The initiation began with a ritual beating. On a hot summer day in 1999, in the wooded area of a Charlotte, N.C., park, some 70 gang members encircled "Jorge." Three of them stepped forward and unleashed a fury of fists and kicks at him for 13 seconds-a duration derived from the gang's name, Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS-13. Jorge (not his real name) defended himself valiantly, even cracking one of his assailants' ribs. Afterward, the gang members told him, "You're a homie now." They gave him a blue bandanna and a nickname, and ushered him into thug life-a world of constant threats, of bloody clashes with rivals, of such indelible images as a gang member's head split apart after a fight and oozing brain matter. The gangsta life "didn't seem real to me at first," Jorge says. Then "everything just went insane."
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