See a preview of this Truly CA episode.
Fruits of War explores a devastating cycle of gang violence that has plagued El Salvador for more than thirty years. The film follows four reformed gang members -- Bullet, Rebel, Weazel, and Duke, who escaped to the United States as child refugees from El Salvador's bloody civil war. They settled in the tough east side of Los Angeles, eventually becoming involved in street gangs.
In an effort to suppress an epidemic of gang violence, the US began an aggressive policy of deporting undocumented gang members with felony records. When these four men return to El Salvador, they discover a country ravaged by war, and facing a new wave of violence as the LA street gangs take root in their homeland. The government, with support from the US, begins a brutal crackdown on the gangs, and these four men find themselves in the middle of a conflict eerily similar to the civil war -- pitting the army and police against thousands of El Salvador's poorest residents, now members of the gangs. As they come to terms with their two countries' violent histories, these former gang members redirect their lives towards helping young people deal with this legacy.