Mortal Doubt. Anthony W. Fontes
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they teach you respect,” Triste said, speaking a mix of English and Spanish typical of deportees who grew up in the United States. “You graduate from just being a gang member.” Triste said that during his stateside incarceration he had no personal contact with known members of La Eme, who were in isolation lockdown. But the entire prison population understood the raison d’être of the SUR. “The Mexican Mafia are the ones that made the SUR,” he explained. “The unity. Us Hispanics, if everyone of us stands on his own in prison, we won’t stand up to anybody. We’re small, fat, chaparritos mostly.” He laughed and slapped his ample belly. “You have to stick together to have power. If you’re on your own everyone knows. If you don’t stick together you’ll get raped, become somebody’s bitch.”
Arising out of sordid histories of officially sanctioned racial violence in US prisons, the Mexican Mafia would eventually play a crucial role in governing California prisons. To put it simply: La Eme and the SUR provided—and still provide—the promise of protection to imprisoned Latino gang members through the threat of imminent violence. The Southern United Raza is the crystallization into “law” of a strategic solidarity among Latino gang members in prison who, on the street, would be at one another’s throats. “Southern” refers to Southern California, the geographical hub of Latino gangs and home to most Mexican Mafia members.48 “Raza” (race), as in la Raza, encompasses all those who identify as Latino and conveys the central role of race in casting the lines of opposition between warring factions in urban California and in the US prison system. As for “United,” the SUR dictates that blood feuds between rival Latino gangs in Southern California must be left at the prison gate. They have no place inside, because in prison everyone is already suffering. Those gangs who pay homage to the Mexican Mafia—in loyalty and other currencies—have long been known as sureños. Sureño gangs often attach the number “13” to their title to show their affiliation with La Eme (“M” is the thirteenth letter in the alphabet).
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