Lack of Opportunity Contributes to Latino Gang Problem, Experts Say

Steve Valdivia estimates that Latinos account for 60,000 of the 100,000 gang members in Los Angeles County. And those figures are multiplying faster than society can figure out ways to deal with them, said Valdivia, executive director of Community Youth Gang Services.

Authorities report that the number of gang members, most of them males, has doubled in the last five years, corresponding with a similar rise in gang murders.

The causes of gang conflict “are as diverse as the gangs themselves,” Valdivia said. Poverty, dysfunctional families, a lack of adult supervision, poor school performance and unemployment are all contributing factors to gang membership among Latinos.

But Valdivia and others who study and work with gangs contend that racism is an underlying cause. The inferior education Latinos generally receive is a product of racism, said USC anthropologist James Diego Vigil. He said this disparity, in comparison to the educational opportunities generally available to Anglos, limits Latinos’ earning potential and forces many to live in run-down neighborhoods, where rents are cheap and gangs may be entrenched.

Vigil said schools do little to encourage Latinos to pursue higher education. “We still have counselors telling (Latino) students that they’d be better off getting into certain vocational and other kinds of semiskilled or skilled occupations rather than the professional, managerial levels,” he said.

The stress on many Latino parents to support their families is often so overwhelming that there is a tendency for them to break up, which can lead to children getting less supervision, Vigil said.

Peer pressure, Valdivia said, plays a major role in gang recruitment because adolescent gang members often ridicule friends who refuse to join. He said some TV programs, films, music videos and advertisements indirectly promote gangs by portraying them as having desirable traits.

The publicity that gangs generate may give much of the public the perception that most Latino youngsters are gang members, Vigil said. But only 4% to 10% of Latino youth get involved with gangs, said Vigil, author of “Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California.”

Historically, gangs have existed since the turn of the century in segregated neighborhoods of immigrants, such as the Italian and Irish communities in New York City, Vigil said.

In Los Angeles, Mexican-American gangs sprang up in East Los Angeles and other areas with large Mexican immigrant populations. Valdivia said the newest--and most deadly--Latino gangs have been formed in recent years by immigrants from Central America.

Father Gregory Boyle of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights said gang members typically have trouble coping with the boredom and despair in their lives.

Boyle said juveniles drop out of school for a variety of reasons. They encounter difficulty getting jobs because they lack skills and end up spending most of their time hanging out on the streets, he said.

“If the kid can’t imagine a future for himself, then his present is not very compelling,” Boyle said. “So you’re not going to care if you kill. And you’re not going to care if you get killed.”

Boyle strongly advocates restoration of the government social programs that have been greatly reduced by budget cuts over the past 15 years. He said money was diverted to hire more police and buy equipment to fight an escalation in all types of crime. Boyle insists that police officers do not offer the services required to decrease racism, poverty and unemployment, to reunite families or to improve the school system.

Law enforcement professionals agree, but they warn against decreasing police funding. “Unfortunately . . . in hindsight you can look back and say: ‘Well, yes, these social programs should have had some funds devoted to them,’ ” said Lt. John Ferguson of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division.

“The people that were making the political (and) financial decisions were more impressed with the idea of ‘let’s capture these people and get them off the street,’ ” Ferguson said. But, he added, “We still don’t have a handle on the crime.” Now society is “going to have to figure out a way to go into the prevention mode,” he said.

His colleague, Detective Jack Forsman, said law enforcement and social programs must coexist. “You can’t just abandon one for the other. You have to have both.”

Forsman is one of four officers who make up the gang unit in the Hollenbeck Division, where 5,000 youths--2.7% of the area’s 185,000 residents--are gang members. “We’re just doing the best we can with what we have,” Forsman said.

Valdivia said Community Youth Gang Services favors community-initiated programs to complement law enforcement’s role in the war against gangs. CYGS, which is funded by government and private sources, seeks to prevent gang violence and related crimes by employing former gang members and professionals to work with gang members, residents, schools, businesses and government and law enforcement agencies.

“I like what (Los Angeles County Sheriff) Sherman Block has stated . . . about incarceration and stricter law enforcement not being the only solution to the gang problem,” Valdivia said. “Community mobilization, prevention activities, and a more humane way of bringing these youth back into the mainstream is the long-term solution to the gang problem.”

A sheriff’s spokesman said the department has hired a civilian, Natalie Salazar, to coordinate its community-mobilization efforts. The position was funded with department money at a time when many other police agencies complain that they have insufficient budgets for this purpose.

The lack of social programs in the LAPD’s Hollenbeck Division prompted officers to start an effort on their own, Ferguson said. The Hollenbeck Parent Project, which operates in conjunction with the Los Angeles Unified School District, got under way last fall at Stevenson, El Sereno and Hollenbeck junior high schools. It will be offered again in March.

For four consecutive weeks, parents attend two-hour bilingual workshops in which officers, educators and social workers give instruction on raising children in gang-plagued neighborhoods.

Speakers discuss methods of dealing with defiant children, ways to recognize drug use and gang involvement, and options to solve the problems. Evelyn Lucero, principal of Hollenbeck Junior High, said the project gives parents and police a chance to form a positive relationship.

Lucero said the most important part of the project is the support-group meetings that take place over an additional 12 weeks. She views the project as the seed for a fruitful relationship among police, schools and parents, and a possible model that could work throughout the district.

“We’re giving them a hand to hold,” Lucero said. “We’re helping to establish a network for the future, so that after they’re finished with our project and they’ve gone through the whole program, that they still will have relationships with one another.”