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Updated: 05:49 PM EST
Reality Show Makes Gang Members Business Owners
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, AP
Ten former gang members each competed for 14 days in a Guatemalan reality show.

GUATEMALA CITY (Feb. 3) - This gang-plagued Central American nation has found a new twist on reality television, putting wayward youths in a house and filming as community leaders turn them into small business owners.

On Friday, the 10 former gang members inaugurated the fruits of their efforts: a car wash and shoe repair shop. The producers of the show, scheduled to air for a week in March, hope it will serve as inspiration for other gang members looking for a way to turn their lives around.

Gangs have flourished in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras since the 1990s, when the United States began mass deportations of young Central American immigrants convicted of crimes.

Gang members now rule much of the region through fear, extorting money from business owners, forcing residents of poor neighborhoods to pay protection fees and slaughtering their enemies, sometimes leaving headless bodies in public places.

The three nations have tried to crackdown on gang activity by strengthening anti-gang laws and throwing young members in jail. But recently many people - including new Honduran President Manuel Zelaya - say that gang members must be rehabilitated and given opportunities to turn their lives around.

On Friday, former gang member Marcos Perez, 26, said he couldn't get a job after he was deported a year ago to Guatemala - after serving nearly three years in jail in the United States for selling drugs.

Perez, who left Guatemala at the age of 3 and who grew up in North Hollywood, California, said employers refused to hire him because of his gang tattoos.

But on Friday, as he washed and waxed cars at his new business with four other former gang members, he said was proud, "not just for myself, but for those that are down, that are in prison, and lost and want to take that step, to show them that there's another way out."

The shoe repair shop was scheduled to be inaugurated later Friday.

The five-episode reality gang show, dubbed "Challenge 10: Peace for the Ex," was sponsored by area businesses and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Harold Sibaja, a program director for USAID who attended the car wash inauguration, said the show was also aimed at making Guatemalans more tolerant of reformed gang members.

"We want to show people the human face of former gang members, many of whom left gang life three or four years ago but can't get work because of the mistrust" surrounding gangs, he said.

Viewers in March will witness how the 10 former gangsters lived together for two weeks in the same house, where volunteers taught them basic skills in accounting, customer service, human resources, sales, marketing, and motivation.

Both groups received $3,200 for startup costs, as well as help getting started. They settled on the car wash and shoe repair businesses because they felt both business models fit their skills the best.

As of Friday, however, they are mostly on their own - although they can still go back to their mentors for advice.

The gang members participating in the show already had abandoned gang life, some by joining an evangelical church. Under gang rules, religion and death are the only legitimate ways to get out of gangs.

Carlos Zuniga, president of Guatemala's usually conservative agricultural association, sponsored five of the gang members for the reality show.

"I'm not the same person I was (before the show) and I want this change that I experienced to reach other Guatemalans," Zuniga said

Sergio Gutierrez, who will be in charge of the car wash, knows that running a small business will be harder than the two-week taping period.

"Now that the (taping of) the show is over, is when the hard part will come," Gutierrez said. "We have to make the business work, but I know if we trust in God, He will help us."

02/03/06 16:51 EST

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