Los Angeles is known as the gang capital of the country. There has been a long history of African American gangs, however within the past two decades there has been an exponential growth of Hispanic gangs that have begun to dominate the area and push the African American gangs to the south. Within the last three years, more and more violent incidents have started occurring, mostly gang turf related, and many times with race gang conflicts. However, just recently within the past year there have been a rising number of incidents involving hate related crimes dealing with race. On September 9, 2010, it was published in the local San Diego news that two Latino gang members were convicted of first-degree murder of a citizen on the basis of a hate crime.
Historically, minority groups that immigrated to Southern California created neighborhoods known as barrios. Because these areas tended to be economically depressed, the males rose to become the protectors and guardians of this community. These males became the peacekeepers, settling disputes and maintaining order. Nowadays, the gangs are much more sophisticated and even collect taxes from others. More interesting is that the local gangs of Southern California, particularly the mafia, are arch rivals with the gangs from El Salvador. Over the years by result of chain migration, these gangs have become larger and larger. In fact, there has been so much migration that Southern California has become overcrowded and previous gang members have had to move, mostly moving to the south. The ethnoviolence that has arisen today not only exists between those of different ethnicities, but in some cases between the homeland gangs and the gangs that exist in the host country.Ethnocentrism is a large part in the formation and maintenance of gangs (ingroup) and dominant group (outgroup) relations. Lately things have escalated in the Southern California area due in part to the increasing number of people who affirm this way of life as their social identity (the social identity theory that the ingroup members almost automatically think their group as better than outgroups).
It can be argued that this is very much an example that proves the Conflict Theory – the view that the elite exploit the masses. This is often times a driving factor in how gangs justify the things that they do: they are ‘sticking it to the man.’ What is ironic about this is that what these groups aspire to do is really to become the authority themselves. They claim they are rejecting rules and that it is the rules and establishment they fight against, but really they are living by their own set of rules and trying to enforce their rules upon others. So in essence, it is one large power struggle, much the same as the turf wars that take between rival gangs.
The presence of gangs and gang turf wars have always been evident: graffiti, vandalism, violence, and the like. But what is most concerning is that in recent years the violence has escalated into hate crimes, sometimes resulting in causalities as with the unfortunate recent case of Cheryl Green, the victim of a hate crime. These cases serve as a chilling reminder that something that started out as forming an identity in a new host country could come so far as to create an entire world beneath the surface of the federal system: another system dictated by those empowered by those who revere them as leaders, the ‘shotcallers’ of gangs.
It’s always one thing to hear about these events, and it’s another to actually witness evidence of it occurring. In one such case, on the entry way of a tunnel in Southern California, the words ‘Go Home Yankee’ can clearly be read to all passing into the territory beyond the end of the tunnel.
