Criminals are criminals.
If you enjoy books about gangsters and believe they should be coddled, you will enjoy this book
The book jumps around a bit moving back and forth between El Salvador and the US with less than seamless writing. I found the book to be informative but did not care for the presentation. I also have very little empathy for gangsters who hack people to death with machetes or shoot people because they cannot find the relative that they are looking for. Equally I have little sympathy for the American gangsters of the 1920s. Criminals are criminals.
If you enjoy books about gangsters and believe they should be coddled, you will enjoy this book
July 22, 2020
As far as a nonfiction text like this goes, I found the writing to be very accessible and informative. I liked how Wheeler would highlight certain individuals in order to illustrate the flawed systems that are in place. I knew very little about all of this and I left thinking about the complexities involved in even tackling a problem like gangs in a country like El Salvador. It's a mess and there is a line in the work that "you can't measure prevention" which makes people really myopic and focused on short term solutions that clearly won't work, because there is nothing glamorous about prevention. Anyway, I'm glad I read it.
February 8, 2024
Very interesting read. Knocked it down bc of the writing but learned a lot.
July 11, 2020
3.5 stars Interesting look into the complexities of gang violence in El Salvador.
February 21, 2020
In State of War, Wheeler acknowledges that MS13 is an American creation; emigrants fleeing the violence of El Salvador's Civil War (1980-1992) settled in Los Angeles where disenfranchised youths formed gangs that in turn were exported back to El Salvador under Clinton's zero tolerance policies. In El Salvador these same tough-on crime policies have been perpetuated under both right and left administrations which have only made gangs like MS13 and Barrio18 stronger. Currently there are still government death squads roaming into local communities to kill gang members and many times their families. Wheeler ends the book with an interview of a police officer awarded asylum in the US. He talks about how much he misses his time on the death squads.
State of War is a very informative read. Unfortunately, there's not too much optimism for the situation in El Salvador getting any better any time soon.
State of War is a very informative read. Unfortunately, there's not too much optimism for the situation in El Salvador getting any better any time soon.
June 8, 2021
Highly recommended. This is a short book that packs a tremendous amount of content into a lean and engrossing package. Most of the content is original investigative research by there author, who has assembled a compelling portrait of the worlds of criminal and law enforcement elements in El Salvador. The account is unsparing and intense, and the conclusion which ultimately emerges is that MS 13 and the other gangs are part of a larger web of abuses that also implicate the authorities and the political parties and which trace back to the country's troubled past, including its violent civil war.
October 24, 2023
[audio] This included a lot of specific stories of murder and not enough about the big picture. It also essentially wholly blames the United States and our policies politics (both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump - oh, and Jeff Sessions gets a shout out in the end) for all of the turmoil and strife in El Salvador. I don't think I learned anything that I didn't already know.
Skip.
Skip.
April 15, 2026
State of War is a brief examination of MS-13 and how decisions made by the United States and El Salvador influenced the gang community. There isn’t a great way to realistically present Wheeler’s work without acknowledging my own subjectivity because Salvadoran history is my history and this impacts my evaluation, impression, and takeaways from Wheeler’s writing and field work in El Salvador among community players, passive members, and affected nonparticipants.
This book was a tough read, but I commend Wheeler’s ability to remain evenhanded when exploring complicated topics around gang life – the nature of responsibility and blameworthiness to a subculture’s evolution and maintenance, the response of international policies and surveillance to ‘radical’ survival mechanisms, and the afterlife and consequences of ‘recognition’ that doesn’t just cost lives but claim them as assets. These are complex issues to address in a short book, and no reader should expect that Wheeler will identify and interpret the conditions of El Salvador’s twenty-first century future that remains entangled in its gangs’ “violent” cultures. However, Wheeler’s writing is straightforward and that accessibility is a strength, particularly when he’s attempting to represent and resolve an environment with a history that is flawed and problematic at best.
With a childhood transformed by the Salvadoran Civil War and through gang life, I expected ambivalence. It made me consider my own life and livelihood, countless others as collateral damage in the “war on gangs” – what kind of histories are lost, unmade, and made impossible and beyond reach when acknowledging and reckoning with the various gradations of failure made through the nation-state’s policies and responses? Can we possibly imagine and create new possibilities, a different future that admits and attests to its violent origins but chooses to understand how that genesis is substantive to its enactment?
