Mexican Mafia
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The "Mexican Mafia" (MM) or "La eMe" (eMe) is a prison gang in the United States. It was formed in the late 1950s by Chicano street gang members incarcerated at the Deuel Vocational Institution, a youthful offender facility located in Tracy, California. Several East Los Angeles gang members and members from other areas of California formed the Chicano (Mexican- American) prison gang known as La eMe, the Mexican Mafia, and the first prison gang in California. Approximately, thirteen to twenty Mexican Americans from East Los Angeles formed the original core of the gang.
Initially, the gang was formed for protection against other inmates and the prison staff. As the organization grew, it rapidly changed into a criminal organization involved in extortion, narcotics trafficking, and murder both inside and outside the prison system walls. Gang leaders from East Los Angeles and other barrios formed a deadly alliance to control the prison narcotics trade. The well-organized gang built its criteria along ethnic lines and a loose set of rules modeled after the Sicilian Mafia.
Some of the original members and leaders of the group were: Louis "Huero" Flores, who gets credit for being the one who came up with the name, and Rodolfo "Cheyenne" Cadena. Joe "Pegleg" Morgan (sometimes called Papa Joe) who is actually Caucasian did not join "La EME" until years later. In the movie American Me by Edward James Olmos, he portrays Cadena, and the character J.D. is represented as "Joe Morgan". Unlike the movie, Cadena was killed by the Nuestra Familia, not La eMe.
According to Bill Valentine in his book "Gangs and Their Tattoos: Identifying Gangbangers on the Street and in Prison", Jimmy Santiago Baca made Blood in, Blood out, which was similar to American Me but omitted the true prison gang names and alliances. The first Coordinator of the CA Prison Gang Task Force which was started in the City of Monterey Park and operated from a trailer to the rear of the Monterey Park, Ca. Police Department, was Robert Morrill who wrote a book "The Mexican Mafia The Story".
With a set of rules governing its members, the eMe became a fundamental criminal enterprise established for the sole purpose of committing criminal activities in furtherance of the organization’s goals. Some of the gang’s activities include expanding its control of drug/heroin trafficking, drug rip-offs, prostitution, business robberies, contract murders, gambling, debt collection, extortion, and other illicit activities. Most of their criminal activities initially focused on victimizing Black and Caucasian inmates while leaving Mexican prisoners alone; however today, most victims are fellow Latinos.
The California prison system became aware of the eMe's criminal activity by the late 1960's and broke the group up. Prison officials relocated them to different prisons, but this only helped the group to continue active recruitment of new members, and the gang basically took control of the California prisons. As members were released from state custody they extended their influence outside the prison system to control drug distribution — principally by "taxing" drug dealers — in parts of Southern California. In recent years La Eme has redlighted the Fresno Bulldogs (Gang) in Prison; however when the gang didn't want to be taxed any longer by the Mexican Mafia, they were labeled as rivals.
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[edit] Membership
CA State and Federal BOP officials say that the Mexican Mafia today is composed of at least 30,000 members, (although no one really knows the exact number of members) and close associates, some in state prisons, but many more freely roaming Southern California, using intimidiation, extortion and murder to control much of the region's more lucrative criminal activity. In addition, the gang has numerous associates who aspire to become members and are willing to commit crimes on the Mexican Mafia's behalf in hopes of attaining membership.
Title: Battle Against Mexican Mafia Opens New Front in Court
Source: New York Times, Nov. 26, 1996
Author: Ayres, B Drummond Jr.
The Mexican Mafia requires a vote of three members to make a new member or murder an existing member, but does not require a vote for a member to kill a nonmember.
Mexican Mafia members have to follow four rules:
- Don´t Be an informant
- Don´t Be a homosexual
- Don´t Be a coward
- Don´t Disrespect or politic against another member.
Death is the automatic consequence for violation of any of the first three rules, and only a member can carry out the murder of another. While in prison, the Mexican Mafia expects its members to engage in drug trafficking, extortion, and any other activity to acquire money and exert power and control over other inmates. Outside prison, Mexican Mafia members meet regularly to discuss and vote on actions in furtherance of the members' illegal activities.
The Sureños are a compilation of many individual smaller gangs. In Prison these gangs band together under one flag for united strength. The Mexican Mafia controls the Sureños. The Surenos are the muscle enforcing the will of the Mexican Mafia. Leadership of the Mexican Mafia is split between two rivals, one of whom comes from one of East L.A.Maravilla gangs while the other comes from the Inland Empire's South Ontario Black Angels gang.
[edit] Communication in prison
In prison, Mexican Mafia members communicate by having meetings in the exercise yard, sending messages through visitors or inmates who were transferred between prisons, and passing small notes known as "kites" or "wilas". Further, Mexican Mafia members operate under a "code of silence", which obligates them to deny any membership in or knowledge of the organization.
According to the FBI, EME has ordered contract killings to be carried out by another vicious prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood.
[edit] References
- The FBI's FOIA file on the Mexican Mafia
- United States v. Shryock, 342 F.3d 948 (9th Cir., 2003)
- Mexican Mafia Timeline
- Mexican Mafia Chart
- [2]Mexican Mafia, the Story.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ pg 43, 50 Title: FOIA Subject: ARYAN BROTHERHOOD Source: The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, Author: United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.
