Benjamin Melendez

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Benjamin Melendez (b. 1952?) is best known for brokering the gang truce in the Bronx and Harlem (New York City) in 1971. At that time, he was President of the Ghetto Brothers, an ethnically Puerto Rican South Bronx gang, and lead guitarist of a musical group also known as the Ghetto Brothers.

Melendez was heavily involved in the rise of Puerto Rican nationalist consciousness among Nuyorican youth, having forged connections with the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. Perhaps surprisingly, Melendez's family, including Melendez himself, were Marranos (Sephardic crypto-Jews), practicing their religion in secret even in the 1970s while being part of a Hispanic community.