Vigil, J.D. (1988). Barrio gangs: Street life and identity in southern California. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

OVERVIEW

The author, Dr. James Diego Vigil, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. His years of experience in the barrios as youth worker, teacher, researcher and writer of numerous articles on Chicano youth strengthen his study.

"Countercultural youth gangs go back at least as the Middle Ages in Europe...and gangs have been an urban problem in the U.S. since the beginning of large-scale immigration to this country before the turn of the century." (p. xi, 3) Dr. Vigil points out the three generations of Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles. Believing that gangs need to be understood, not eliminated, by the police force, the author explains his concept of "multiple marginality," the many factors defining gang behavior.

The factors from which gangs spring include:

• Isolation from the dominant culture.
• Unemployment and poverty.
• Family stress and household crowding.
• Street life and peer pressure.
• The adolescent struggle for self-identity.

The author describes the choloization of Mexican-American youth out of this holistic perspective of their life situation. Although gang members typically constitute a small minority of the young in a barrio, they represent a street style that both conforms and contrasts with familiar youth patterns. On the one hand, most of their time is spent in the usual cohort activities found in any neighborhood where adolescents and other youth congregate. They talk, joke, plan social events, party, and exchange stories of adventure and love. Their alcohol consumption and drug use shows some parallels with that of other American adolescents. Yet it is their other, violent, socially disruptive activities that distinguish a gang member from most adolescents.

Reflecting the tendency among adolescents to develop new modes of dress and speech, Chicano gang members have adopted a distinctive street style of dress, speech, gestures, tattoos, and graffiti. This style is called cholo, a centuries-old term for some Latin American Indians who are partially acculturated to Hispanic-based elite cultures. The term also reflects the cultural transitional situation of Mexican Americans in the southwestern United States; it is a process strongly affected by underclass forces and street requisites.

Many of the cholo customs symbolize an attachment to and identification with the gang, although many individuals copy the style without joining the gang. There is vast difference among members in degree of commitment to the gang, but generally those members with the most problematic lives and intense street experiences become regular members.

Over the decades, the gang has developed a social structure and cultural value system with its own age-graded cohorts, initiations, norms and goals, and roles. These now function to socialize and acculturate barrio youth. (pp. 2-3)

GENERAL DISCUSSION

It is a holistic interpretation precisely because social behavior is multilayered, and for many Chicanos it is the cumulative functionings of these marginal situations that account for their deep gang membership. (p. 175)

The author’s method combines statistical data, behavioral analysis, and personal interviews. Predicting the future of gangs, he sees increasing Latino population and influence in particularly Southern California which will bring about an "expected increase in gangs." (p. 175)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What most impressed you, troubled you, or raised a question for you in the reading of this article?
2. What is the gang activity in the city closest to you?
3. How do you explain the violence of gangs, killings that appear ruthless, and the total lack of reverence for human life?
4. What have you seen as the positive aspects of gang life?
5. Why did gang activity decline across the U.S. from the 1960s to the early 1980s and begin to rise in the late 1980s?

IMPLICATIONS

1. In many ways gangs are a reflection of our society and in other ways a barometer on the failures of our society.
2. The "first step in ending the antisocial behavior of youth who have been pushed to the margins of society" is understanding. The second step is developing a trusting relationship with them. The third is the opening up of possibilities of achieving a confident self-identity and vocational fulfillment. Positive action on the streets begins with a street worker, may include residential facilities, and leads to positive training programs.
3. Social clubs, churches, schools, and even police can organize programs designed to give those locked into gangs new beginnings. In some cases whole gangs may be turned in positive directions.