1

National Gang Center Bulletin

No. 4 May 2010

Bureau of Justice Assistance

U.S. Department of Justice

HISTORY OF STREET GANGS IN THE UNITED STATES

By: James C. Howell and John P. Moore

Introduction

The first active gangs in Western civilization were reported 

by Pike (1873, pp. 276–277), a widely respected chronicler 

of British crime. He documented the existence of gangs of 

highway robbers in England during the 17th century, and 

he speculates that similar gangs might well have existed 

in our mother country much earlier, perhaps as early as 

the 14th or even the 12th century. But it does not appear 

that these gangs had the features of modern-day, serious 

street gangs.1 More structured gangs did not appear 

until the early 1600s, when London was “terrorized by a 

series of organized gangs calling themselves the Mims, 

Hectors, Bugles, Dead Boys ... who found amusement in 

breaking windows, [and] demolishing taverns, [and they] 

also fought pitched battles among themselves dressed 

with colored ribbons to distinguish the different factions” 

(Pearson, 1983, p. 188).

The history of street gangs in the United States begins 

with their emergence on the East Coast around 1783, 

as the American Revolution ended (Sante, 1991). But 

there is considerable justification for questioning the 

seriousness of these early gangs. The best available 

evidence suggests that the more serious street 

gangs likely did not emerge until the early part of the 

nineteenth century (Sante, 1991). 

The Influence of Population 

Migration Patterns on Gang 

Emergence

This bulletin examines the emergence of gang activity 

in four major regions of the United States: the Northeast, 

Midwest, West, and South. (Gangs would emerge in the 

South much later than in other regions.) The purpose of 

this regional focus is to develop a better understanding 

of the origins of gang activity and to examine regional 

migration and cultural influences on gangs themselves. 

There is some evidence that the gangs that first emerged 

in each of these regions influenced the growth and 

1 Serious street gangs are typically characterized as having a 

multiple-year history, having a large membership (varies widely), 

being somewhat organized (having some sort of hierarchy and 

leadership roles), and being involved in violent crimes in the course 

of street presence (e.g., homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, use 

of firearms) (Howell, 1999, 2006).

characteristics of gangs in their respective regions. 

Therefore, an understanding of regional influences 

should help illuminate key features of gangs that operate 

in these particular areas of the United States. 

Gang emergence in the Northeast and Midwest was 

fueled by immigration and poverty, first by two waves 

of poor, largely white families from Europe. Seeking a 

better life, the early immigrant groups mainly settled in 

urban areas and formed communities to join each other 

in the economic struggle. Unfortunately, they had few 

marketable skills. Difficulties in finding work and a place 

to live and adjusting to urban life were equally common 

among the European immigrants. Anglo native-born 

Americans discriminated against these immigrants as 

well. Conflict was therefore imminent, and gangs grew 

in such environments. 

First came the “old immigrants,” those who came to 

the United States from Northern or Western Europe 

(especially Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia) 

during the first wave of immigration following American 

independence and extending up to about 1860. The 

second enormous group of immigrants—the Poles, 

Italians, Irish, and Jews—overlapped the first wave, 

arriving during the 1820–1920 period. Both groups 

largely consisted of low-skilled, low-wage laborers. 

Not unexpectedly, the second wave on top of the first 

one overwhelmed the housing and welfare capacity of 

the young Northeast and Midwest cities,2

 contributing 

directly to slum conditions and the accompanying crime 

problems, gangs included (Riis, 1902/1969). “The slum is 

as old as civilization. Civilization implies a race [among 

social strata] to get ahead... They drag one another 

farther down. The bad environment becomes the 

heredity of the next generation. Then, given the crowd, 

you have a slum ready-made” (Riis, 1902/1969, p. 1). 

In contrast, gangs grew out of the preexisting Mexican 

culture in the Western region, and their growth was 

fueled by subsequent Mexican migrations. El Paso, 

Albuquerque, and Los Angeles initially were populated 

by immigrant groups along the trail from Mexico to 

Los Angeles. The continuing influx of Mexicans fueled 

2 The U.S. Bureau of the Census designates four major regions 

(Midwest, Northeast, South, and West).
2

gang growth. Indeed, they brought an embryo, or pregang, culture with them that was transmitted by youth 

who had been named pachuchos, after field hands 

from a Mexican city of that name (Geis, 1965). These 

pachuchos socialized with other immigrant youths in 

the streets (Vigil, 2002).

The Northeast, Midwest, and Western regions 

would soon be inundated with a second major wave 

of immigrants, African-American populations that 

migrated northward and westward from the Deep 

South. In addition, other gang mixtures including 

Hispanic/Latino3 (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Dominican 

Republic, Cuba), Asian (Cambodians, Chinese, Filipinos, 

Koreans, Samoans, Thais, Vietnamese, and others), and 

Latin American (Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, 

Ecuadorians, Panamanians, Puetro Ricans, and others) 

would later populate the gang landscape (Miller, 2001, 

p. 43). Native-American gangs also would emerge, but 

much later (Conway, 1998). The internal migration of the 

blacks mainly fueled the emergence of another distinct 

wave of gang activity. The end result was a mixture of 

predominantly white, Mexican, and black gangs—with 

varying degrees of influence—in each of the three early 

gang regions in the United States. 

These regional histories begin with the first observance 

of street gangs in the United States in the Northeast.

Street Gang Emergence in the 

Northeast

Street gangs on the East Coast developed in three 

phases (Adamson, 1998; Sante, 1991). The first ganglike groups began to emerge immediately after the 

American Revolution ended in 1783, but they were 

not seasoned criminals; only youth fighting over local 

turf. The beginning of serious ganging in New York 

City would commence a few years later, around 1820, 

in the wake of far more large-scale immigration. The 

gangs that emerged from this melting pot were far 

more structured and dangerous. A third wave of gang 

activity developed in the 1950s and 1960s when Latino 

and black populations arrived en masse. 

New York City’s Ellis Island was the major port of entry 

to the United States. It “has throughout the country’s 

history been the cauldron into which highly diverse 

immigrant groups have been poured” (Geis, 1965, 

p. 42). The three predominant early immigrant groups 

that arrived in New York City and settled in the Lower 

East Side in large numbers after the War of 1812 were 

English, Irish, and German (Sante, 1991). Their collective 

arrival spurred gang development in the squalor and 

overcrowding of the Lower East Side. That area of the 

city—particularly around the Five Points—fell victim to 

3 The term “Hispanic” is used particularly by federal and state 

bureaucracies to refer to persons who reside in the United States 

who were born in, or trace their ancestry back to, one of 23 

Spanish-speaking nations (Moore and Pinderhughes, 1993, p. xi). 

Many of these individuals prefer to use the term “Latino,” and 

that term is used in this report. “Chicano” is also used to refer to 

Mexican descendants.

rapid immigration and ensuing political, economic, and 

social disorganization. 

First Period of Gang Emergence 

in New York City

The members of the gangs that first drove social stakes 

in the streets of New York in the late 18th century were 

the same age as most members of current street gangs, 

from the early teens to about the mid-twenties (Sante, 

1991). They consisted of five main groups: “The Smiths’s 

Vly gang, the Bowery Boys, and the Broadway Boys 

were white, mainly Irish groups; the Fly Boys and the 

Long Bridge Boys were black” (p. 198). There already 

was a substantial black population in the area (Sante, 

1991, p. 199). 

It is important to examine more closely the racial/ethnic 

character of the early New York gangs described here. 

Overall, the earliest gangs were largely Irish, followed 

after the Civil War by Italian and then Jewish gangs 

with a mixture of Italian, Irish, and Scandavian members 

(Riis, 1902/1969; Sante, 1991). Dutch, Welsh, Scots-Irish, 

Irish Catholic, and German youth, as well as persons 

of mixed ethnicity, soon would expand the melting pot. 

Indeed, early gangs were often multi-ethnic, drawn 

from neighborhoods that were not rigidly segregated 

by ethnicity (Adamson, 2000). 

The earliest gangs of New York were not criminal 

groups. Many street gang members were employed, 

mostly as common laborers (Adamson, 1998; Sante, 

1991). Some were bouncers in saloons and dance 

halls, as well as longshoremen. A few were apprentice 

butchers, carpenters, sailmakers, and shipbuilders. 

“They engaged in violence, but violence was a normal 

part of their always-contested environment; turf warfare 

was a condition of the neighborhood” (Sante, 1991, 

p. 198). Gangs formed the “basic unit of social life among 

the young males in New York in the nineteenth century” 

(Sante, 1991, p. 198).

More dangerous street gangs than previously seen 

emerged around 1820 from the persistent disorder that 

gripped the city slums, tenements, saloons, and dance 

halls (Riis, 1902/1969; Sante, 1991). The Forty Thieves gang 

was characterized as “the first important and decisively 

dangerous gang of the quarter [century]” (Sante, 1991, 

p. 199). It and other new groups of gangs that emerged in 

this period were centered in criminal enterprises as much 

as in territorial disputes (Sante, 1991). “It is axiomatic 

that the more sophisticated the gangs became, the more 

violent they grew as well” (p. 198).

“Prior to 1840, territorial alliances took precedence over 

ethnic solidarity. Thereafter, in the climate of economic 

restructuring and intense competition for jobs, gang 

warfare replicated ethnic conflict” (Adamson, 1998, 

p. 64). From its early history, ethnic succession and 

invasion has been a regular process in the city. “From its 

earliest days when the Dutch and English struggled for 

political and economic control, through the nineteenth 

century when new groups such as Germans and the 
3

Irish settled in great numbers, and up through the 

early twentieth century with the arrival of southern 

and eastern Europeans, the city has always been an 

ever-evolving mix of ethnic groups” (Lobo, Flores, and 

Salvo, 2002, p. 703). 

The Five Points gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits, 

typically formed in the corner groggeries (selling a 

combination of groceries and cheap liquor) that had 

bars in the rear of the buildings (“speak-easies,” Asbury, 

1927), which became social centers. “As a social unit, 

the gang closely resembled such organizations as the 

fire company, the fraternal order, and the political club, 

all of these formations variously overlapped” (Sante, 

1991, pp. 197–198). Bar room brawling was a common 

denominator. “The majority of dives featured one or 

another of a variation of the basic setup: bar, dance floor, 

private boxes, prostitution, robbery” (p. 112). 

The Five Points Gang was particularly influential, such 

that it is said to be “the most significant street gang 

to form in the United States, ever!” (Savelli, 2001, p. 1). 

Its coleader, Johnny Torrio, became a significant member 

of the Sicilian Mafia (La Cosa Nostra). He recruited street 

hoodlums from across New York City to the Five Points 

Gang, including a teenaged Brooklyn boy of Italian 

descent named Alphonse Capone, better known as 

Al Capone or “Scarface.” Capone became a member 

of the James Street Gang, which the Five Pointers 

considered a minor-league outfit. The Five Points Gang 

became the major league to many young street gangsters 

and a farm club for the Mafia (Savelli, 2001, p. 1). 

The gang also specialized in supplying bodies to 

political entities, in keeping unsympathetic voters away 

from the election center. It was a symbiotic relationship; 

each group benefitted from the influence of the other. 

The apex of its 25-year history was approximately 1857 

(Sante, 1991). “By the 1870s, few gangs remained in Five 

Points” (Gilfoyle, 2003, p. 622). A 2002 movie, Gangs 

of New York, vividly depicted their reign, with some 

exaggerations and distorted history in “a blood-soaked 

vision of American history” (p. 621). 

Years later, in 1919, being sought by authorities in 

connection with a gangland murder in New York, 

Al “Scarface” Capone moved to Chicago when Torrio 

needed his assistance in maintaining control of Chicago 

mob territories. “Al Capone eventually became the 

most violent and prolific gangster in Chicago, if not...

the United States, that law enforcement has ever 

experienced” (Savelli, 2001, p. 1). 

