Has family planning stopped youth gangs?
Some economists maintain that with the access of the lower classes to contraceptives, the unwanted children who once grew up, joined the criminal gangs, stopped proliferating...
Here we had Vaquilla and the like in the eighties and nineties: today they are the Latin kings.
And I agree that contraceptives increased the control of the poorest citizens over birth, but that does not explain everything. There continued to be high homicide rates afterwards.
Have we imported criminal gangs?
Because street culture has also been globalized and is now booming on both sides of the Atlantic... Like the Latin kings.
What are you going to tell me about reggaeton!
Or wearing saggy pants, very low, because they copy those worn in jail, where they prohibit wearing belts...
Do the bands impose their fashions?
...Hip-hop, break dance, were born in prison yards and were copied in marginal neighborhoods, just as it happened with graffiti.
Why are your trends popular?
Because those kids aren't just gang members, they're also creative and innovative.
Are you smart or pringas in the neighborhood?
I know very well, because I was one of them...
His accent is cockney.
I am from East London and the challenge of being born there was to be proud to be from my neighbourhood, poor neighbourhood, working class... Hustler!
From the neighborhood to the faculty?
And along the way, some good teachers tried to clean up my slum accent, but you see and hear that they didn't succeed.
Will the Latin kings one day also be integrated citizens?
They came to Spain from Ecuador when Washington tightened its border with their mothers, who emigrated as domestic workers, and here they grew up in the gang culture with their frustrated identity.
Do you think that justifies your criminality?
Gangs like the Latin Kings do not have to be criminals: they are social structures to integrate or disintegrate.
Do you really see them acting as an NGO?
In New York, in the 2000s, they became an association for integration and political and social influence that stopped drug trafficking.
As?
Gang members are not stupid: they know that the life of a dealer is short and hard, and low paid and brutal. And they end up losing it so that the big drug traffickers can prosper...
Was any output better than that?
They began to question why kill themselves and die in the streets. And in 2005, a Latin king leader emerged among them, Tone Fernández, who wanted to do politics.
As?
The kings were already more than 3,000 in all New York neighborhoods and had enormous cultural influence –they premiered the documentary Black and gold– and social.
Beyond organized crime?
They sought employment and unionization, and Tone, to run for mayor of New York.
I'm sure there have been worse.
But crime is both a disgrace for the lower classes and an opportunity for populists, who win votes by posing a "strong hand" against crime.
What happened to the integrated kings?
Mayor Giuliani preferred them criminals and arranged for Tone to be arrested. They set up several special operations with which the police said they found drugs on him. They gave him 12 years and they put him in an isolation cell. I wrote him...
Because?
He knew the king leaders personally and knew their true history. And I asked him to help me integrate the Latins here in Barcelona, with the help of the Generalitat. And the president of Ecuador, Correa, also joined the initiative. They knew that the opportunity was in giving them a chance.
Is it cheaper to subsidize gangs than to fight them with more police?
It is fairer, more pragmatic, and less expensive to give them opportunities to educate and work than to pay more and more police officers.
How do you know?
Because those investments in integration began to be noticed in that the street crime rate dropped where they were carried out. Instead, where Giuliani imposed mere repression, the kings ended up reverting to marginalization and street fighting.
Where was the opportunity taken advantage of?
Work was done well with the Latin kings here, in Barcelona –in Madrid they preferred the heavy hand–, and in Genoa and Ecuador: they are already a transnational brand and a structure that bears values, trends and fashions that can integrate or disintegrate societies depending on what is known. manage or not
