Nuestra Familia

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Nuestra Familia (Our Family) was organized in the San Quentin, California State Prison in 1968. Inmates were tired of the abuse and victimization at the hand of the Mexican Mafia. Most of the original members of the NF were from Northern California and Central California. As the NF and Mexican Mafia engaged in a bitter prison war, new prisoners from Northern California were recruited into the NF while Southern California inmates joined the Mexican Mafia. By the late 1970s, after numerous prison riots and murders, an official dividing point emerged between the gangs in Bakersfield, California. Those living North of this location were known as Norteños (Northern in Spanish.) The Nuestra Familia was the first prison gang to ever be federally indicted for violation of the RICO act in the early 1980s. The gang has a written constitution, rules (known as the 14-bonds) and an organized leadership structure.

Nuestra Familia has a large chain of command that oversees every Norteño gang in Northern California and Central California. Norteños have been identified in nearly every state in the country as well as several Latin America countries. The Mexican Mafia began preying on Chicano inmates in the mid-1960s which some felt was against the "Chicano Pinta Power" and inmate protection thing they started out as.

At the direction of the Nuestra Familia, a pro-Norteños gangster rap group compiled two music CDs entitled "Generations of United Norteños" and "Cuete" (meaning gun in Spanish). The CDs were effectively distributed to Norteño street gang members. According to federal authorities, the NF's purpose of the CDs was to raise money for the gang and to promote unity among individual Norteño street gangs. Norteños continue to be heavily involved in drug sales, and murders.

[edit] Symbols and culture

At the same time that Nuestra Familia were first organizing in prisons and calling for liberation from the Mexican Mafia (scraps), the UFW and its leader Cesar Chavez were folk heroes and symbols of liberation to many Chicano youths, including some gang members who had met Chavez when he was imprisoned for his union work. Nuestra Familia has a very active working relationship with Black Guerrilla Family, BGF.