Mexican American criminal organization
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Also known as: La Eme, Los Carnales
Written by
Michele Metych
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article History
- Also known as:
- La Eme (the letter “M”) and Los Carnales (“Brothers”)
Mexican Mafia, prison gang and street gang network in the United States, centred in southern California but active in 13 states. The Mexican Mafia, which is one of the largest and deadliest prison gangs, is known for its secrecy and code of silence, for uncompromising violence, for its antipathy toward African Americans, and for using grassroots tactics like infiltrating self-help addiction groups, social action groups, and gang prevention programs to advance the gang’s agenda and recruit members. Estimates of the number of members inside the prison system range from 350 to 400 full members, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, with tens of thousands affiliated foot soldiers in street gangs throughout California.
Origins
The Mexican Mafia was founded in 1957 at Deuel Vocational Institution, a high-level institution in the California prison system, by former street gang member Luis (“Huero Buff”) Flores. Select incarcerated members of established Hispanic gangs from Los Angeles were recruited to form the gang, making it a “gang of gangs” that would grow to tightly and ruthlessly control the California prison system, the largest in the country. Flores modeled the gang’s organizational composition on the Sicilian Mafia, intending to form an alliance between members of several Hispanic gangs by uniting the leaders. Membership is for life and requires a sponsor and a blood oath to join. Symbols include the letter M and a black hand tattoo.
The gang quickly took hold and grew in number and power. In an attempt to thwart the gang’s activities and growth, the California prison system transferred some members to youth prisons and some to adult facilities. Instead of weakening the structure, however, this decision allowed factions to form in the adult prison system too. By 1966 the Mexican Mafia controlled narcotics trafficking in the California prison system and was attempting to gain control of all other illegal activities in the state’s prisons.
As other prison gangs were founded about the same time period, the Mexican Mafia aligned itself with the Aryan Brotherhood against the Black Guerrilla Family and La Nuestra Familia. Members of the Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood united in their shared antipathy for African Americans. According to the FBI, La Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia are constituted primarily of Hispanic American members; Mexican Mafia members were drawn from barrios around metropolitan Los Angeles county, whereas members of La Nuestra Familia tended to be from northern rural areas of the state, regions that members of the Mexican Mafia considered inferior.
Later expansion
Soon the Mexican Mafia had acquired enough influence to expand beyond the prison system. Joe (“Pegleg”) Morgan, who was of Slavic descent, carried out one of the gang’s first street executions when he killed fellow gang member Alfonso (“Pachie”) Alvarez in 1971. Morgan would later earn the title of “godfather” in the gang. This murder was one of the events that marked the beginning of the gang’s organized criminal activities outside prison. As gang members were paroled, they returned to the streets of Los Angeles and joined other gangs, influencing them. The reach of the Mexican Mafia expanded in this manner until there were thousands of members in hundreds of other gangs outside the prisons, and a profitable criminal enterprise was established. Members of these gangs who pledged loyalty to the Mexican Mafia became known as sureños (Spanish: southerners).
In 1971 Rodolfo (“Cheyenne”) Cadena, one of the Mexican Mafia’s early leaders, ordered paroled gang members to infiltrate self-help addiction programs and community groups in East Los Angeles. Cadena’s goal was to establish a gang-member presence in as many Mexican American community groups as possible and then use those connections to cultivate goodwill from the local population while using the organizations as fronts for criminal activity.
21st-century developments
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The Mexican Mafia’s criminal enterprises include robbery, extortion, assault, murder, weapons dealing, and trafficking and distributing drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine. The Mexican Mafia controls territories around Los Angeles and dictates the activities of local affiliated gangs, while collecting a tax from them in exchange for allowing them to operate there. It was not until 2002 that a high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia defected and cooperated with the federal government and confirmed the organization’s hierarchy. In the first decades of the 21st century, the Mexican Mafia was rumoured to have ordered an ethnic cleansing of its jurisdictions by instructing its foot soldiers and affiliated gangs to target African Americans.
Michele Metych
