The US played a key role in the financing of mercenary groups during the armed conflicts of the 70s and 80s in Central America, resulting in over 1 million people emigrating. Those who went to the US were forced into common crime, vandalism, and drug trafficking as a survival response to everyday violence. In 1996, the US implemented massive deportation, transferring 200,000 people, a quarter of them imprisoned for being related to the gang culture, to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. This led to the transnationalization of the Maras, one of the most famous social manifestations of a broad spectrum of gang violence in Central America.