This is a study of two Chicano gangs in East Los Angeles and how they have changed over time. The gangs originated in the 1940s in a climate of hysteria. They continue to operate in a climate of renewed hysteria. American cities are swept by periodic waves of fear and outrage about poor and racially distinctive young men. These outbreaks of fear usually begin with reports from law enforcement people, and are greatly helped along by newspapers and other media and especially by television in recent years. “Moral panic” is perhaps the most useful phrase; it was coined by an...

Both of our barrios are small pieces of an area known generally as East Los Angeles. During the entire period of our study Los Angeles and certain surrounding areas housed the largest single concentration of Mexican Americans in this country—a sort of Chicano capital, unmatched anywhere except perhaps in certain areas in Texas. inside this concentration, the White Fence gang lives in a city neighborhood known as Boyle Heights. Just east is the cluster of neighborhoods known as Maravilla, in an unincorporated part of the county known more specifically as East Los Angeles. There are several gangs in Maravilla:...

In this chapter I introduce the two gangs that we have studied, White Fence and El Hoyo Maravilla. I discuss the earliest, founding cliques and then turn to the question of how the gangs became institutionalized within their neighborhoods and what have been the major turning points in their fifty-year history. Brief attention is paid to the parallel history of gang programs—responses to the various moral panics that the gangs have inspired. Finally, I discuss the alternative theoretical perspectives that may make sense out of the changes that are more fully detailed in succeeding chapters.

In the earliest years...

These two gangs had been active for more than forty-five years when we did our study. Over those years, they became quasi-institutionalized. Each clique is part of a continuing institution. In this chapter I discuss changes in recruitment and initiation patterns, changes in patterns of sociability and drug use, changes in gender-related attitudes, and changes in violence. These last three concerns touch on drugs, sexuality and violence, and reflect our interest in the gang as a socializing institution in which adolescent identity issues get acted out. They also reflect a more general question about gangs: Have they become more—or...

That teenage gang members are linked to conventional barrio life is obvious. In fact, much of the members’ time is spent with the family, at school, under the eyes of neighbors who are decidedly “square,” and, sometimes, with conventional friends or dates. This linkage is usually overlooked in researchers’ preoccupation with the life of the gang during the hours that it bands together. In Chapter Four I explored the influence of the gang; in this chapter I look at conventional agents of socialization.

We can understand only a little bit of this interaction from what the gang members have to...

Most boys and girls in East Los Angeles never became involved with gangs. Because the community has so many problems, over the years researchers have been tempted to search for the roots of gang involvement in some special characteristics of the members’ families. After all,somethingmust make these particular young people susceptible to the attractions of this most rowdy of youth groups. Where better to search than in the family?

This search has taken three major approaches. The oldest emphasized some structural feature: thus it is said that immigration and poverty cause family stress, and family stress weakens controls....

Most researchers on gangs emphasize the adolescent years. But what happens after adolescence when gang members grow up? People often assume that once a kid joins a gang he or she is doomed to street life, interspersed with periods in prison. Our own previous work has looked at adults who were in gangs, but even that work might well confirm such an assumption because we were limited to interviewing heroin addicts and ex-prisoners who happened to have been members of gangs (Moore et al., 1978; Moore with Devitt, 1989).

By contrast, in this study a random sample ofallof...

This book has focused on change in two of Los Angeles’ Chicano neighborhood gangs. We have discovered some very real changes over the years, but also some important continuities in the long history of the two gangs. What can be concluded from this study that is of generalizable interest?

The gangs discussed in this book are like Chicano gangs found in many places in the Southwest, but they differ from most of the new gangs that have attracted both media and research attention since 1987. El Hoyo Maravilla and White Fence are old, long-standing, traditional gangs, with their own norms,...