Maras and Organized Crime

I just had an interesting conversation with a colleague about crime and justice in Central America (a topic which comes up a lot in conversation for me, unsurprisingly). One of the points my conversation partner brought up was the shift of focus in the international media away from the issue of youth gangs and towards drug trafficking, specifically when talking about Guatemala. She noted that in the past, the focus of reports on violence in Guatemala tended to lay the blame on the maras--the image of all that was wrong was the tattooed face of a teenage gangster. More recent coverage has to do more with the threat of organized crime and drug trafficking, especially the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel. I think this has a lot to do with shifting international priorities in the region and the bloody drug war in Mexico. Drug gangs have replaced street gangs in the media as the ones who decapitate rivals and commit atrocious acts of violence. The maras and the drug cartels are, of course, intimately connected in many ways. Just as I was having this conversation, I came across an article written by another colleague on the issue of maras in El Salvador. She points out connections between the two types criminal organizations that I have seen mentioned in local and international coverage of crime in Central America: drug traffickers hire mareros as assassins, as protection along smuggling routes, and as small-time local drug dealers. The interesting thing, however, is that the maras in El Salvador make most of their money from extortion. It brings to mind passages from the political science literature on state building in Europe that reference the mafia-style way in which new states were formed through protection rackets. But are the maras considered organized crime? How much are they like the mafia, either in the US or in Italy? Is the extortion they commit anything like the mafia-type protection racket? I don't think I know enough about the US or Italian mafia or other types of organized crime to say, but I think the question is interesting.