Puerto Rican Shits
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The Puerto Rican Shits, or PRS is an urban gang concentrated in the Eastern United States, primarily in concentrated in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. It was founded by Kiki Asan in the early 1980s but has roots in Puerto Rico going all the way back to colonial times, when pirates seeking refuge in Port Royal, Jamaica, reestablished their trading posts in San Juan following the devastation of the Earthquake of 1692.
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[edit] History
[edit] Before 1982
[edit] Before the Earthquake of 1692
In colonial days, the rich Caribbean city of Port Royal became the economic center of the Caribbean region, attracting heavy European investment and a thriving tourist market.
Port Royal had a reputation as something of an immoral, licentious city, a city of excess and frivolity, not unlike New Orleans prior to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. Prostitution, gambling, and liberal indulgence in alcohol was widespread.
For decades, Port Royal was a haven to Spanish pirates who wished to store and spend their treasure. Various pirates would routinely meet there to collaborate in illegal acts, such as the boarding and subsequent plundering of French and Spanish ships (this was often done at the encouragement of the English).
Beginning in the late 1680s, Port Royal began to enforce anti-piracy laws against the city's illegal traders.
[edit] After the Earthquake of 1692
Following the Earthquake of 1692, Port Royal was essentially eliminated as a viable center for trade. The pirates who had found refuge there soon turned to the shores of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
A small group of persecuted and displaced pirates joined together to form a loose shipping alliance called the Oceanic League. The alliance did not engage in significant trade but was able to preserve what routes and bounty it had through the use of mutual defense tactics.
The League effectively extinct by the time that the United States acquired the island of Puerto Rico in 1898.
[edit] Following American Acquisition (1898)
However, its members continued to work together and soon were able to establish a flourishing illegal trade on the Puerto Rican mainland. Perhaps the most lucrative of their activities involved what was ironically dubbed, "the Flan Cartel."
The Flan Cartel was so named because it employed the native Latin American dish of flan to aid in the illegal sale of numerous drugs, but principally cocaine. The drug peddlers opened several sweets shops as a front for their operation, seemingly conducting ordinary business and selling delicious flan and other foods.
Behind closed doors, however, small packets of cocaine were being cooked into specific dishes of flan, which were then sold to the designated clientele. A similar operation involved marijuana and empanadas, though this came much later, only becoming common practice on the island in the 1960s.
The flan operation was uncovered by U.S. federal agents in 1974, at which point the gang had not yet been officially formed and remained a casual association of drug dealers and bootleggers.
The Federal strike in 1974 devastated the members' illegal trade and led many of them to be impoverished. The empanada cartel was able to subsist until 1978, when it too was ended by a series of raids.
The associates of the two cartels continued with small drug trading, such as the sale of marijuana, but their industry had been wiped out. The resultingly desperate financial situation led several participants in the crimes to move to the United States in the early part of the 1980s.
[edit] 1982: PRS is Founded by Kiki Asan
[edit] Prelude to PRS: Kiki Asan Comes to the United States
Kiki Asan, a Puerto Rican citizen born in either 1950 or 1952 (he refuses to confirm his exact date of birth) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was the son of sugarcane farmers and led an extremely difficult childhood.
His father, Jorge Asan, was born in 1923 and heavily felt the effects of the Great Depression that had hit the United States. Jorge Asan's own father had fought against the American invasion in 1898 and blamed the United States for all of Puerto Rico's troubles.
Both Jorge and Kiki Asan inherited this feeling of anti-Americanism (though unconfirmed rumors state that Kiki Asan has softened this stance after living in the United States).
Kiki Asan became a minor drug runner when he was a young boy in 1964. After the drug raids in 1974 and 1978, Kiki relocated to Washington, D.C. in March of 1981.
[edit] La Justicia
He met and was followed by a number of displaced Puerto Ricans who had had similar fates as a result of the raids. By the summer of 1981, he had created the initial framework for the gang that he originally called, "La Justicia" ("Justice").
It was during the summer that La Justicia began the first of a series of successful drug rings in the Washington, D.C. area, capitalizing on the cocaine boom that was then sweeping the United States. Unlike traditional gangs, they marketed their products at least partially to wealthy suburban teens who were eager to jump in a growing craze.
While La Justicia was nowhere near being a national force, it was becoming stron enough to compete with the Crips and the Bloods on a local level, primarily because it was taking a good segment of both gangs' business.
Between July of 1981 and March of 1982, the question of where La Justicia's allegiance would fall was critical to the gang balance of power in the East. The Crips and Bloods, engaged as ever in their deadly rivalry, were about evenly matched. The added might of La Justicia, which by itself was a relatively small organization, could potentially be enough to push either side over the other.
Then, in March of 1982, the issue was resolved in a horrific manner.
La Justicia, to distinguish themselves from the red Bloods and blue Crips, wore Earth-green bandanas.
On March 19, 1982, a Crips leader began circulating posters around the Washington area that directly mocked La Justicia as a worthy foe, referring to them as the "Shits" because of the color of their bandanas and the fact that some Crips viewed La Justicia as nothing more than a miniature or "wannabe" version of the Crips.
The charicatures sparked a "beef," or personal rivalry between Kiki Asan and the Crips leadership.
[edit] March 20, 1982
At just after midnight on March 20, 1982, Kiki Asan personally led an attack on a group of Crips in the southwest D.C. area. The violent shootout that followed resulted in the deaths of one "Justicio" (member of La Justicia) and five Crips. The success of the strike left the Crips stunned and greatly impressed the Bloods, who immediately offered a hand of friendship to La Justicia.
Kiki Asan promised to consider forming an alliance.
[edit] March 21, 1982: PRS Is Born
On March 21, 1982, one day after the March 20 attack, Kiki Asan assembled his top lieutenants and officially announced that La Justicia was being renamed the "Puerto Rican Shits" as a reminder to those who would insult the gang's honor or deride its viability.
The gang still bears this name today, and its members refer to themselves as "La Justicia" only when referring to parts of its history that occurred before March 21, 1982.
March 20 and March 21 are celebrated as days of community, and, to a degree, national pride. At a time when African-Americans dominated organized crime in America, La Justicia (the Puerto Rican Shits) was one of the only Latin units trying to forge its own niche.
The name "Puerto Rican Shits" is worn as a badge of honor. Mocking the title is considered among the gravest of offenses that can be committed against the gang or its members. Both the Crips and the Bloods, despite their initial belittlement of La Justicia, do show the PRS great respect in recognition of its passion and persistence.
[edit] 1982-2006: PRS Today
Following its emergence in 1982, the PRS has slowly expanded ever further outward from its initial center of Washington, D.C. The PRS had several units in Baltimore by 1987, and by 1994 Baltimore nearly rivaled Washington in strategic importance.
In the summer of 1996 the two cities were equal in stature, and by 1999 Baltimore had displaced Washington as the city with the greatest population of PRS members. The traditional seat of power, however, remains Washington, D.C. Since the establishment of a significant PRS presence in Baltimore, the gang has slowly encircled the suburbs of southern Maryland.
The result of this, as of 2006, is that Prince George's County, Anne Arundel County, and Montgomery County have been heavily infiltrated by the PRS.
Beginning in 2002 and 2003, the rise in gang activity has flowed into Northern Virginia, particularly affecting Loudoun County and Fairfax County. This has led to grave concerns within the affluent suburban communities on both sides of the Potomac.
The Puerto Rican Shits continues to run a highly profitable business by targeting well-off, typically white, teenagers as a key sales demographic. The members remain overwhelmingly Hispanic, with the majority of these (about 75%) Puerto Rican.
