The boys with the long hair were newer to the neighborhood. They went by a name that Eddie had heard for the first time only recently: Mara Salvatrucha, or MS. This was Salvadoran slang—a portmanteau meant to convey scrappiness and savagery. Mara referred to a gang or group of close-knit guys; the word first became popular in El Salvador in the 1950s, as part of a loose translation of a widely seen Charlton Heston movie called The Naked Jungle. Salva was a nod to the country,