Second Period of Gang Growth 

in New York City

The arrival of the Poles, Italians, and Jews in 

New York City in the period 1880–1920 ushered in a 

second distinct period of gang activity in the city’s 

slums. Jacob Riis, a journalist, photographer, and social 

reformer, shocked the conscience of many Americans 

with his factual descriptions of slum conditions in his 

book, The Battle with the Slum (1902/1969). Inundated 

with immigrants, New York City could not provide 

enough homes for the influx that occurred over the next 

30 years. Tenement houses were created as a temporary 

solution that became permanent. Members of a select 

committee (cited in Riis, 1902/1969, p. 12) of the state 

legislature came to the city and saw how crime came 

to be the natural crop of people housed in crowded, 

filthy tenements with “dark, damp basements, leaking 

garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into 

dwellings.” These conditions predated the formation 

of the city Health Department, viable social services, 

and the Children’s Aid Society. Moreover, the New York 

City Police Department was not effective in maintaining 

order. Gangs and other criminal groups were virtually 

unfettered from forging their own wedges in the social 

and physical disorder. 

The Whyos (named for a bird-like call the members used 

to alert one another) is said to have been “the most 

powerful downtown gang between the Civil War and 

the 1890s” (Sante, 1991, p. 214). It appeared to have 

emerged from an earlier gang, the Chichesters. This 

transformed and far more criminal gang actually had a 

take-out menu of its services, including punching ($2), 

nose and jaw bone broken ($10), leg or arm broken ($19), 

shot in the leg ($25), and “doing the big job” ($100 and 

up) (Sante, 1991, p. 215). 

The histories of the city’s gangs can be 

seen as running a close parallel to the 

progress of commerce. From small, specialized 

establishments narrowly identified with 

particular neighborhoods, gangs branched out, 

diversified, and merged, absorbing smaller and 

less well-organized units and encompassing 

ever-larger swaths of territory. After the Whyos, 

their numbers decimated by jailings and deaths, 

dissolved in the early 1890s, a small number 

of very large gangs, organized as umbrella 

formations made up of smaller entities, came to 

dominate the scene (Sante, 1991, p. 217).

Four gang alliances were longest-lived gangs on the 

Lower East Side of Manhattan—for nearly two decades 

on either side of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: 

the Five Pointers, the Monk Eastman, the Gophers, and 

the Hudson Dusters (Sante, 1991, p. 217). Territorial 

disputes and reorganizations were commonplace, 

but the Jewish Monk Eastman Gang was particularly 

notable for having “terrorized New York City streets” 

(Savelli, 2001, p. 1). 

In the meantime, the Chinese set up their own highly 

structured tongs around 1860, and put the street 

gangs to shame in running a criminal operation that 

controlled opium distribution, gambling, and political 

patronage (Chin, 1995). “The tongs merged the 

functions, resources, and techniques of politicians, 

police, financiers, and gangsters, and enforced their 

levy with no opposition” (Sante, 1991, p. 226). Even so, 

the tongs soon were matched in strength by the Mafia, 

which had moved from New Orleans into New York. The 

last major downtown gang fight occurred in 1914; soon 
4

thereafter, “the gang situation downtown had entered 

its decadent phase. Gangs were splintering into tiny 

groups, while bands of juveniles and amateurs were 

coming up everywhere” (Sante, 1991, p. 231). 

Third Period of Gang Growth in 

New York City 

Youth gangs are presumed to have virtually disappeared 

from New York City by the 1950s, following the West Side 

Story era (Sullivan, 1993). But field observations in the 

city by an anthropologist and adroit gang researcher 

(Miller, 1974) refuted the popular media story that 

the gangs had dissolved. In New York City and other 

places, “mass migration of Southern Blacks (seeking 

better employment opportunities and social conditions) 

landed many of them in urban locales near all White 

neighborhoods, which sparked interracial conflict . . . 

White male youth groups formed and violently resisted 

racial integration of neighborhoods, which led to Black 

brotherhoods evolving into social protection groups” 

(Cureton, 2009, p. 351). Under these conditions, “street 

gangs became entrenched in the social fabric of the 

underclass” (p. 351). 

New York City’s gangs also were strengthened 

during this period by Latino immigrant groups (from 

Latin America, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico) that 

moved into areas of the city populated by European 

Americans—particularly in the South Bronx (Curtis, 

2003) and Brooklyn (Sullivan, 1993).

Urban planners built high-rise public housing 

developments across the country (from the mid-1940s 

to the mid-1960s). Black gangs were very prevalent in 

these and in segregated communities in New York City 

by the 1960s (Gannon, 1967; Miller, 1982/1992). On the 

one hand, high-rise public housing settings provided 

gangs with cohesion because it was an identifiable and 

secure home base (Monti, 1993). On the other hand, the 

creation of low-income, high-rise public housing shifted 

previous inner-city slums and ghettos to outer-city, 

ring-city, or suburban areas (Miller, 1982/1992). The 

scattering of these low-income public housing projects 

around the city served to diffuse to some extent the 

between-gang violence that developed in Chicago. 

By the 1960s, more than two-thirds of the New York 

gangs were Puerto Rican or black (Gannon, 1967, 

p. 122). However, the highly organized Chinatown 

gangs reigned for nearly 20 years—from the mid1970s to the mid-1990s—during which they were 

“responsible for systematic extortion and violence” 

(M. L. Sullivan, 2006, p. 22). In this same period, a 

surging Hispanic/Latino population succeeded whites 

across New York City, creating a preponderance of 

both all-minority and multiethnic neighborhoods (Lobo 

et al., 2002). In the post-1990 period, newer Hispanic 

groups began to succeed Puerto Ricans. “In fact, by the 

late 1990s, Hispanics had replaced blacks as the largest 

minority group in the city” (p. 704). “Social observers of 

New York City in the 1880s, when the city was swarming 

with Irish gangs, would have been incredulous had they 

been told that within the century the police would be 

hard put to locate a single Irish gang in the five boroughs 

of the city” (Miller, 1982/1992, p. 79). 

Modern-Day Eastern Gangs

In the 1990s, post-World War II urban renewal, slum 

clearances, and ethnic migration pitted gangs of AfricanAmerican, Puerto Rican, and Euro-American youth 

against each other in battles to dominate changing 

neighborhoods, and to establish and maintain their turf 

and honor (Schneider, 1999). By 2008, “approximately 

640 gangs with more than 17,250 members [were] 

criminally active in the New England region4 ” (Federal 

Bureau of Investigation, 2008, p. 17). Most of the gang 

growth in this region has been in the 222 Corridor—so 

named because Pennsylvania Route 222 bisects five 

cities5 in the state. In the decade following the late 

1990s, “each of these cities experienced a dramatic 

increase in gangs and their associated criminal 

activities” (Easton Gang Prevention Task Force, 2007). 

“Violent gang members from major metropolitan areas 

such as New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, and 

Baltimore travel to and through the 222 Corridor using 

the smaller urban communities as part of their drug 

distribution networks” (p. 1). 

Another important trend in the broader Northeast 

region is increasing gang-related violence as a result of 

competition among gangs for control of territories (FBI, 

2008). According to the FBI’s intelligence reports, “the 

most significant gangs operating in the East Region 

are Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Ñeta, and United Blood 

Nation” (p. 16). 

A relatively new street gang in the Northeast region, 

the Trinitarios, meaning the Trinity or Special One, 

was formed during the late 1990s for protection from 

Dominican inmates in New York prisons (FBI, 2008). 

Upon leaving prison, members banded together as a 

street gang, calling themselves Trinitarios to separate 

themselves from other Dominican street gangs in 

New York. “Trinitarios members are establishing a 

reputation for extreme violence throughout the area” 

and this gang appears to be increasing its presence 

in the region (p. 16). Its members are particularly 

involved in drug trafficking, robberies, auto theft, and 

murder. Trinitarios also maintains strong, hierarchical 

organizations in correctional facilities.

In addition to the Trinitarios, local law enforcement 

agencies currently identify the East Coast Bloods and 

Dead Man Inc. as presenting enormous threats to 

public safety in the Northeast region. The East Coast 

Bloods were formed in New York City’s Rikers Island 

Jail in 1993 to fight off Ñetas and Latin Kings within 

the facilities.6 Members of this gang are predominantly 

African-American males aged 16–35 years. Some gang 

4 This region extends northward from the New York border.

5 Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading, and Lancaster.

6 Capital Region Gang Prevention Center: http://www.

nysgangprevention.com/).
5

sets7 on Rikers require an individual to “put in work” 

or “eat food” (cut or slash someone) before they are 

considered Blood members. In the estimation of some 

authorities, the East Coast Bloods is reputed to be the 

largest street gang in New York City, and it operates in 

other East Coast cities as well.

Dead Man Inc. is a white prison gang that reportedly 

was formed in the Maryland Correctional Adjustment 

Center, known as Supermax. It was founded in the late 

1990s by white inmates who desired affiliation with 

the established Black Guerrilla Family, but the group’s 

request was denied because its white race, which 

conflicted with the BGFs Black membership.8 Hence, 

Dead Man Inc. was formed.

Street Gang Emergence in 

Chicago

Chicago emerged as an industrial hub between the Civil 

War and the end of the 19th century. The city’s capacity 

to produce gangs was enhanced when it recruited a 

massive labor force from the peasantry of Southern and 

Eastern Europe, becoming “a latter-day tower of Babel” 

(Finestone, 1976, p. 6). Gangs that flourished in Chicago 

in the early part of the 1900s grew mainly from the same 

immigrant groups that populated the early serious street 

gangs of New York City (Thrasher, 1927/2000). By the 

early 20th century, Polish and Italian gangs were the 

most numerous in Chicago. Only 7 percent were black. 

Much like the early New York scene, gangs of mixed 

nationalities were common; in fact, ethnically mixed 

gangs represented almost 40 percent of all gangs in 

Chicago by 1925 (p. 68). Another parallel is that the social 

dynamics associated with gang formation were similar 

in the two cities. Thrasher (1927/2000) stated the case 

for Chicago. The gang, he said, “is one manifestation 

of the disorganization incident to the cultural conflict 

among diverse nations and races gathered in one place 

and themselves in contact with a civilization foreign and 

largely inimical to them” (p. 76). 

Thrasher (1927/1963) dubbed this “economic, moral, 

and cultural frontier” the “zone in transition.” This 

“gangland” between the thriving downtown business 

district and neighborhoods filled with stable, workingclass families was “unattractive, dirty, and filled with 

industry, railroad yards, ghettos, and the city’s recent 

immigrants” (Monti, 1993, p. 4). Thrasher’s study was 

a very broad one. In addition to gangs, he discusses 

other criminal groups: adult hoodlum bands, rings, 

syndicates, political machines, bootleggers, robbers, 

gambling houses, vice resorts, and other crime fixtures 

in the urban landscape of rapidly developing Chicago. Of 

the more than 1,300 gangs that he catalogued, he was 

able to classify 90 percent: 530 were clearly delinquent 

or criminal; 609 were dubious in character; and only 52 

were clearly not delinquent. But this characterization 

7 Gang subgroups or sections.

8 According to intelligence information compiled by the Gang 

Identification Task Force: http://whiteprisongangs.blogspot.

com/2009/05/dead-man-inc.html. 

masked the truly dangerous gangs that already existed 

in the city of Chicago at that time. 

First Period of Chicago Gang 

Growth

Chicago’s first street gangs developed among white 

immigrants along ethnic lines before the American Civil 

War.9 Perkins (1987) found evidence of white gangs 

“roving the streets” in the city as far back as the 1860s, 

but it would be 20 years before street gangs had a 

notable presence. Many of the early white gangs may 

have emerged from fire departments. Carrying names 

such as “Fire Kings,” these companies of young workingclass men brawled in the streets and sponsored social 

events. After the official creation of fire departments 

forced volunteer operations to disband, gang activities 

shifted into saloons. 

Predominant large Irish gangs included the Dukies and 

the Shielders, which exerted a powerful influence on the 

streets around the stockyards—robbing men leaving 

work, fighting among themselves, and terrorizing the 

German, Jewish, and Polish immigrants who settled 

there from the 1870s to the 1890s. These gangs fought 

constantly among themselves, but they occasionally 

united to battle nearby black gangs.10 Black gangs did 

not appear until the 1920s, although “the impact of Black 

street gangs on the Black community was minimal, at 

best, prior to the 1940s” (Perkins, 1987, pp. 19, 25). 

