The PRISON That Created The MEXICAN MAFIA

[00:00:00]You start to enjoy it after a while. See a person pleading and cry for help, the blood, everything. It's weird. It's a sickness. Because there's so much history between NF and the Mexican Mafia. While Mexican Mafia members are actually going out and killing NF members, this is the bloody rise and redemption of boxer Enriquez, a Mexican Mafia killer. Today, we're going to continue with the reading of the Black Hand.

[00:00:22]Chapter 2, Mexican Mafia history. It all began in 1957 at the Deuel Vocational Institution, DVI, in Tracy, California.

[00:00:30]Five years before Rene was Rene Enriquez was even born. That lockup was then considered the last stop of the state's most incorrigible, violent juvenile inmates. It was in effect a juvenile a junior prison. Those who were too difficult to handle in reform school were sent to California Youth Authority, CYA. And those too violent for CYA ended up at DVI.

[00:00:51]At the time, it was often referred to as Gladiator School, a place where already tormented teenagers honed their criminal skills and acted out against rivals from enemy barrios.

[00:01:03]As the Mexican Mafia population grew in Southern California, so did a barrio culture that spawned street gangs with traditional rivalries, neighborhood against neighborhood. Deadlier and deadlier gangs were formed to protect home turf. They called themselves Vatos Locos, crazy dudes. In his book, Mexican Mafia, author and former hitman, former MM member Ramon Mundo Mendoza, says, "The more aggressive gang members went about serious business of establishing violent reputations. Along with the reps, came the celebrity status. A completely abnormal social value system was established. Some of the gang members, in honor of their ancient Aztec or Toltec roots, or even more recent Apache and Yaqui tribes, took on took on Indian warrior names, such as Caballo, Chato, Crazy Horse, Crow, Cuchillo, Geronimo, and Indio. Others adopted more modern gang handles like Shotgun, Machine Gun, Capone. In either case, the names were adopted out of pride to generate fear and respect. At DVI, 16-year-old Luis Huero Buff Flores of Hawaiian Gardens, a Los Angeles suburb, is credited with coming up with the idea of uniting all Mexican-American Southern California gangs into one big prison super gang or gang of gangs. Together, they would cease Mexican street gang rivalries inside prison, control the heroin heroin trafficking, protect themselves against unruly prison guards, and unite as brothers Carnales against rival black and white inmates.

[00:02:37]And unite as brothers Carnales against rival black and white inmates. Mundo Mundo Mendoza observes, "These guys were raging maniacs whose modus operandi was all off and were extremely aggressive, had no respect for their adversaries, and unabated disdain and contempt for general population. We felt bulletproof."

[00:02:58]Prison lore has it that Huero Buff was fascinated with the power and mystique of the Italian Mafia and dubbed the new group Mexican Mafia or La Familia Mexicana.

[00:03:06]There were about a dozen original members who quickly doubled their ranks and terrorized inmates, stealing their possessions, mostly canteen items and drugs. Mundo Mendoza notes, "The goal in the beginning was to terrorize the prison system and enjoy prison comforts while doing time. Those who resisted the Eme extortion were beaten or stabbed." Huero Buff later said, "It was a kid's trip then, just a bunch of homeboys from East L.A. If I felt like killing somebody, I would. If I didn't, I wouldn't. We were just having fun then. The power was intoxicating."

[00:03:39]The majority of the early members did come from East Los Angeles with violent reputations. Varrio Soto Maravilla, Varrio Nueva Estrada, White Fence, Big Hazard, Clover, Avenues.

[00:03:50]Everyone was recruited for their fearlessness, aggressiveness, and ruthlessness.

[00:03:55]Each candidate had to be sponsored by a made member and voted in by the entire group. All were supposedly equal in status, were sworn to secrecy about La Eme's existence, pledged their allegiance for life, and vowed to kill for the organization, and promised to never show fear, weakness, hesitation, or doubt. Any infraction would be punishable by death.

[00:04:17]Memorable names of the Eme pioneers like Mike "Hatchet" Ison, Eddie "Potato Nose" Loera, Jesus "Little" Pedrosa, Alejandro "Handel" Lechuga, Gabriel "Little Slugger" Castañeda, Benjamin "Topo" Peters, Joe "Colorado" Arrias, and Richard "Richie" Ruiz.

[00:04:39]Rudolfo "Shank" Cadena, who was at the age of 15 stabbed a local gang rival to death outside a dance hall in Bakersfield, is widely known as the co-founder of the Mexican Mafia. He was only 5' 4" and weighed 120 lb, but he was handsome, a natural leader with tremendous energy, high intelligence, a a hair-trigger temper, and undisputed presence. He suggested that the word Eme be used along with the term Mexican Mafia. It added a Spanish flavor for those who still bickered over the name, believing it was too much like the Italians. Also, Eme could be used as code word around prison guards and others unfamiliar with the language.

[00:05:18]By 1961, the administration at DBI, alarmed by the escalating violence, had transferred a number of charter Eme members to San Quentin hoping to discourage the violent behavior by intermingling them with hardened adult convicts. It didn't work.

