PBS Street Gang Documentary Pulls No Punches

Signs of the times: Loony, left, and Diablo, two leaders of San Salvador's 18th Street gang. (By Tim Watts)

The camera pans the crowd in slo-mo, dancing with a crowd of very young men. They are bare-chested and tattooed, pumped up on testosterone, flashing gang signs, looking joyous. There are women, too, just as young, looking on top of the world, the camera following them through the streets of San Salvador and into a playground's basketball court, eavesdropping as they negotiate the rules of the game.

Can I hold up my hands to my face? A young, ponytailed woman wants to know. Hit back, maybe?

"You can't do anything," another woman informs her. You've just got to take it.

And take it the girl does, as four or five women and one man kick the daylights out of her, 18 kicks in all, to commemorate the name of the gang she is trying to join: the 18th Street gang of San Salvador, the subject of an often mesmerizing documentary, "18 With a Bullet." (The film, written and directed by Ricardo Pollack, airs tonight at 9 on PBS.)

The initiate curls on the ground, flinching but resolute. Her attackers yank her up, pat her on the back, and grin.

"Welcome to the gang!" they tell her.

As openings go, it's a real humdinger, quickly establishing tone and territory. But it's also a bit misleading, because aside from this scene, women are mere extras in the documentary, occasionally seen but rarely heard from, unless it's the weary wife of Slappy, stoic and suffering, telling her murdering, crackhead husband, "I swear to you, this is the last time. . ."

Instead, the filmmakers focus on the compelling men of 18: Slappy, Charlie, Travieso, Duke and their compadres, a baby-faced crew of conflicted souls finding family, solace and structure in each other.

"I love my gang more than my mother," says one gang member whose mother abandoned him to find work in the United States. "When I needed my mother, she wasn't there for me." The gang, however, was.

About that gang: It is an American export, a little example of cross-cultural fertilization gone awry. Many of the gangbangers depicted were born in El Salvador and came with their parents to the States, growing up in Los Angeles, where they formed allegiances with the original 18th Street gang, or MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), whose presence has been acutely felt in the Washington area.

Gang life leads to trouble with the law, and many of these gangbangers are deported and booted back home. Unmoored and missing family, they re-create their gang in tiny El Salvador. Because of the country's bloody 12-year civil war, there are guns aplenty, and no shortage of bombastic young men eager to use them. Today, the documentary reports, El Salvador has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The cost of gang violence on the tiny nation: $1 billion a year, according to the filmmakers.

"A bunch of homies came through, deported," says Slappy, himself a deportee, "and they still come."