During this period, gangs became entrenched in the 

patronage networks operated by ward politicians 

(Adamson, 2000), and the city’s gangs “thrived on 

political corruption” (Moore, 1998, p. 76). Cook County 

Commissioner Frank Ragen established the Ragen 

Athletic Club—home of the Ragen’s Colts gang—on 

Chicago’s Halsted Street. This gang’s mantra was “Hit me 

and you hit a thousand” (p. 278). “The gang masqueraded 

as an athletic club but in fact controlled and protected 

[its] turf, particularly from Blacks who either worked in 

the area or traveled through the area on their way to and 

from work” (Arrendondo, 2004, p. 406). With members 

ranging in age from 17 to 30, it also “provided a de facto

policing service for the community” (Adamson, 2000, p. 

278). Several other athletic clubs hosted gangs, and gangs 

also assisted union leaders and factory workers in the 

protection of their interests (Spergel, 1995). 

During the “Roaring Twenties,” violence among warring 

gangs was a frequent occurrence in Chicago (Block, 

1977). Organized crime mobs were also prevalent, 

the most notable of which was the Al Capone gang 

(Peterson, 1963). Street gangs were said to “prosper in 

the very shadow of these institutions” (McKay, 1949, 

p. 36). Thrasher described the key characteristics of most 

9 The author’s main source for this early history of Chicago gangs 

is the Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.encyclopedia.

chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed December 28, 2009.

10 The author’s main source for this early history of Chicago 

gangs is the Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.

encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed 

December 28, 2009.
6

of the 1,313 gangs (with some 25,000 members)11 that he found 

in Chicago and plotted their location on a map of the city. This 

exercise revealed Chicago’s “gangland” (see Sidebar: Chicago’s 

Gangland) within what Thrasher called the “interstitial” or rapidly 

deteriorating transitional areas (ghettos and slums) between the 

central city and the better residential areas. 

The heyday of Chicago’s white ethnic gangs soon came to an 

end, however. As Moore (1998, p. 68) explains it, “the gangs 

of the 1920s were largely “a one-generation immigrant ghetto 

phenomenon.” Perhaps the most important reason for the gangs’ 

dissolution is that their immigrant families were able to move out 

of Chicago’s downtown ghettos and into better areas, into a social 

and economic mainstream. But “they did not take their gangs 

with them.” These remained and more gangs soon would emerge 

because the whites moved to the suburbs, making room for the 

incipient influx of African Americans in the more impoverished 

central city. 

Second Period of Chicago Gang 

Growth

The second period of gang growth in Chicago commenced in 

the 1930s as the result of a steady migration of Mexicans and 

blacks to northern cities. Black immigrants arrived first, following 

the U.S. Civil War, to escape the misery of Jim Crow laws and 

the sharecropper’s life in the southern states. Between 1910 

and 1930, during the “Great Migration” of more than a million 

blacks from the rural South to the urban North for jobs, Chicago 

gained almost 200,000 black residents (Marks, 1985; Miller, 2008), 

giving the city an enormous urban black population—along with 

New York City, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and other 

Northeast and Midwest cities. From 1940 to 1950, the Chicago 

black population nearly doubled, from 278,000 to nearly 500,000 

(Miller, 2008). Most of the immigrant blacks in Chicago settled in 

the area known as the Black Belt, a geographic area along State 

Street on the South Side, where abject poverty was concentrated 

(Wilson, 1987). 

Large numbers of black workers were inspired “to leave family 

and friends and seek their fortunes in the North” (Marks, 1985, 

p. 5). But they faced formidable challenges. Many observers 

thought the black migrants were unqualified for the upward 

mobility paths that white immigrants had used in Northeast 

cities. However, “the reason for non-assimilation of Black migrants 

into American society was not because Blacks were non-urban 

or unskilled. It owed substantially... to racial segmentation of 

the labor force structured to keep them at what they had been 

recruited for, a source of cheap labor” (Marks, 1985, p. 22).

The origins of Chicago’s serious street gangs can be traced 

to blacks’ disproportionate residency in socially disorganized 

inner-city areas, dating back to the period between 1917 and the 

early 1920s (Cureton, 2009).12 “As more and more Blacks populated 

Chicago, there was an increase in delinquency among Black youth 

as well... As one might anticipate, these activities invariably led 

11 This number may not be exact. Legend has it that student research 

assistants played a joke on Professor Thrasher in representing 1,313 as the 

total number of gangs in the study (Short, 2006). This number was the address 

of a nearby brothel.

12 See Perkins, 1987, pp. 19–32 for a first-hand and detailed account of the 

early formation of black gangs in Chicago.

Chicago’s Gangland

Source: Thrasher, 1927/2000

Gangland stretched in a broad semicircular 

zone about the central business district, 

called the Loop of Chicago, and “in general 

forms a sort of interstitial barrier between 

the Loop and the better residential areas” 

(p. 1). Thrasher mapped the gang regions 

as the “Southside badlands,” the “Northside 

jungles,” and the “West Side wilderness.” In 

the 1920s, most Chicago gangs were of Polish 

stock, for the city had at least “150,000 more 

persons of Polish extraction than any other 

nationality except the German” (p. 2). 

The Southside badlands produced the 

earliest serious street gangs in the city, 

which Thrasher (p. 4) traced back to 1867 in 

available urban documents. The unnamed 

group, about a dozen young men aged 

17–22, were fond of gambling and robbing 

men as they headed home with their pay. 

The gangsters were said to have killed and 

thrown some victims into a creek. This slum 

area also gave rise to a number of small 

criminal organizations and unofficially was 

called “the aristocracy of gangland” (p. 5). 

Indeed, Ragen Colts, a notorious Irish gang 

that flourished on the Southside during 

the period 1912–1927, claimed up to 3,000 

members (Short, 1974, p. 12). 

Gangs in the Northside jungles continually 

waged war across river bridges with their 

enemies, gangs in the West Side wilderness. 

But the most notorious gangs in the Northside 

jungles were found in “Little Sicily,” which 

came to be known as “Little Hell.” Notably, 

“Death Corner” in this area was the scene 

of frequent murders. A Polish colony, “Pojay 

Town,” also received considerable respect.

The West Side wilderness was a slum of 

50,000 people per square mile with “a gang 

in almost every block” (p. 2). This area was 

home to the Polish Blackspots, a perennial 

community terror, and the fighting “West 

Siders,” who constantly battled the “Pojay 

Town” from the Northside jungles. “The 

notorious and daring ‘Deadshots’ and the 

adventure-loving Irish and Italian ‘Black 

Handers’ [were] among the groups which 

[carried] on hostilities with the [black] gangs 

from Lake Street and the Jews to the west 

and south” (p. 3). The Black Handers, who 

specialized in blackmail, were named after 

secret societies in Southern Italy and Sicily 

(p. 72). 
7

to Black youth hanging out together and forming cliques, 

major ingredients for the formation of street gangs” 

(Perkins, 1987, p. 20). In addition, “athletics played an 

important role in the development of early Black street 

gangs” (p. 21). The games fueled conflicts between rival 

teams. By the mid-fifties, Black street gangs “began to 

vent their frustration and perpetrate violence against 

the Black community.”

The race riot of 1919, in which black males united 

to confront hostile white gang members who were 

terrorizing the black community, also contributed 

directly to black gang formation in Chicago (Perkins, 

1987). White and black youth battled fiercely “as each 

group declared street supremacy and control over 

streets, alleys, railroad tracks, storefronts, building 

stoops, and small waterfronts” (p. 353). Although some 

black gangs likely formed to counter the aggressive 

white youth, the unorganized black youth were no 

match for the well-organized, all-white gangs that were 

centered in their athletic clubs. These confrontations 

declined between the 1920s and the early 1940s, but 

interracial conflict continued, along with competition 

for the ghetto’s scarce resources. 

Three major street gang organizations were formed 

between the 1940s and early 1960s (i.e., Devil’s 

Disciples, P-Stones, and Vice Lords). Two of these gangs, 

the Vice Lords (1958) and the Black P-Stone Nation/

Black Stone Rangers (1959), were created in the Illinois 

State Reformatory School at Saint Charles (p. 353; see 

also Dawley, 1992). The Latin Kings was also formed in 

this era. Established in 1960, the Devil’s Disciples gang 

splintered into three warring factions between 1960 and 

1973: the Black Disciples, the Black Gangster Disciples, 

and the Gangster Disciples (p. 354). Gang wars occurred 

frequently among these large gangs in the late 1960s 

(Block, 1977; Block and Block, 1993). 

To make matters worse, officials constructed 51 high-rise 

public housing projects, virtually all of which were built 

in the 20 years following World War II within existing 

black ghetto sites (Miller, 2008). As a result of blacks’ 

continuing population growth in Chicago, in the 1950s 

city planners framed another black ghetto on the west 

side of the city, barricaded by a freeway and an extended 

row of more than a dozen high-rise apartments. By 

many accounts, the public housing high-rises were 

eventually dirty, crime-ridden, and in disrepair, having 

become gang incubators and battlegrounds (Kotlowitz, 

1992). Arguably, erecting many of the high-rise units 

adjacent to each other was the worst mistake that 

city planners made (Moore and Pinderhughes, 1993). 

This setting provided a strong base for gangs, but also 

brought them into regular and direct contact. Gangs 

not only grew stronger in the buildings but in several 

instances took control of them, literally turning them 

into high-rise forts. 

Three gangs in particular ruled from within the public 

housing projects and controlled drug distribution 

operations: the Conservative Vice Lords, the Gangster 

Disciples, and the Black P. Stones (Cureton, 2009; 

Venkatesh, 1996).13 Gang wars erupted, and Chicago’s 

largely black gang problem “exploded” in the 1960s, a 

period of increased gang “expansion and turbulence” 

in Chicago (Perkins, 1987, p. 74) with the formation 

of so-called “super gangs” with 1,000 members or 

more (Chicago Crime Commission, 1995; Short, 1974). 

Several already sizeable gangs “were joining forces and 

becoming larger, structured organizations” and each 

of them controlled large sectors of the city (Chicago 

Crime Commission, 2009, pp. 11, 13). The major black 

street gangs were the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, 

Black P. Stones, Cobra Stones, and El Rukins (Perkins, 

1987, p. 79).

Along with the high-rise gang incubators, it seems 

evident that racial unrest was a key factor accounting 

for this rapid period of gang growth (Cureton, 2009; 

Diamond, 2001; Perkins, 1987). The rise of the Black 

Panthers instilled black pride, and their demise stirred 

resentment. At the same time, “the Civil Rights 

Movement was advocating nonviolence, racial pride, and 

unity. But black students who were having nonviolent 

demonstrations in the South had little influence on black 

street gang members [in Chicago] who were having 

their own distinctly more violent demonstrations” 

(Perkins, 1987, p. 29). The black gangs that were 

prevalent in Chicago in the 1960s “lived and acted in 

a world that overlapped with that of other youths [and 

the gang members] were surely participants in a street 

culture” that promoted racial empowerment and racial 

unity (Diamond, 2001, p. 677). Diamond emphatically 

asserts that “the fact that organized gangs, per se, 

were not easy to spot as leaders or even actors in . . . 

collective responses to political and economic injustices 

does not necessarily mean that they did not provide an 

infrastructure within which sensibilities of racial anger 

formed and circulated” (p. 674). The youth subculture 

was a ready source of distinctive clothing, hairstyles, 

music, and other symbols including clenched fists. 

Diamond’s research on Chicago gangs revealed that 

these strong sentiments fueled manly and neighborhood 

honor, gang growth, and conflicts that developed in 

conjunction with large-scale migration of blacks and 

both Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, in particular. 

Latino gang emergence in Chicago, however, is not 

well-documented (Arredondo, 2004). The continuous 

presence of Mexicans in the city dates only from the turn 

of the 20th century (Valdés, 1999). The early immigrants 

were restricted to primarily black areas (Arredondo, 

2004) and both Mexican and black youth were attacked 

by the reigning Polish gang, Ragen’s Colts, in marking 

the racialized boundaries of “their” space. Other white 

gangs also patrolled that area. “Reportedly, young 

Irish men, particularly on the east side of the yards, 

applied violent tactics similar to those of Ragen’s Colts, 

waylaying Mexicans and beating them up” (p. 406). 

None of the gangs in Thrasher’s (1927–2000, p. 68) 

enumeration of Chicago groups was of Mexican descent. 

