Mara Salvatrucha in Quebec Canada

Nobody would have blamed Maria Mourani for wanting to relax a little after her re-election last October. In one of the tightest races in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois MP held on to her Montreal riding of Ahuntsic by less than 500 votes. But the ballots were barely counted when Ms. Mourani began packing her bags for a trip to El Salvador to seek out street gangs considered among the deadliest in the world.

While she is best known in Canada as a Member of Parliament for the separatist Bloc, Ms. Mourani has a Masters degree in sociology and worked as a parole officer before she was first elected in 2006. That was also the year her first book on street gangs was published, establishing her as an expert on the subject in Quebec. Her post-election trip to El Salvador has provided the heart of her second book, Gangs de Rue Inc. (Street Gangs Inc.), published last month in French.

In a recent interview, Ms. Mourani said her interest in street gangs stems from a commitment to protect children. There is a tendency outside Quebec to view the Bloc as a single-issue party, committed to Quebec sovereignty and nothing else. But Ms. Mourani, the party's assistant public-security critic, said the cause of children is as important to her as the struggle for sovereignty.

"The first victims of street gangs are the children, the teenagers," she said. "Just because I'm a Bloc MP doesn't mean I have no concern for Canadian children." (She is also passionate about the Middle East and last February had to apologize after distributing to her fellow MPs a pro-Palestinian email that included links to videos praising terrorist organizations.)

Ms. Mourani says her interest in El Salvador stemmed from the realization that the Central American country's notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and Pandilla 18 gangs were establishing a foothold in Canada. In Gangs de Rue Inc. she calls them "by far the most violent and most dangerous gangs in the world."

Her ticket into their world came in 2007 when she met the head of El Salvador's National Security Council, Oscar Bonilla, at a Montreal conference. "I told him, 'You know eventually I would like to go see the MS-13 up close.' He said, 'Whenever you're ready.' "

That moment came after last year's election. Mr. Bonilla found her a guide who had close contacts with gang members, and she immersed herself in the barrios of the capital, San Salvador. She travelled at her own expense, she said, and she introduced herself as Maria, a researcher, not as a Member of Parliament. "It would not be easy to go there as an MP," she said. "There are a lot of kidnappings of politicians for money."

Michael Chettleburgh, a street gang expert and president of the Toronto-based Astwood Strategy Corp., has not read Ms. Mourani's book, but he said her courage in meeting with the gangs is impressive. "As far as going down to Central America and talking to the gangsters, we're talking about some of the most dangerous, out-of-control places in the world," he said. "If she indeed immersed herself, she would have had to have very good contacts in the community." Last month, Christian Poveda, a French filmmaker who had spent years chronicling life in El Salvador's gangs, was murdered outside the capital. A police officer and four gang members were arrested in connection with his killing.

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