Wheeler doesn’t resolve the “further action” in response to MS-13 and Barrio 18’s synthesis with the Salvadoran government. This is one of those books where it chronologically substantiates the current problem with these gangs: gangs’ roots in Los Angeles; their inevitable exile to an unprepared El Salvador, still captive to warfare; a series of oscillating responses by the government, from ineffective crackdowns to their recognitions and even government-mandated concessions; clandestine effects by the gang, including ‘disappearing’ individuals to reduce statistics; and now the dilemma of the gang ‘powder keg’ – where the gangs have accessed ‘legitimate’ avenues to broadcast their existence and continued presence.
Something that felt dangerous in Wheeler’s work here that he expressed but did not synthesize in a meaningful way for readership is the last point: the gangs’ ‘recognition’ by El Salvador is the “chink” in the nation-state. This doesn’t just legitimize the gangs through government policy, but it fully invests value into their status, giving them built-in capital and power; MS-13 and Barrio 18 are transnational criminal organizations and can use, weaponize, erode, and dismantle sovereignty ‘logic’ of the nation-state because they have authority over the very state that seeks to ‘control’ them. El Salvador’s future rests upon the impossible contradictions of seeking ‘solidarity’ with organizations that now operate at their expense and with acknowledgment. Even worse, if the nation-state itself manufactures the exact circumstances which it proclaims to be vehemently opposed to, how can there be any goodwill be created or sustained if the state’s actions reveal its citizens are fungible and expendable?
While the book is positioned as an exposition of repercussions to government response, it should be worth mentioning how the real losers in this situation are the affected nonparticipants, the everyday people pressed into a severe existence because they are relegated to ‘nonentity’ status. The book shouldn’t resolve this conflict, and no one should expect it to. However, I think the book misses the true afterlife: reckoning with the debt carved into its population, the diaspora, displaced people, the citizenry, individuals who are subject to whatever decisions are made, paid for, or fought without thinking of how it continues to impact them. It is important to acknowledge that I write this as someone shaped by this history but reading from a diasporic distance; my relationship with El Salvador’s present is mediated by that displacement. I do think it’s extremely important to preface that those living under these conditions may hold a different position entirely. My relationship to gang violence and the various nation-states’ social, economic, and political failures – both the United States and El Salvador – mean that this work and my criticism of it is a different register than someone else and I want my review of Wheeler’s contributions to reflect that.
This book was a tough read, but I commend Wheeler’s ability to remain evenhanded when exploring complicated topics around gang life – the nature of responsibility and blameworthiness to a subculture’s evolution and maintenance, the response of international policies and surveillance to ‘radical’ survival mechanisms, and the afterlife and consequences of ‘recognition’ that doesn’t just cost lives but claim them as assets. These are complex issues to address in a short book, and no reader should expect that Wheeler will identify and interpret the conditions of El Salvador’s twenty-first century future that remains entangled in its gangs’ “violent” cultures. However, Wheeler’s writing is straightforward and that accessibility is a strength, particularly when he’s attempting to represent and resolve an environment with a history that is flawed and problematic at best.
With a childhood transformed by the Salvadoran Civil War and through gang life, I expected ambivalence. It made me consider my own life and livelihood, countless others as collateral damage in the “war on gangs” – what kind of histories are lost, unmade, and made impossible and beyond reach when acknowledging and reckoning with the various gradations of failure made through the nation-state’s policies and responses? Can we possibly imagine and create new possibilities, a different future that admits and attests to its violent origins but chooses to understand how that genesis is substantive to its enactment?
Wheeler doesn’t resolve the “further action” in response to MS-13 and Barrio 18’s synthesis with the Salvadoran government. This is one of those books where it chronologically substantiates the current problem with these gangs: gangs’ roots in Los Angeles; their inevitable exile to an unprepared El Salvador, still captive to warfare; a series of oscillating responses by the government, from ineffective crackdowns to their recognitions and even government-mandated concessions; clandestine effects by the gang, including ‘disappearing’ individuals to reduce statistics; and now the dilemma of the gang ‘powder keg’ – where the gangs have accessed ‘legitimate’ avenues to broadcast their existence and continued presence.
