From him I learned that you need to trust in order to be trusted. . . . Representing through Graffiti Chicano gang members represent their neighborhoods in graffiti in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. Graffiti are crucial mechanisms for the acts of representing through which gang members intertwine their emotional and political concerns. These categories relate to different elements of gang life and membership. Through the text I link them as often as possible to the social concerns that further bind gang members to their neighborhoods and culture.
All gangs define themselves in part by who they are and in part by who they are against.
Gang members represent levels of identity through different kinds of events, body decoration, writing, and speech patterns. While the general forms this expression takes are common to all Chicano gangs, the specific content varies from gang to gang. Each neighborhood has its own name, specific color, hand signs, initials, sometimes insignias, and common nicknames. Graffiti is one among many gang practices that help gang members define their group within the spaces where they live. Examining graffiti and its links to other types of cultural production through time is a uniquely strong method for charting social and political change.