The first major wave of Mexican migration to Chicago 

13 “Gangland,” The History Channel, aired April 15, 2009.
8

during the years 1919–1939 was instigated by the revolutionary 

period in Mexico and new employment opportunities in the 

city—particularly in the meat-packing and steel industries 

(Arredondo, 2008). Most of the immigrants traveled to and from 

Texas, Arizona, and California, but a small proportion got jobs on 

rail lines. Railroads in Mexico linked with the rails in Texas and 

elsewhere in the Southwest, and these connected with multiple 

railways leading to Chicago (via Laredo, San Antonio, and 

Kansas City). “Through track work and rail-related jobs, the first 

significant numbers of Mexicans worked their way to Chicago...

as early as 1910, working for a variety of railroad companies” 

(p. 22). Soon the first colony of Mexican workers was recruited 

and transported by rail into Chicago by packing companies, mills, 

and rail yards. By the 1940s, the Mexican migration into Chicago 

had swelled, and it reached 56,000 by 1960, prompting residents 

to dub the city as the “Mexico of the Midwest.”14 

The post-World War II period also saw another surge of Mexican and 

Latino workers move into Midwest cities, including Chicago and 

Detroit (Pachon and Moore, 1981). Partly in reaction to racial violence, 

gangs began emerging in Mexican barrios in the 1940–1950s, 

notably the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (ALKQN). Soon, 

Mexican immigrants spread into two Chicago communities that had 

long been settled by the Irish, Germans, Czechs, and Poles (Pilsen 

and Little Village),15 wherein Latino gangs grew to join the ranks of 

the most violent gangs in the city (Spergel, 2007). As noted below, 

the Latin Disciples and the Latin Kings would expand to become 

two of the four largest Chicago gangs in the 1990s. 

People and Folk

In the mid-1970s, Latino gangs, black gangs, and Caucasian 

gangs in Chicago formed two major alliances, the “People” and 

the “Folk” (see Sidebar: Gang Names and Alliances). A third group 

of independents was not aligned with either. It is said that the 

People and the Folk were formed in the penitentiary system by 

incarcerated gang members seeking protection through coalition 

building (Chicago Crime Commission, 2009). The two alliances 

were said to have carved out turf boundaries similar to agreements 

among modern nations. “Until recent years, these alliances were 

respectfully maintained on Chicago’s streets and the People and 

the Folk were strong rivals... Now, although street gangs still 

align themselves with the People and the Folk, law enforcement 

agencies all seem to agree that these alliances mean little” (p. 

11). Nevertheless, “the Chicago style of gangsterism stretches to 

Gary, Indiana, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where alliances are 

fragile enough to promote interracial mistrust and solid enough 

to fuel feuds lasting for decades” (Cureton, 2009, p. 354).

Modern-Day Midwest Gangs

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, just 4 of the 40 major gangs 

in Chicago had a total membership of approximately 19,000 

(the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, the Latin Disciples, the 

Latin Kings, and the Vice Lords). In the period between 1987 and 

14 The Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.encyclopedia.

chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed December 28, 2009.

15 The Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.encyclopedia.

chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed December 28, 2009.

Gang Names and Alliances

Source: Miller, 2001, pp. 43–44

During much of the past century, most 

gangs were locality-based groups, often 

taking their names from the neighborhoods 

where they assembled and carried on their 

activities (e.g., Southside Raiders, Twelfth 

Street Locos, Jackson Park Boys). Other 

gangs adopted nonlocality-based names of 

their own choosing (e.g., Cobras, Warriors, 

Los Diablos, Mafia Emperors). Most gangs 

were autonomous and independently named. 

During the 1960s, a pattern of gang branches 

became popular in some cities, whereby 

a number of gangs adopted a variant of a 

common gang name. In Chicago in the 1960s, 

the Vicelord name was used by about ten 

local gangs, including the California Lords, 

War Lords, Fifth Avenue Lords, and Maniac 

Lords. These gangs claimed to be part of a 

common organization—the Vicelord Nation—

related to one another by ties of alliance and 

capable of engaging in centrally directed 

activity (Keiser, 1969). 

In the 1980s, the pattern of adopting a common 

name and claiming a federated relationship 

with other gangs expanded enormously. The 

most prominent of these were the Crips and 

Bloods—two rival gangs originally formed 

in Los Angeles—with locality designations 

reflecting neighborhoods in that city 

(e.g., Hoover Crips, East Side 40th Street 

Gangster Crips, Hacienda Village Bloods, and 

42nd Street Piru Bloods). Many of the Bloods 

and Crips gangs or “sets” regarded one 

another as mortal enemies and engaged in a 

continuing blood feud. In succeeding years, 

hundreds of gangs across the United States 

adopted the Bloods and Crips names. A 1994 

survey counted more than 1,100 gangs in 115 

cities throughout the nation with Bloods or 

Crips in their names. 

Another gang name widely used throughout 

the nation was the Latin Kings—a name 

originally used in Chicago in the 1940s. 

Another development during the late 1900s 

was the practice by gangs of identifying 

themselves with named alliances or 

federations that had become nationally, 

rather than locally or regionally, prevalent, 

often as paired antagonists (i.e., traditional 

rivals). Prominent among these “families” or 

“nations” were the People and the Folks.
9

1990, these four gangs were responsible for nearly seven 

out of ten of the city’s street gang-motivated crimes 

and more than five out of ten street gang-motivated 

homicides (Block and Block, 1993). 

The most recent chapter in Chicago gang history is the 

proliferation of gangs outside the city of Chicago, in 

the surrounding county and beyond. Street gangs were 

pushed outward to the suburbs with the gentrification 

of the inner city and the destruction of high-rise housing 

units. By 2006, 19 gang turfs were scattered around 

Chicago, throughout Cook County (Chicago Crime 

Commission, 2009, p. 119). Next, gangs began emerging 

in the larger region surrounding Chicago on the North, 

West, and South sides. At the present, “Chicago style of 

gangsterism stretches to Gary, Indiana, and Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin” (Cureton, 2009).

Chicago is not the only city in the Central region 

that reports serious gang problems (FBI, 2008, p. 18). 

Other cities in this region that have extensive gang 

activity include Cleveland, Detroit, Joliet, Kansas City, 

Minneapolis, Omaha, and St. Louis. According to the 

FBI (2008), Latino gangs with ties to the southern 

California-based Mexican Mafia (La Eme) prison gang 

have established a presence in the Central region and 

are attempting to expand their influence there. Hispanic 

Sureños 13 members have also been reported in the 

region (p. 15). In addition, several Latino gangs are 

said to be involved in drug trafficking with the Mexican 

drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating along 

the U.S.–Mexico border (p. 11).

Despite these developments, traditional Chicago gangs 

still have the strongest presence within the Midwest 

region. Gang growth among several of them has 

continued to the present time, and some reformation 

has taken place. In 2008, “the largest street gangs in 

Chicago appear to be the Gangster Disciple Nation 

(GDN), Black Gangsters/New Breeds (BG), Latin Kings 

(LKs), Black P. Stone Nation, Vice Lords (VLs), the Four 

Corner Hustlers and the Maniac Latin Disciples (MLDs)” 

(Chicago Crime Commission, 2009, p. 11).

Gang Growth in the West

The existence of the Mexican population in the United 

States dates back to the 16th century, when Spanish 

explorers settled what was then northern Mexico and is 

currently the American West (Moore and Pinderhughes, 

1993). In Los Angeles and Albuquerque, the downtown 

plazas were original settlement areas, around which 

these cities grew. Spanish and Mexican settlers who 

already lived in that region became United States 

citizens following the end of the Mexican-American War 

in 1848, although Mexican immigration in large numbers 

did not begin until the turn of the 20th century (Pachon 

and Moore, 1981). 

Gang-like groups are said to have first appeared in the 

Western region as early as the 1890s (Redfield, 1941; 

Rubel, 1965). Widely recognized experts on Latino 

gang origins (Moore, 1978, 1991; Vigil, 1990) suggest 

that the precursors of Latino or Chicano (Americanborn) urban gangs in the Western region were the 

palomilla (meaning literally, flock of doves). These are 

best described as small groups of young Mexican men 

that formed out of a “male cohorting tradition,” first 

reported in south Texas in the early 1900s (Rubel, 1965). 

These nascent gangs appear to have migrated along 

the trail that originated in Mexico and continued along 

a route through El Paso and Albuquerque, and onward 

to Los Angeles. The first Los Angeles gangs, called “boy 

gangs” (Bogardus, 1926), clearly were patterned after 

the palomilla (Moore, 1978; Vigil, 1990). 

The trail from Mexico to Los Angeles would later come 

to resemble a well-traveled road. Gangs exist in Mexican 

states from which migration to the United States has 

been most common, including in states such as Jalisco 

and Michoacan, with a generations-old tradition of 

migration to and from the United States (Moore, 2007). 

In fact, events that led to the presence of Mexican 

street gangs in Los Angeles and the entire Western 

region began long before the first gangs appeared there 

(Valdez, 2007, pp. 93–136). Following the end of the 

war between the United States and Mexico, under the 

Treaty of Hidalgo (in 1848), the Mexican government 

ceded a large southwestern region to the United States. 

Mexican citizens in the area we now know as California, 

Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and half 

of Colorado became naturalized U.S. citizens. “Many 

Mexican street gang members felt—and still feel—that 

the United States stole this part of their country from 

their ancestors” (p. 94). 

Worse yet, the Mexicans became alienated in their own 

homeland. Even though they were naturalized citizens, 

“they often were treated as second-class citizens and 

were told to go back to their home, Mexico. In their 

mind, they were home, but now [their homeland] was 

part of the United States because of the annexation. 

They were in a country where they were not wanted, 

but they could not return to Mexico because of their new 

status with the United States” (p. 94). Over the next halfcentury, these alienated people were slowly joined by 

other migrants from Mexico. Then Mexican immigration 

was greatly accelerated by the Mexican Revolution 

(1910–1920) and the labor needs of the Southwest and 

the Midwest. These two factors combined to draw up 

to 2 million Mexican immigrants to the United States in 

the next 20 years (Vigil, 1988). 

Two forces served to incubate street gangs of Mexican 

origin in Los Angeles and in other Western cities: 

physical and cultural “marginalization” (Vigil, 1988, 2002, 

2008). The barrios in which the earliest and most firmly 

established gangs developed were well-demarcated 

settlements of Mexican immigrants. “They were located 

in geographically isolated areas that other settlers 

and developers had bypassed as less appropriate for 

habitation, and were further isolated by cultural, racial, 

and socioeconomic barriers enforced by ingrained 

prejudices of the Anglo-American community” (Vigil, 
10

1993, p. 95). This rendered the barrios more impermeable 

to outside influences. 

Mexican immigrants were culturally marginalized 

between their society of origin and the dominant 

American culture to which they had migrated. Cholo

youth, the poorest of the poor marginalized immigrants, 

could not fully assimilate into Anglo culture or develop 

a unique identity incorporating aspects of both Anglo 

and Latino culture (Horowitz, 1983; Vigil, 1988, 1990). 

This group comprises the cholo subculture (Lopez and 

Brummett, 2003). Being a cholo allows such youth 

to assert a Latino identity, take pride in it, and deny 

“being enbacheado (Anglicized)” (Vigil, 1988, p. 42). 

In other words, these street youth shaped their own 

cholo (a derivative of the Spanish solo, meaning “alone”) 

subculture. 

Gangs more territorially structured than the palomilla

and cholo groups were populated by second-generation 

children of Mexican Americans who gathered in groups 

to “give themselves emotional and psychological 

support in a defeating world” (Pachon and Moore, 1981, 

pp. 119–120). The nuclei of the gangs that emerged in 

the barrios were street youth “who saw little to aspire 

to in their parents’ difficult circumstances and received 

little guidance from other adults” (Vigil, 1993, p. 96). 

They were formed among youth who were culturally and 

socially alienated and gravitated to barrio hangouts. 

First Period of Gang Growth in 

Los Angeles

The Latino gangs in the barrios (neighborhoods) of 

East Los Angeles typically formed in adolescent 

friendship groups in the 1930s and 1940s (Moore, 

1993), although the first ones appeared in the 1920s as 

“boy gangs” (Bogardus, 1926). Conflict with groups of 

youth in other barrios, school officials, police, and other 

authorities solidified them as highly visible groups 

(Moore, 1993; Vigil, 1993). Core members of the gangs 

that flourish in these barrios tended to come from 

among those cholos with the weakest ties to either 

the Mexican-American or Anglo-American cultures. 