Something that felt dangerous in Wheeler’s work here that he expressed but did not synthesize in a meaningful way for readership is the last point: the gangs’ ‘recognition’ by El Salvador is the “chink” in the nation-state. This doesn’t just legitimize the gangs through government policy, but it fully invests value into their status, giving them built-in capital and power; MS-13 and Barrio 18 are transnational criminal organizations and can use, weaponize, erode, and dismantle sovereignty ‘logic’ of the nation-state because they have authority over the very state that seeks to ‘control’ them. El Salvador’s future rests upon the impossible contradictions of seeking ‘solidarity’ with organizations that now operate at their expense and with acknowledgment. Even worse, if the nation-state itself manufactures the exact circumstances which it proclaims to be vehemently opposed to, how can there be any goodwill be created or sustained if the state’s actions reveal its citizens are fungible and expendable?
While the book is positioned as an exposition of repercussions to government response, it should be worth mentioning how the real losers in this situation are the affected nonparticipants, the everyday people pressed into a severe existence because they are relegated to ‘nonentity’ status. The book shouldn’t resolve this conflict, and no one should expect it to. However, I think the book misses the true afterlife: reckoning with the debt carved into its population, the diaspora, displaced people, the citizenry, individuals who are subject to whatever decisions are made, paid for, or fought without thinking of how it continues to impact them. It is important to acknowledge that I write this as someone shaped by this history but reading from a diasporic distance; my relationship with El Salvador’s present is mediated by that displacement. I do think it’s extremely important to preface that those living under these conditions may hold a different position entirely. My relationship to gang violence and the various nation-states’ social, economic, and political failures – both the United States and El Salvador – mean that this work and my criticism of it is a different register than someone else and I want my review of Wheeler’s contributions to reflect that.
March 11, 2025
3.5 stars. Slim, interesting little volume of reportage on MS-13. Researched and written over the latter half of the 2010s, the author obviously missed the massive changes under Bukele and the dramatic improvement in the security situation. The author’s intimation that El Salvador won’t be able to arrest its way out of the problem turned out to be spectacularly wrong; credit where credit is due: say what you will about due process, Bukele sure did manage to bring security to the country.
Generally, the book is well written and includes some really thoughtful analysis. Some of the interviews were excellent as well.
That said, I found a bit too much of the already-limited space was dedicated to case studies of interesting but ultimately insignificant figures. I would have preferred a bit more historical context and explanation of the geopolitics of the period, but hey maybe that’s just me.
All in all a decent read which you could whip off in a day or two.
Generally, the book is well written and includes some really thoughtful analysis. Some of the interviews were excellent as well.
That said, I found a bit too much of the already-limited space was dedicated to case studies of interesting but ultimately insignificant figures. I would have preferred a bit more historical context and explanation of the geopolitics of the period, but hey maybe that’s just me.
All in all a decent read which you could whip off in a day or two.
February 1, 2020
On the origin and rise of one of the world's most eminent gangs and how national and international policies only exacerbate their reach and wealth, increasing their credibility as actors with power on par with the state's. The reportage here is part of the Columbia (University) Global Reports series of long-form journalism on current events from around the world.
February 14, 2021
I would like this book even if someone I know didn't write it. This is top-shelf badass & smartypants journalism blowing the lid off the MS-13 gang that was born in the wake of El Salvador's brutal civil war and the American foreign policies that have helped stoke the rise of the gang and descend the country into violence.
March 13, 2026
Engrossing and readable, skillfully uses interviews to compose a broader but coherent narrative. Unfortunately many of the links he draws rely on a mere handful of interviews and the book is too brief to persuasively articulate the full scope of what it discusses
April 20, 2022
Great background reading for those heading to Latin America or those wanting to understand the origins of how this gang has gained a stronghold in San Salvador once again.
June 3, 2024
Deep dive into the the post Civil War violence and governence in El Salvador.
June 9, 2024
Too short, and lacking in details, but a decent read nonetheless.
July 17, 2025
really shows the fcked up aspects of el salvador’s gangs and the terrifying influence they held over the nation before bukele
July 6, 2025
Fairly informative and brief overview of the situation pertaining to gang violence and operations on pre-Bukele El Salvador. Helpful for understanding the current situation in the country.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews