They took the opportunity in the trend-setting fiction programs of narcos and gangs. They took advantage of the ease with which Spaniards hook up to the series. And so, they campaigned on a fake series about the gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to be released on February 19. The name of the series would be “Maras. See, hear and be quiet”. The promotion showed elaborate trailers an entertaining and seductive plot, and promised renowned actors such as Edgar Vittorino, tattooed to the eyelids, would have a part in the show.
Since the beginning of February, a very active social media campaign had raised expectations. Followers reached nearly 10,000 users, potentials fans. The audience seemed to be assured and, with it, the attention.
Bajo el control de las maras no se vive, se intenta sobrevivir. Vas a descubrir qué es el miedo en #MarasLaSerie, una producción de @globomedia.
👉🏽 https://t.co/Tt5EvnCBGx pic.twitter.com/fruAeV2i2k
— Maras. La serie (@MarasLaSerie) February 8, 2019
Attention is precisely what The Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR) wanted. On the day of the promised premiere, the audience found a campaign that broke the asepsis of Hollywood style fiction and put reality before their eyes, in their own territory. In association with the production company Globomedia, CEAR showed them that the violence of the Maras in the North Triangle of Central America does exist. Their victims flee and arrive in countries like Spain, but most are denied refugee status.
Instead of a fiction series, viewers came across five short episodes that tell the true stories of five victims of the Maras whose asylum applications were rejected in Spain: Jonathan, who saw his teenage daughter being raped by gang members; Milagros, who the gang wanted to recruit and who was sexually harassed by a gang member; Emily, who is transgender and who was attacked by Maras with stones and forced to flee (“we don’t want fags here”); Débora, who was extorted by members of the 18 gangs and whose nephew was killed with seven bullets; Marcos, whose brother was murdered and who was threatened with being next.
Their stories have no “script, actors or special effects,” recalls the CEAR campaign.
“Mara is not a series, but there is violence, there are kidnappings, there are robberies, there are murders. Here you won’t see characters telling a story. Here you will see people telling their story”, is the introduction to each testimony, published on YouTube and on the campaign web page, maraslaserie.com.
According to CEAR, in 2018 alone the nationals of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala made 4,860 asylum requests in Spain. However, only 320 of these applications were resolved, and only 15 turned out to be favorable.
As noted by El País’ Lola Hierro, on average, 29 murders a day occur in the three countries of the North Triangle, in contrast with 0.6 in Spain.