Thus the gang subculture provided a means of social 

adjustment or adaptation for marginalized youth. 

The earlier “boy gangs” were now transformed into 

street gangs (Vigil, 1990), in a ritualized “street 

baptism” (Vigil, 2004). 

Each day, “conflict with rival gangs provides an arena 

for the demonstration of street-learned skills, values, 

and loyalties” (Vigil, 1993, p. 98). A territorial-based 

rationale for conflict became institutionalized that is 

distinguished by “defense of the barrio and fighting 

for one’s ‘homeboys,’” for the honor of both (p. 96). 

“Mi barrio” (my neighborhood) became synonymous 

with “my gang.” “The interchangeability of these 

terms is important in the gang subculture; a boy is a 

member of a gang, of a neighborhood, and of a barrio” 

(Moore, Vigil, and Garcia, 1983, p. 184). “They fought 

other gangs and they sprayed their graffiti all over 

the place” (Moore, 1993, p. 35). Latino gangs became 

cultural institutions in Latino communities on the East 

Los Angeles streets and in several other southwestern 

cities (Moore, 1978).

This intense bonding to barrios and gangs is unique 

to Los Angeles and other Western cities. “In Chicago, 

no such well-defined Mexican, Latino, or youth-gang 

subculture has developed, in large part because 

the major barrios were not settled until the 1960s” 

(Hutchison, 1993, p. 164). In contrast, “the long duration 

of gangs in barrios throughout Southern California 

has created both a model and a direct impetus for the 

formation of other gangs in nearby areas” (Vigil, 1993, 

p. 97). “Each new wave of immigrants has settled 

in or near existing barrios and created new ones, 

[providing] a new generation of poorly schooled and 

partially acculturated youths from which the gangs 

draw their membership” (Vigil and Long, 1990, p. 56). 

Moore and Pinderhughes (1993) contrast this process 

of gang institutionalization in the American Southwest 

with the establishment of gangs in Chicago and other 

urban centers, where gangs formed simultaneously with 

“ethnic succession.” 

This history is not all that distinguishes Latino or 

Mexican-American gangs from those in New York 

and Chicago. Another main difference is that gangs 

in these two cities emanated from conflicts with other 

racial/ethnic groups (Adamson, 1998, 2000). In contrast, 

Latino gangs drew more of their strength from their 

own ethnic history. A second main difference is that the 

Western Latino gangs did not grow out of severe social 

disorganization, as was claimed in the evolutionary 

history of New York and Chicago gangs. Generally 

speaking, poverty did not become as concentrated in 

Latino neighborhoods as in Chicago or New York City 

(Moore and Pinderhughes, 1993, p. xxx). 

Second Period of Gang Growth 

in Los Angeles

From 1940 to 1964, another 4 million Mexicans settled 

in the United States, followed by an additional 6 to 12 

million in the 1970s (Vigil, 2002). The Los Angeles area 

received the most Mexican immigrants. “By 1990 the 

number of native Mexican Americans and immigrant 

Mexicans in Los Angeles County exceeded three 

million” (Vigil, 2002, p. 30). As a result, the city grew 

enormously “between 1930 and 1990, adding more 

than six million people for a total of nearly nine million 

residents” (Moore and Vigil, 1993, p. 30), becoming the 

second-largest city in the nation. Los Angeles became 

heavily populated with an unusual mixture of nativeborn urban Americans, Mexican Americans from other 

parts of the Southwest, new immigrants from Mexico, 

and third-generation Latinos who had long lived in the 

intermixed barrios (Moore, 1978). Indeed, “Los Angeles 

has long been the Latino ‘capital’ of the United States, 

housing more people of Mexican descent than most 

cities in Mexico” (Moore and Vigil, 1993, p. 27). 
11

Two other historic events in the 1940s would prove 

pivotal in the development of Mexican-American gangs 

in the Southwest: the Sleepy Lagoon murder, and the 

Zoot Suit Riots. Sleepy Lagoon was a popular swimming 

hole in what is now East Los Angeles. A Mexican 

youngster was killed there in 1942, and members of the 

38th Street Mexican gang were arrested and charged 

with murder by the Los Angeles Police Department 

(Valdez, 2007, pp. 98–99). Unfortunately, the criminal 

trial resembled a “kangaroo court,” in which five of the 

gang members were convicted and sentenced to prison. 

“Mexican street gangs changed forever because of these 

convictions. The jail sentences also acted as a glue to 

unite the Mexican community in a common cause, a 

fight against class distinction based on prejudice and 

racism, a fight against the establishment” (p. 98). The 

38th Street gang members’ cause continued in prison. 

They maintained their dignity and “demonstrated 

a type of gang pride and resolve never seen before. 

These behaviors also elevated the incarcerated 

38th Street gang members to folk hero status in 

the Mexican community. The street gang members 

especially held them in high esteem” (p. 99).

The Zoot Suit Riots had a similar unifying effect for 

Mexican Americans. Zoot suits were a fashionable 

clothing trend in the late 1920s and popularized in 

the nightclubs of Harlem (Valdez, 2007, p. 96). The 

exaggerated zoot suit included an oversized jacket 

with wide lapels and shoulders, and baggy pants 

that narrowed at the ankles, typically accompanied 

by a wide-brimmed hat. The style traveled west and 

south into Mexico and, most likely, was introduced 

into California via the El Paso Mexican street gang 

population. By 1943, the Anglo community, the police, 

and the media began to view the zoot suiters as a savage 

group that presumably had attacked vulnerable white 

women and was also said to be responsible for several 

local homicides (Katz and Webb, 2006, p. 44). Military 

personnel and citizen mobs chased and beat anyone 

wearing a zoot suit—Latino and black youth alike—

during a five-day riotous period (Vigil, 2002, p. 68). 

Third Period of Gang Growth in 

Los Angeles 

In this third stage, the development of black gangs 

in Los Angeles follows a pattern that is similar to the 

emergence of black gangs in Chicago. As in Chicago, 

a pattern of south-to-north black migration fueled 

the growth of black gangs in Los Angeles (Cureton, 

2009). But gang formation in Los Angeles developed 

in two phases (Alonso, 2004): post-World War II to 

1965, and between 1970–1972. In both periods, “racial 

intimidation, school and residential segregation, 

extreme marginalization, and racial exclusion from 

mainstream Los Angeles” played significant roles in 

black gang formation (Alonso, 2004, p. 659). 

The influx of black immigrants came in two waves, 

between 1915 and 1929 and from 1940 to 1950, with most 

newcomers coming from the Deep South (Vigil, 2002, 

pp. 63–68). “Southern blacks were simply looking for 

a better life, and the West was considered the land 

of prosperity because of employment opportunities in 

factories” (Cureton, 2009, p. 355). Instead, institutional 

inequality (in housing, education, and employment), 

and restrictive housing covenants legalized in the 

1920s rendered much of Los Angeles off-limits to most 

minorities (Alonso, 2004; Cureton, 2009). Black residents 

challenged these covenants, leading to violent clashes 

between white social clubs and clusters of black 

youth. “Fear of attack from Whites was widespread 

and this intimidation led to the early formation of Black 

social street clubs aimed at protecting Black youths 

against persistent White violence directed at the Black 

community” (Cureton, 2009, p. 664). 

Although Chicago had its own race riot, racial violence 

played a much stronger role in the formation of black 

street gangs in Los Angeles than was the case in 

Chicago (Alonso, 2004; Cureton, 2009). The first black 

gangs formed in Los Angeles in the late 1940s as a 

defensive response to white youth violence in the 

schools (Vigil, 2002, p. 68), from which they spread south 

and westward (Alonso, 2004). But the gangs that grew 

in the 1950s and 1960s were far more serious gangs 

than the earlier ones. These grew out of black clubs and 

nascent gangs that played a central role in developing 

resistance strategies to counter white intimidation. “As 

white clubs began to fade from the scene, eventually the 

black clubs, which were first organized as protectors of 

the community, began to engage in conflicts with other 

black clubs. “Black gang activity [soon] represented 

a significant proportion of gang incidents” across 

Los Angeles (p. 665).

By the mid-1950s, South Central black gangs “served as 

the architects of social space in the new, usually hostile, 

settings” (Alonso, 2004, p. 68). Generally speaking, in 

the ghetto areas of the southside and the eastside of 

Los Angeles, “where tens of thousands of 1940s 

and 1950s Black immigrants were crammed into the 

overcrowded, absentee-landlord housing, youth gangs 

offered ‘cool worlds’ of street socialization for poor young 

newcomers from rural Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi” 

(p. 68). With time, blacks “were able to escape the ghetto 

to surrounding communities, but in doing so they merely 

widened the ghetto’s boundaries” (p. 69). 

“The end of the 1960s was the last chapter of the political, 

social, and civil rights movement by Black groups in 

LA, and a turning point away from the development 

of positive Black identity in the city” (Alonso, 2004, 

p. 668). But the “deeply racialized context coincided 

with the resurgence of new emerging street groups” 

between 1970 and 1972 (p. 668). Black Los Angeles 

youth searching for a new identity began to mobilize 

as street groups. This process also widened the base of 

black gangs into two camps, Crips and Bloods. 
12

The Crips and Bloods began to emulate the territorymarking practices that had been developed by 

the early Los Angeles Latino gangs (Valdez, 2007, 

p. 186).16

Crips wore blue clothing; the Bloods chose red. The Crips 

led the way in using graffiti to mark their territories. 

They often listed core members of their gangs. Their 

claimed areas came to be known as “hoods.” They 

developed a mantra, “Crips don’t die, they multiply.” 

Indeed, the Crips grew enormously throughout 

Los Angeles County, particularly in the public housing 

projects, “insuring that available positive role models 

were kept to a minimum and that the role models who 

were around belonged to the street” (Vigil, 2002, p. 77). 

Both the Bloods and the Crips grew in these settings 

(Valdez, 2007, Vigil, 2002), particularly in the housing 

projects built in Watts in the 1950s—in Jordan Downs, 

William Nickerson, Jr. Gardens, and Imperial Courts—

and blacks made up nearly 95 percent of these two 

gangs (Vigil, 2002, p. 76).

The Los Angeles gang culture soon began to draw the 

attention of youth in nearby cities. By the 1970s, street 

gangs had emerged in most populated areas across 

California (Miller, 1982/1992, pp. 35–36). At that time, 

there were 20 cities in California with populations of 

100,000 or more. Of these, 19 reported gang problems, 

and altogether street gangs were reported in more than 

100 cities and towns across the state. “The numbers of 

cities and towns with gang problems in the extended 

Los Angeles metropolitan area, along with the size of 

the population aggregates affected, were... without 

precedent in American history” (p. 37). 

Modern-Day Western Gangs

The Bloods became particularly strong in the black 

communities in South Central Los Angeles—especially 

in places on its periphery such as Compton—and in 

outlying communities such as Pacoima, Pasadena, and 

Pomona (Alonso, 2004; Vigil, 2002). By 1972, there were 

18 Crips and Bloods gangs in Los Angeles, and these 

were the largest of the more than 500 active gangs in 

the city in the 1970s (Vigil, 2002, p. 76). In the 1980s, 

the most prominent of the Los Angeles Crips and Bloods 

16 There are other competing accounts of how Bloods and Crips 

gangs formed. Prominent among these is Cureton’s (2009, pp. 

356–357). Based on his research, former Black Panther president 

Bunchy Carter and Raymond Washington formed the Crips in 1969 

out of disappointment with the failure of the Black Panther Party 

to achieve its goals. The Crips were originally organized to be a 

community help association; however, following Carter’s death, 

the Crips’ leadership shifted its focus “to drug and gun sales 

that involved much violence.” Street gang feuds soon erupted. 

