Chicano Street Gangs

 

Mexican Gang – Norteños

 

The gang the I selected to go over in my essay are the Northern California based gang, the Norteños. I choose this gang because of my familiarity of the gang being raised in Northern California, specifically the East Bay. I am from Union City, and we have two sets of the Norteños gang in our town, one being Old Alvarado in the westside of town, and the other being Decoto being on the east side of town. Both sets came up relatively around the same time, being the 1970s. It was always a Hispanic community, due to being a farming town at one point so the gang was always around; however, with the integration of prison gangs in the late 60’s and into the 1970’s they became part of the Norteños.

The Norteños are street soldiers so to speak of the prison based La Nuestra Familia (NF). The gang formed in the Duel Vocational institute in Tracy, CA in the late 1960’s. Ironically enough, the gang first gained notoriety as being an offshoot gang of the Mexican Mafia (La Eme). The members were inmates who hailed from smaller towns or cities outside of LA like Chino, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Bakersfield, San Fernando, etc. so they were not originally from Northern California. However, within its members there were inmates who hailed from cities like Salinas, Fresno, and Oakland. Mexican Mafia members were from the bigger urban cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento. Mexican Americans who were is disgruntled with the organization and the abuse by the Mexican Mafia decided to form their own gang and protect themselves from the Mexican Mafia; so they formed La Nuestra Familia. The Mexican Mafia used to pick on Mexican Americans who hailed from the smaller towns and would call them farmers as a way to belittle them. They would also get picked on and experience abuse. They would also pick on non-Mexicans of Latino decent like Salvadorians and Puerto Ricans. The subsets started out as two separate gangs who were unhappy with the Eme; La Familia Cinco and the Nuestra Familia Mexicana (NFM) aka Blooming Flower. La Familia Cinco later got vacuumed into the NFM due to having the same agenda. On Mexican Independence Day of 1968 the 16^th of September; a war broke up between the NF and the Eme. This is now hailed as the Independence Day for the Nuestra Familia when they first revolted against the NF. By the 1970’s the NFM dropped the word “Mexicana” because one of the main members was of Puerto Rican decent; Robert "Babo" Sosa of Santa Barbara, California. From the late 1970’s and on, a breakdown of the state occurred. North of Bakersfield is Norteños territory, and south of that is Sureño territory. In 1992 the Mexican Mafia ordered the gangs of Southern California to unite to an increase of ongoing gang wars that led to the killings of civilians via drive-by shootings. Respectively, in 1997, a NF general made a call onto the streets to have the Norteños united and stop fighting among each other. By doing so a album was put out in 1998 called GUN (Generation of United Norteños) sponsored by Darkroom Familia Records and overseen by street commander Robert Gratton. The name of the album is a nod to the general, Gerald "Cuete" Rubalcaba who was nicknamed Cuete, Spanish slang for gun.