Neighborhood groups who opposed the Crips formed an umbrella 

organization to unify these groups. “Hence, the Bloods were born 

(1973 to 1975), and their philosophy was that a far more ruthless 

approach was needed to compensate for being outnumbered by 

the Crips... The Crips and Blood feuds were historic, featuring the 

rise and fall of peace treaties, community stress, shock, and sorrow 

over the unforgiving nature of fatal violence.” For yet another 

competing account of Bloods and Crips origins, see Valdez (2007, 

pp. 186–87).

were the Hoover Crips, East Side 40th Street Gangster 

Crips, Hacienda Village Bloods, and 42nd Street Piru 

Bloods (Miller, 2001). Many of the Bloods and Crips 

gangs regarded one another as mortal enemies and 

engaged in a continuing blood feud. In succeeding 

years, hundreds of gangs in the Southwest—and also 

in other parts of the United States—adopted the Bloods 

and Crips names. “Today, all west coast black street 

gang members affiliate themselves with the Bloods or 

Crips” (Valdez, 2007, p. 189).

The significant street and prison Latino gangs operating 

in the Western and Pacific regions (particularly 

California, Nevada, and Hawaii) are La Eme, 18th Street, 

Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13), and Nuestra Familia, (FBI, 

2008, p. 19). The most prominent Mexican gangs among 

these are 18th Street, La Eme, and Nuestra Familia. 

The FBI considers the California-based Mexican Mafia 

(La Eme) to be one of seven major prison gangs.17 

The Mexican Mafia prison gang was formed in the late 

1950s within the California Department of Corrections 

(FBI, 2008). It is loosely structured and has strict rules 

that must be followed by members. Altogether, the 

Mexican Mafia controls approximately 50,000 to 75,000 

California Sureños gang members and associates 

(p. 7). Most members are Mexican-American males 

who previously belonged to a southern California street 

gang. Although the Mexican Mafia is active in the 

Southwestern and Pacific regions of the United States, 

its power base is in California. The gang’s main source 

of income is extorting drug distributors outside prison 

and distributing methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, 

and marijuana within prison systems and on the streets. 

Some members have direct links to Mexican drugtrafficking organizations, which is examined in more 

detail in the following section. The Mexican Mafia also is 

involved in other criminal activities, including controlling 

gambling and homosexual prostitution in prison.

Two notorious gangs, MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, 

both of which originated in the Los Angeles area, are 

examined below, as possible “transnational gangs.” 

Street Gang Emergence in the 

South

The Southern region18 emerged much later as an 

important gang territory. For one thing, it lacked a 

central large city within which early gang activity 

was concentrated. The early immigrant groups were 

dispersed across the area. Moreover, gang activity likely 

did not emerge in the southern states prior to the 1970s 

17 The others are Aryan Brotherhood, Barrio Azteca, Black 

Guerrilla Family, Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, Mexikanemi (also 

known as Texas Mexican Mafia or Emi), and Ñeta. See FBI, 2008, 

pp. 28–29 for more detailed information on each of these.

18 Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, 

Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West 

Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
13

(Miller, 1982/1992).19 Toward the end of that decade, 

only four southern cities reported gang activity (Dallas, 

Fort Worth, New Orleans, Miami, and San Antonio) 

(pp. 42, 110). Among these cities, only Miami and 

San Antonio were considered to have a moderately 

serious gang problem at that time (pp. 45, 110). Actually, 

Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, Fort Worth, and Miami 

reported a greater problem with disruptive local groups 

than gangs in the 1970s (p. 68). 

Gang activity grew significantly across the South from 

the 1970s through the 1990s but remained dispersed 

across the Southern region (Miller, 2001, p. 26). Several 

southern states saw sharp increases in the number 

of new gang counties by 1995: Florida (23 percent), 

South Carolina (15 percent), Alabama (12 percent), and 

Texas (8 percent). In addition, gang activity emerged 

in multiple cities in a number of southern counties by 

1995, including Dallas County, Texas (18 cities); Broward 

County, Florida (15 cities); Palm Beach County, Florida 

(11 cities); Dade County, Florida (8 cities); and St. Louis 

County, Missouri (6 cities). From the 1970s through 1995, 

the Southern region led the nation in the number of new 

gang cities, a 32 percent increase, versus increases of 

26 percent in the Midwest, 6 percent in the Northeast, 

and 3 percent in the West (p. 32). 

By 1998, the states with the largest number of gangproblem cities were California (363), Illinois (261), Texas 

(156), and Florida (125) (Miller, 2001, p. 60). Of these, 

only two, California and Illinois, reported large numbers 

of cities with gang problems in the 1970s. The states 

with the largest number of gang counties in 1998 were 

Texas (82), Georgia (61), California (50), Illinois (42), and 

Florida (40), with the South replacing the Northeast 

as the region with the most top-ranking states (p. 63). 

Hence, the Southern region appeared to catch up with 

other regions in the prevalence of gang activity just 

before the turn of the century. 

Another Wave of Immigrant 

Groups

Another mixture of immigrant groups would arrive 

after the mid-1960s. The Immigration and Nationality 

Act of 1965 ended the national quotas on foreigners 

in the U.S. This led to a shift in immigration to the 

U.S., from European origins to Central and South 

America and Asia (Bankston, 1998). The new groups 

consisted largely of Asians (Cambodians, Filipinos, 

Koreans, Samoans, Thais, Vietnamese, and others) and 

Latin Americans (Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, 

Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, 

and others) (Miller, 2001, pp. 45–46). By the late 1980s, 

the children of many American-born or Americanized 

parents among the new immigrants, dubbed “the new 

second generation,” had reached adolescence or young 

adulthood (Portes and Zhou, 1993), and these youth 

19 Mexican-American gangs actually existed in San Antonio 

before the 1970s (Valdez, 2007, p. 43). But Valdez notes that these 

early multigenerational barrio gangs in the city were not connected 

to others that emerged later.

“formed gangs in the classic immigrant gang tradition” 

(Miller, 2001, p. 46). 

The urban areas where these members of the new 

second generation settled “experienced increased 

juvenile crime in recent years, in addition to increased 

ethnic diversity” (Bankston, 1998, p. 36). Gang-related 

crime in many cities increased during the same era. 

The number of gang cities started accelerating in the 

1980s and grew steadily through the 1990s (Miller, 

2001, pp. 64–68). “Youth gangs of the 1980s and 1990s 

are more numerous, more prevalent, and more violent 

than in the 1950s, probably more so than at any time 

in the country’s history” (Miller, 1990, p. 263; see also 

Spergel, 1995, pp. 33–42). Miller, Moore, and Spergel 

draw attention to distinct racial/ethnic components of 

the elevated gang violence. “There can be little doubt 

that the new immigrants have contributed to the growth 

of gangs” (Miller, 2001, p. 46).

However, the faces of gang members soon changed 

nationwide in three other important respects, the 

widespread involvement of white youth, females, and 

youth from all socioeconomic strata. By the middle of this 

decade, studies showed relatively equal proportions of 

racial/ethnic groups in young samples. For example in a 

15-city sample, racial and ethnic proportions were quite 

similar for whites (7 percent), blacks (8 percent), and 

Hispanics (9 percent), but slightly larger (13 percent) 

for multiracial groups (Esbensen, Brick, Melde, et al., 

2008). Differences between female versus male gang 

membership rates also gradually became minimal. 

In this same 15-city sample where gangs are active, 

9 percent of boys and 8 percent of girls were classified 

as current gang members. Nationwide, in the 1997 

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the male-tofemale ratio was approximately 2:1 (11 percent of males 

versus 6 percent of females) (Snyder and Sickmund, 

2006, p. 70). 

“Transnational” Gangs 

If one is using this term broadly to mean multinationality 

of membership, then transnational gangs are not a 

new phenomenon in the United States (Franco, 2008b). 

So-labeled gangs in the United States “have included 

[those] composed of members of Asian, Russian, African, 

Serbian, Bosnian, Jamaican, and other races, ethnicities, 

and nationalities. Some of these transnational gangs 

have evolved into highly organized and sophisticated 

criminal enterprises known for influencing government 

officials and the judiciary in the countries in which they 

operate. In the United States, the most well-known 

example of this type of crime syndicate is the Mafia, 

or La Cosa Nostra, composed of members of Sicilian 

descent” (p. 2).

There is no single definition of a transnational gang. 

Various definitions have cited one or more of the 

following characteristics (Franco, 2008b, p. 2): 

•	Such gangs are criminally active and operational in

more than one country.
14

•	Criminal activities committed by gang members in

one country are planned, directed, and controlled 

by gang leaders in another country.

•	Such gangs tend to be mobile and adapt to new

areas. 

•	The criminal activities of such gangs tend to be

sophisticated and transcend borders. 

For a gang to be considered transnational, Franco 

suggests that it should have more than one of the 

above characteristics; however, “much of the literature 

characterizes . . . gangs as transnational merely because 

they are present in more than one country” (p. 2).

The notorious 18th Street gang (M-18) and Mara 

Salvatrucha (MS-13) Los Angeles gangs have been 

called transnational gangs. Both gangs became aligned 

to the Mexican Mafia prison gang and thus became 

Sureños, adopting the number 13 into their iconography 

(for the letter “M,” the 13th letter of the alphabet). As a 

result, Mara Salvatrucha is often known as MS-13.

18th Street Gang

The 18th Street gang (also called Calle 18, Barrio 18, 

or M-18) emerged in the 1960s (Valdez, 2000b). The 

18th Street gang was created because a local Mexican 

gang, Clanton Street, rejected all youths who could not 

prove 100% Mexican ancestry. “As a result, the kids 

from the Clanton Street neighborhood who were denied 

membership because of their tainted ancestry formed 

their own gang. They became the original 18th Street 

gang” (p. 146). To date, it “is probably one of the largest 

Hispanic street gangs in the country and it has become 

established nationally and internationally” (Valdez, 

2007, p. 145). It was formed in Los Angeles as a result 

of prejudice on the part of Mexican street gang members 

against mixed-race Mexicans and non-Mexicans. 

Because it broke the racial barrier in accepting 

largely immigrant youths and those of mixed racial 

backgrounds, the 18th Street gang quickly grew 

enormously. “Predominately composed of Hispanics, 

some cliques of the 18th Street gang have even 

recruited African Americans, Asians, Whites, and Native 

Americans for membership . . . . Another unique aspect 

about the 18th Street gang is that, although it was 

primarily turf-oriented, some gang members traveled 

to other areas and states to establish cliques and start 

illegal activities” (Valdez, 2007, p. 146). 

The size of the 18th Street gang is phenomenal. Some 

estimates have assessed the 18th Street gang as having 

more than 20,000 members in California, other states, 

and a few other countries (Valdez, 2007, p. 145). The 

18th Street gang epitomizes the enormity of the Mexican 

gang phenomenon that Los Angeles produced.

“Like most gangs, 18th Street is involved in 

many types of criminal activities including 

auto theft, car-jacking, drive-by shootings, 

drug sales, arms trafficking, extortion, rape, 

murder, and murder for hire. Although national 

and international drug trafficking seems to be 

the main criminal activity that the 18th Street 

gang is involved in, it is helpful to know that 

the 18th Street gang also established ties 

with the Mexican and Columbian [sic] drug 

cartels. Because of the amount of drugs being 

distributed and sold, 18th Street also has 

connections with the Mexican Mafia prison 

gang and many African American street gangs” 

(Valdez, 2007, p. 147).

Mara Salvatrucha 13

As Central American gang experts explain, the word 

mara is a Spanish word for “gang,” coming from a 

type of ant in Central America known for its ferocity. 

Trucha means “trout” but is also a slang term for 

“shrewd Salvadoran” (Manwaring, 2005b, p. 44; see also 

Franco, 2008a; McGuire, 2007). Thus, Mara Salvatrucha 

specifically refers to a gang of shrewd Salvadorans. 

Generally speaking, though, the term maras can also 

be used to denote Central American gangs. 

Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) originated in gang-infested 

neighborhoods of Los Angeles in the 1980s among 

refugees of the Salvadoran civil war (1979–1992) who 

had fled to the United States. Originally, MS-13 had 

only native El Salvadoran members (Valdez, 2007, 

pp. 149–151; Valdez, 2000a). Salvadoran youth faced a 

choice: either join 18th Street or form their own gang 

to combat it. A number of them chose the latter option, 

thus forming what became known as Mara Salvatrucha, 

and the rivalry between the two groups began. 

Soon members from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, 

and Mexico, and a few blacks from the southern 

United States were allowed to join Mara Salvatrucha 

and the gang grew in strength.

The main “international” feature of the MS-13 gang 

stems from U.S. immigration policies. “Once gangs had 

begun to emerge in the Central American immigrant 

communities in the United States, U.S. deportation 

policies helped spread their names, their style, and 

their influence back to Central America” (McGuire, 

2007, p. 5). The key gang diffusion mechanism was 

the release of convicted felons from prisons in the 

United States back to their countries of origin 

(Manwaring, 2005a, p. 1). McGuire details this important 

phase of the “internationalization” process: 

“Beginning in the mid 1990s, the U.S. 

adopted a new, more aggressive approach to 

deportation, identifying and deporting not 

only undocumented and legal non-citizen 

convicts as they completed federal prison 

sentences, but reaching out to identify and 

deport undocumented and non-citizen felons 

as they completed sentences in state and local 

prisons. The increasing deportation of ganginvolved Central Americans from the United 

States fed an already-existing gang problem in 

Central American countries, which have many 
15

fewer resources than does the U.S. to address 

the societal threats that gangs pose. After 

arriving in the country to which they have been 

deported, with few networks and sometimes 

little or no working knowledge of Spanish, 

many gang members are likely to join forces and 

establish or join up with gangs in their home 

country, in prisons and in the streets” (McGuire, 

2007, p. 5). 

The U.S. deportation policies also served to strengthen 

the maras in Central America and other gangs in 

Mexico:

“This resulted in Central American and 

Mexican gangs adopting more sophisticated 

gang techniques [that had] originated on the 

streets of urban America. In addition, these 

gangs became increasingly connected to their 

gang affiliates in the U.S., which has continued 

to facilitate cross-border communication, 

organization, and growth among gang members 

in the U.S., Central America, and Mexico” 

(U.S. Agency for International Development 

[USAID], 2006, p. 6).

Criminal opportunity is another factor that has 

contributed to the transnationalization of gang activity. 

“For example, Central American gang members consider 

southern Mexico to be a lucrative business environment 

where one can profit from the cross-border trafficking 

of drugs, weapons, and humans. On Mexico’s northern 

border, gangs are reportedly hired by international drug 

cartels for various services such as drug distribution 

and assassinations” (USAID, 2006, p. 18). In June 2005, 

the FBI gathered information showing that some gang 

members are involved in transnational gang activity 

(p. 19):

The FBI MS-13 National Task Force traveled 

to Chiapas, Mexico, on a fact-finding mission. 

On that trip, the FBI obtained 180 fingerprint 

records of gang members. These records were 

later shared with ICE and U.S. Customs and 

Border Protection. The interagency partners 

determined that 46 of those same individuals 

had already been identified in the United States. 

Although it was not clear from the June factfinding mission in which direction—north or 

south—the gang members were heading, it 

was evident that there is frequent transnational 

movement by gang members throughout the 

region.

The MS-13 and 18th Street gangs currently receive 

considerable attention among broadcast media, 

law enforcement, and the U.S. Congress because of 

their widely publicized connections with gangs in 

Mexico and Central America (Franco, 2008a, 2008b). 

U.S. government figures place the total number of 

MS-13 and 18th Street gang members in the United 

States at roughly 38,000 (USAID, 2006, p. 17). Another 

20,000 gang members are estimated to be active in 

gangs along the Mexico border. Both of these figures 

are largely based on information provided to the USAID 

(p. 17) by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration 

rather than on official Mexican and Central American 

records. 

A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC, 

2007) assessment produced an estimate (Box 1) of the total 

number of gang members in each of the Central America 

countries (69,145). This latter study also produced 

estimates of the number of gangs and gang members. 

Two of these estimates are particularly noteworthy. 

First, Honduras—not El Salvador—is believed to have 

the most gang members among these countries (36,000). 

Second, El Salvador is believed to have very few gangs 

(only four), but they are far larger than gangs in other 

countries in the region, averaging 2,625 members each. 

These two countries and Guatemala appear to be most 

affected by gang activity.

Box 1. Central American Gang Member 

Estimates

Country Number of 

Gangs

Total 

Membership

Average 

Number of 

Members 

Per Gang

Panama 94 1,385 15

Nicaragua 268 4,500 17

Guatemala 434 14,000 32

Belize 2 100 50

Honduras 112 36,000 321

Costa Rica 6 2,660 443

El Salvador 4 10,500 2,625

Total 69,145

Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2007, 

p. 60) 

Extremely dire social and economic conditions in this 

region provide ideal gang incubating conditions. As 

explained by Manwaring (2007, p. 14): “The root causes 

of gang activity in Central American countries and 

Mexico are also similar. They include gang members 

growing up in marginal areas with minimal access to 

basic social services; high levels of youth unemployment, 

compounded by insufficient access to educational and 

other public benefits; overwhelmed, ineffective, and 

often corrupt police and justice systems; easy access 

to weapons; dysfunctional families; and high levels of 

intra-familial and intra-community violence.” Although 

“press reports and some current and former Central 

American officials have blamed MS-13 and other gangs 

for a large percentage of violent crimes committed in 

those countries . . . some analysts assert that those 

claims may be exaggerated” (Seelke, 2008, p. 4). As 

Seelke notes, “other gang experts have argued that, 

although gangs may be more visible than other criminal 

groups, gang violence is only one part of a broad 

spectrum of violence in Central America” (Thale, 2007, 

citied in Seelke, 2008, p. 4). 
16

The UNODC (2007) Central America study20 concluded 

that Guatemala and El Salvador are internationally 

among the most violent countries for which standardized 

data have been collected, and that Central American 

countries are particularly vulnerable to violent crime 

fueled by drug trafficking and corruption because they 

are geographically located between the world’s largest 

drug-producing and drug-consuming countries. After 

assessing violence in Central America, the UNODC 

(2007, pp. 16–17) made these observations, based on 

the limited crime data that are available: 

“In El Salvador, it is claimed that 60 percent of 

all intentional homicides are carried out by the 

maras, but again, the evidence for this conclusion 

is unclear. Research by the Salvadoran Institute 

of Forensic Medicine was only able to attribute 

some 8 percent of the firearm homicides in 

2000 to mara activity. In Guatemala, a recent 

police study of the 427 intentional homicides 

that occurred in that country in January 2006 

could only attribute 58 of these to gang activity 

(14 percent), 40 in urban areas and 18 in the 

countryside . . . Violence appears to be endemic, 

and gang members represent the demographic 

group most at risk of violence in any society.”

Even less information is available on specific crimes that 

can be attributed to the 18th Street and MS-13 gangs. 

An assessment of gang activity in Mexico and Central 

American countries conducted by the U.S. Agency for 

International Development supported the following 

general conclusion: “Gangs such as MS-13 and 

18th Street conduct business internationally, engaging 

in kidnapping, robbery, extortion, assassinations, and 

the trafficking of people and contraband across borders” 

(USAID, 2006, p. 6). MS-13 members are reportedly being 

contracted on an ad-hoc basis by Mexico’s warring 

cartels to carry out revenge killings, and regional and 

U.S. authorities have confirmed gang involvement in 

regional drug trafficking (Ribando, 2007, pp. 1–2). But 

the question remains as to the extent to which the 

U.S.-based gangs are involved with drug cartels in 

the region. The UNODC (2007) concluded that “while 

some drug trafficking may involve gang members, the 

backbone of the flow seems to be in the hands of more 

sophisticated organized crime operations.”

U.S. Gang Involvement in Drug 

Trafficking Along the U.S.-

Mexico Border

It is difficult to determine at this time the extent of 

U.S. gang or Central America maras involvement in 

drug trafficking in the Mexico-Central America region. 

Figure 1 shows the five major drug-trafficking cartels, 

their sphere of operations, most commonly trafficked 

drugs, and affected counties. Other Mexican drug 

cartels also operate in the region, including La Familia 

20 Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, 

Nicaragua, and Panama.

Michoacana (LFM), Los Zetas, Tijuana, and the BeltranLeyva Organization, and they have been battling among 

themselves, and with other drug-trafficking organizations 

and Colombian cartels over the past several years, for 

lucrative smuggling routes (Figure 1) (Danelo, 2009; 

Manwaring, 2009a, 2009b; West and Burton, 2009). 

Among these, LFM has drawn the most attention in 

the U.S. government because of its vigilante origins 

and acclaimed extensions into the United States, as far 

north as Chicago (West and Burton, 2009). In addition, 

homicides related to drug trafficking in Mexico more than 

doubled last year, from 2,275 in 2007 to 5,207 in 2008. 

The Michoacana family, or La Familia, is an increasingly 

important contributor to this ghastly mayhem in the 

extremely bloody drug wars among Mexican cartels 

(Grayson, 2009). Evidence is lacking with respect to U.S. 

gang involvement in these wars. It also is difficult to draw 

a bright line between traditional street gangs, paramilitary 

organizations, and other criminal groups that operate in 

Mexico, Central America, and South America (Manwaring, 

2009b; Sullivan, 2006; Sullivan and Bunker, 2002). 

Unfortunately, according to Manwaring (2009a, p. 11): 

Authorities have no consistent or reliable 

data on the gang-TCO [transnational criminal 

organization] phenomenon in Mexico. 

Nevertheless, the gang phenomenon in that 

country is acknowledged to be large and 

complex. In addition, the gang situation is 

known to be different in the north (along 

the U.S. border) than it is in the south (along 

the Guatemala-Belize borders). Second, the 

phenomenon is different in the areas between 

the northern and southern borders of Mexico. 

Third, a formidable gang presence is known to 

exist throughout the entire country (regardless 

of the accuracy of the data estimating the size 

and extent of this gang presence), and—given 

the weakness of national political-economic 

institutions—criminality has considerable 

opportunity to prosper.” 

Still, there are gaps in knowledge of U.S. gang 

involvement in drug trafficking with Mexican DTOs. 

“The exact nature of the relationship between Mexican 

cartels and U.S. gangs is very murky, and it appears to 

be handled on such an individual basis that making 

generalizations is difficult. Another intelligence 

gap is how deeply involved the cartels are in the 

U.S. distribution network.” No doubt, some U.S. gangs 

play an active role in street-level drug marketing north 

of the border. “However, the U.S. gangs do not constitute 

formal extensions of the Mexican DTOs. Border gangs 

... have their own histories, traditions, structures and 

turf, and they remain independent. Their involvement 

in narcotics is similar to that of a contractor who can 

provide certain services, such as labor and protection, 

while drugs move across gang territory, but drug money 

is not usually their sole source of income.”21 

21 This paragraph contains verbatim extracts (with minimal 

editing) from Stratfor Global Intelligence (Burton and West, 2009).
17

“Street gangs are present in virtually every U.S. city and 

town of significant size along the border and are obvious 

pools of labor for distributing narcotics once they hit 

the United States (see Figure 2 for a partial listing). The 

largest of these street gangs are MS-13 and the Mexican 

Mafia. The Mexican Mafia (also known as La Eme; Eme 

is the Spanish word for the letter M in the alphabet) 

works with allied gangs in the American Southwest to 

control large swaths of territory along both sides of the 

U.S.-Mexican border.” Note that the Mexican Mafia is 

active in five of the seven drug distribution points along 

this border (Figure 2).22 

“These gangs are organized to interact directly 

with traffickers in Mexico and oversee trans-border 

shipments as well as distribution inside the United 

States. Operating underneath the big gang players are 

hundreds of smaller city gangs in neighborhoods all 

along the border. These gangs are typically involved 

in property theft, drug dealing, turf battles, and other 

forms of street crime that can be handled by local police. 

However, even these gangs can become involved in 

cross-border smuggling.”23

22 This paragraph contains verbatim extracts (with minimal 

editing) from Stratfor Global Intelligence (Burton and West, 2009).

23 This paragraph contains verbatim extracts (with minimal 

editing) from Stratfor Global Intelligence (Burton and West, 2009).

“While territorial rivalries between drug traffickers have 

led to thousands of deaths in Mexico, these Mexican 

rivalries do not appear to be spilling over into the 

U.S. border gangs, who are engaged in their own 

rivalries, feuds and acts of violence. Nor do the more 

gruesome aspects of violence in Mexico, such as torture 

and beheadings.” In addition, “U.S. gangs can serve more 

than one cartel, which appears to be fine with the cartels; 

they need these retail distribution services north of the 

border in order to make a profit. Likewise, city gangs that 

control less territory are more limited geographically in 

terms of which cartels they can work with.”24 

There is growing concern in the U.S. government 

that the connection between gangs from Mexico 

and Central America with gangs in the Western and 

Eastern states is strengthening. This approximate 

transnational gang flow (shown in Figure 3) is based on 

the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) 

intelligence information from Operation Community 

Shield. “The arrows indicate tendencies or patterns of 

gang member migration. The circles are representative 

of areas where large numbers of gang members were 

processed” (USAID, 2006, p. 25).

A related concern is that Mara Salvatrucha is said to 

be involved in selling drugs at street level in a number 

24 This paragraph contains verbatim extracts (with minimal 

editing) from Stratfor Global Intelligence (Burton and West, 2009).

Figure 1: Major Mexican Drug Cartels Source: © Stratfor (Burton and West, 2009)
18

Figure 2: U.S. Gangs 

Source: © Stratfor (Burton and West, 2009)

of cities (FBI, 2008, p. 26). Specifically, according 

to most of the reports by state law enforcement 

authorities to the National Drug Intelligence Center, 

“Mara Salvatrucha is mainly involved in distributing 

cannabis and methamphetamine. Most cannabis sold 

in the United States is either domestically produced 

or imported from Mexico and Canada. Little if any is 

imported from or through Central America” (UNODC, 

2007, pp. 63–64). This area is also not a likely source of 

methamphetamine for U.S. consumers, because “most 

methamphetamine sold in the U.S. is produced in the 

United States and Mexico. Linkages to gangs located 

in Central America are not needed to source these 

drugs, and it appears both are mainly sourced from 

the Mexican drug trafficking organisations that control 

U.S. drug markets” (p. 64). The UNODC report goes 

further in questioning this linkage:

“The maras are often referred to as ‘transnational’ 

in their character, as groups exist with the 

same name in different countries. Since some 

mareros are former deportees, it would [be] odd 

if there were not some communication between 

these groups. But the spectre of ‘mega gangs’, 

responding to a single command structure and 

involved in sophisticated trafficking operations, 

does not, at present, seem to have been 

realised, at least insofar as drug trafficking is 

concerned. It is likely that the gang members 

are preoccupied with more local, neighbourhood 

issues” (p. 64).

Figure 3: The 

Revolving Door 

of Transnational 

Gang Member 

Migration

Source: USAID, 

2006, p. 25
19

The FBI’s 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment 

(FBI, 2008, p. 26) contains the following information 

on MS-13:

“Traditionally, the gang consisted of loosely 

affiliated groups known as cliques; however, 

law enforcement officials have reported 

increased coordination of criminal activity 

among Mara Salvatrucha cliques in the Atlanta, 

Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and 

New York metropolitan areas. The gang is 

estimated to have 30,000 to 50,000 members and 

associate members worldwide, 8,000 to 10,000 

of whom reside in the United States. Members 

smuggle illicit drugs, primarily powder cocaine 

and marijuana, into the United States and 

transport and distribute the drugs throughout 

the country. Some members also are involved 

in alien smuggling, assault, drive-by shootings, 

homicide, identity theft, prostitution operations, 

robbery, and weapons trafficking.”

Reports to Congress have suggested an MS-13 presence 

in a relatively large number of states (Franco, 2008a). 

However, the size and strength of MS-13 gangs outside Los 

Angeles have been questioned. The Washington Office on 

Latin America (WOLA) conducted a brief evaluation and 

analysis of the characteristics, both local and transnational, 

of Central American gangs in the Washington, DC, area 

(McGuire, 2007). This study revealed that 18th Street, at 

that time, did not “have a strong presence in the DC area, 

though small cliques may form and disband occasionally. 

Mara Salvatrucha, perhaps the most well known of the 

gangs that exist in Central America and the U.S., does 

have a presence in the Washington area” (pp. 1–2). Four 

major conclusions were made (p. 2):

•	First, despite sensationalist media coverage of gang

violence (some of it driven by the demonization 

of Central American youth as a result of antiimmigration sentiment in the region and nationally), 

Central American youth gangs are a relatively minor 

security problem in the DC area. The problem is 

significant for particular communities, especially 

for the youth who get drawn into the gang life. But 

relative to other public security threats in the area, 

Central American gangs are not a high-priority 

concern for area law enforcement.

•	Second, based on the experience of former gang

members interviewed for the study, the nature of 

youth involvement in a gang varies significantly 

from individual to individual. The decision to join or 

to leave a gang, and how an individual participates 

in a gang, does not follow a single, simple pattern; 

widely held stereotypes about gangs and gang 

members are oversimplified and often inaccurate.

•	Third, there are important examples of “best

practices” in responding to youth gang violence 

in the DC area. Many local governments have 

implemented a three-pronged approach, which 

includes prevention, intervention, and enforcement 

efforts, rather than focusing exclusively on policing. 

These approaches may be succeeding in reducing 

gang violence and helping at-risk youth avoid 

joining Central American youth gangs.

•	Finally, despite the positive approaches being

implemented in the area, many youth are still at 

risk. Prevention efforts are underfunded, and the 

needs of Latino immigrant youth (especially those 

at risk of joining Central American gangs) need to 

be more fully recognized and addressed.

The study also concluded that “While there are cases of 

Central American gangs attacking random citizens, the 

overwhelming majority of their crimes are perpetrated 

against rival gangs, or against other Latinos in their 

communities” (p. 29). Noting sensational media 

coverage of Central American gangs, the report makes 

the following comment on media portrayals of MS-13 

(p. 33):

“The sensational portrayals of gang-members 

in the media—in the region as well as in the 

U.S. are a significant part of the ‘problem’ 

that advocates face when searching for a 

constructive response to the phenomenon. 

One documentary, which perhaps received the 

most media coverage on the topic in the United 

States, is a National Geographic special about 

Mara Salvatrucha entitled, ‘The World’s Most 

Dangerous Gang.’ In this documentary, Mara 

Salvatrucha is characterized as a uniform, 

transnational enterprise that ‘could be in a 

neighborhood near you.’ These sensationalist 

and inaccurate portrayals of Central American 

gangs are perilous because they shape public 

perception of the problem, and further stigmatize 

young people who become gang involved.”

Conclusion

Important differences in the history of gang emergence 

are apparent in the four major U.S. gang regions. In 

both New York and Chicago, the earliest gangs arose in 

concert with external migration of European origins—

the traditional classic ethnics of the 1783–1860 period 

(particularly German, French, British, Scandinavian). 

Other groups of white ethnics soon arrived during 

the 1880–1920 period—mainly Irish, Italians, Jews, 

and Poles. The latter nationalities almost exclusively 

populated the early serious street gangs of New York 

and Chicago. By the 1960s and 1970s, the predominance 

of European ethnic groups had dissipated, and the 

composition of gangs had changed dramatically in both 

of these cities, with a far greater proportion of black and 

Latino members (Miller, 1982/1992). The Western gang 

history contrasts sharply with that in the Northeast 

and Midwest. Western gangs never had a white ethnic 

history. Instead, for at least half a century, virtually all 

of the gangs were of Mexican descent. 

In both New York City and Chicago, street gangs 

originated among adult-dominated groups engaged in 

criminal activity—largely volunteer firemen, laborers, 
20

and bar room brawlers. Mobsters and shady political 

operators, mixed with adult criminal groups, controlled 

the streets in both cities. Younger street gangs likely 

emerged from their influences and flourished in their 

shadows. Gangs also grew in these cities amidst 

physical and social disorder; within the cracks of 

governmental and social agencies. 

In contrast, street gangs in the Western region appear to 

have emerged from aggressive groups of young Mexican 

men, nascent gangs called the palomilla, that were 

attached to barrios in Mexico and also in Los Angeles. In 

this region, a youth subculture, dubbed cholo, provided 

the street lifestyle that supported gang formation. 

Abject poverty appears to have been less important 

than cultural pride that arose as a result of extreme 

social and cultural isolation, that is, “marginalization.” 

This national pride has long been a characteristic feature 

of the Latino gangs in the United States.

Each of the four regions also saw a pronounced second 

wave of black gang development as a result of internal 

migration. However, it appears that the impact of this 

population shift from South to North and West on gang 

emergence differs among the four regions. Notably, 

black gangs that developed in conjunction with this 

migration do not appear to have gained the foothold 

in New York City that they gained in the Midwest and 

West. Factors that might account for this difference are 

not readily apparent.

Another important cross-region distinction is that gangs 

of Mexican descent in the Western region were not only 

populated by waves of newly arriving immigrants, but 

also by families with gang-ready youths. In the first 

phase of cultural diffusion (Vigil, 2008), when they 

arrived in the United States, street gangs were already 

present in the barrios into which they moved. In the 

second phase, gang culture in Mexico was enriched 

by reverse migration. Children often came to the 

United States, stayed for a period, and returned home, 

having learned a gang culture. In turn, they introduced 

American gang lifestyle to younger youths in Mexico 

and Central America, so that in the third phase, the 

next generation of immigrants arrived in the United 

States fully prepared for active gang involvement. To this 

day, gang culture in the Western region is continually 

reinforced with wave after wave of immigrants from 

Mexico and Central America (Vigil, 2008).

A common denominator fueling gang growth in 

New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles is the policy 

of concentrating poverty in the high-rise public housing 

units. But this urban planning blunder victimized black 

immigrants far more than Latinos in Chicago and 

New York City—suggesting an important point—each 

city’s gang dynamics differ in some respects; sweeping 

generalizations are ill-advised.

For example, gang emergence in the West was not 

stimulated by racial and ethnic clashes or by immigrant 

succession and replacement as in the Northeast and 

Midwest. A different resolve—cultural traditions and 

barrio identification—served to fuel gang growth 

and maintain its presence in the West. This unique 

characteristic of Latino gangs in the Western and 

Southwestern regions would give rise to purported 

“transnational” gangs. Initial cultural connections were 

transmitted along a mere migration trail that originated 

in Mexico and continued along a route through El Paso 

and Albuquerque, and onward to Los Angeles. Later, 

U.S. deportation policies would inadvertently turn this 

trail into a well-travelled road. 

While we recognize that these gang members are 

transnational in that members are deported to 

El Salvador, and many return to the United States and 

even smuggle goods over the border, they are the 

strongest, most influential, and most dangerous in 

Central American countries, not in the United States. 

In Central America, these gangs threaten to destabilize 

neighborhoods, and in Mexico, some gangs have links 

to narcotics-trafficking cartels that go head-to-head 

with the military. At the present time, political and 

governmental conditions in these countries are more 

conducive to gang development and expansion than 

in the United States.

Yet recent developments have extended and expanded 

the scope and dangerousness of three U.S. street 

gangs—MS-13, 18th Street, and the Mexican Mafia—in 

particular. First, the funneling of major drug-trafficking 

routes from air transport and sea-crossing to the overland 

route via Central America and Mexico has opened more 

lucrative drug-trafficking opportunities to U.S. gangs 

along the border and within the Southwestern and 

Western regions. Second, expanded and intensified 

interactions with Mexico and Central American 

countries over the past 20 years or so have contributed 

to the growth of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. 

The extent of collusion among U.S. gangs, DTOs, and 

other criminal organizations along the U.S.-Mexico 

border is not clear. Nevertheless, this intermingling is not 

a welcomed development for MS-13 and 18th Street that 

already are considered to be among the most dangerous 

in this country. The involvement of the Mexican Mafia 

and other prison gangs in the Western-Southwestern 

region is also an unwelcomed development of great 

concern, along with the peripheral involvement of 

local U.S. gangs along the U.S.-Mexico border. These 

situations represent formidable challenges to U.S. public 

safety in the Western and Southwestern regions, gang 

policies, and programs. 
21

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This project was supported by Grant No. 2007-MU-BX-K003, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, 

and Grant No. 2007-JV-FX-0008, awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 

Office of Justice Programs. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this 

document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The National Gang Center (NGC) is a collaborative effort between 

the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) 

and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

This partnership works to provide professionals in the field of gangs 

with tools that can be used in a comprehensive range of strategies to 

respond to street gangs, from prevention and intervention to criminal 

justice strategies such as suppression, prosecution, and re-entry.

James C. “Buddy” Howell is a Senior Research Associate with the 

National Gang CenterTM.

John P. Moore is a Senior Research Associate and Director of 

the National Gang CenterTM.

©2010 by the Institute for Intergovernmental Research® (IIR) on behalf of the National Gang Center. All Rights Reserved.