[00:05:34]For example, the story goes that Cheyenne arrived on the lower yard and was met by a 6' 5" 300 lb black Eme who planted a kiss on his face and announced that this scrawny teenager would now be his [ __ ] Shy returned a short time later, walked up to the unsusp- suspecting predator, and stabbed him to death with a jailhouse knife or shank.

[00:05:56]There are more than a thousand inmates on the yard. No witnesses stepped forward, and only one dead man entertained the idea that Cadena was anyone's [ __ ] Uh other young Eme members at San Quentin continued to reign their reign of terror. A pair of Mafia killers, for no apparent reason, stabbed Robert "Bobby Loco" Lopez, who staggered across the upper yard, hit the pavement in convulsions, and died. A few days later, the deadly duo stabbed another clueless inmate.

[00:06:23]Eme's Alfredo "Cuate" Jimenez killed another convict on the lower yard, and Mike "Hatchet" Ison took out another inmate in the prison gymnasium.

[00:06:33]took out another inmate in the prison gymnasium. Tony Chacon was from Lopez Maravilla, the largest gang in East Los Angeles at the time. It also has the largest number of inmates in the state prison system. Chacon made the mistake of badmouthing the Eme. So, even So, Eme hitman Richie "Grease" and Eddie "Bello" Moreno took him out in San Quentin Adjustment Center unit uh that housed the worst of prison bad guys.

[00:07:00]Charlie White was a black inmate upset the about the Eme's bullying tactics. He shouted out obscenities at Eme stalwarts uh locked up in the cells, singling out "Honda Lechuga".

[00:07:12]Those who fought with their mouths from behind closed cell doors were derisively uh called cell soldiers.

[00:07:18]Shortly after cell doors were racked open to let inmates out into the exercise yard, uh an Eme soldier greeted White on the tier with a series of shank shots that closed that cell soldier's mouth forever. Juan Zamipa was a highly feared and respected inmate who had killed an informer about a year earlier, not to be messed with. He let it be known he would take no [ __ ] from the Mexican Mafia.

[00:07:40]Cadena, believing Zamipa might be of some use to the Eme on the yard, tried to reason with him to stop disrespecting the brothers. Zamebpa wouldn't hear it.

[00:07:50]On his way back to his cell, Zamebpa was stabbed 11 times by four Eme members.

[00:07:56]It was not possible to disrespect someone from the grave. It was all killing for the sake of killing to claim a superiority on the yard, to let other cons know Eme should be feared.

[00:08:06]Ramon Mendoza, who participated in 20 mob hits before he defected in the late 1970s, says "They dedicated their lives to making a career out of crime." He calls the Eme the special forces of the gang underworld. Mendoza says, "We recruited the worst of the worst.

[00:08:23]People who are willing to kill at the drop of a hat for the organization." In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson increased US military strength to half a million troops in Vietnam to defeat the Viet Cong war army.

[00:08:38]During that same year, Mexican Mafia's strength grew no more than 30 hardcore members, and they controlled drug trafficking, gambling, extortion, loan sharking, and prostitution not only at San Quentin, but elsewhere as their numbers and influence spread throughout the DBI in California penal system.

[00:08:56]The Eme's quest for complete control alienated many other Mexican-American inmates who were fed up with Mexican Mafia bully uh bully stabbing, killing, and stealing their watches, rings, cigarettes, or anything else of value.

[00:09:08]Some of them secretly formed a new prison gang called La Nuestra Familia, NF, or Our Family.

[00:09:15]It was first established in the mid-1960s at the California Training Facility in Soledad. Some of the early members were from the Los Angeles area, but NF drew inmates primarily from rural communities in northern California.

[00:09:30]The Mexican Mafia saw NF as a lame and inferior, just a bunch of farmers or farm the However, in 1968, at San Quentin, a full-scale riot broke out after a Mexican Mafia soldier, or soldado, sold a pair of shoes from NF an NF sympathizer.

[00:09:47]19 inmates were stabbed and one M associate ended up dead.

[00:09:52]The battle became known as the shoe war and it established the Nuestra Familia as a major M rival. After the shoe war, a number of Mexican Mafia hitters were transferred to Folsom State Prison, considered then to be the end of the line for hardcore convicts. Jailhouse legend Joe Morgan was one of the one of the notorious inmates there. He was tall, muscular, bald-headed Croatian with a near IQ genius who grew up in East Los Angeles and San Pedro Barrios.

[00:10:24]Beat his 32-year-old girlfriend's husband to death with a rubber hammer when he was only 16 and buried the body in a shallow grave. He robbed banks, escaped from jail twice, committed multiple murders, and had Mexican cartel heroin connections and ties to the Italian Mafia. Despite the fact that he was not Mexican and entered the Mexican Mafia at the advanced age of 40.

[00:10:44]Morgan was dubbed the Godfather of La Eme within a few years. He had been shot in the leg during a bank robbery and gangrene set in. It was amputated below the knee.

[00:10:54]He earned the nickname Peg Leg, but no one ever called him that to his face.

[00:10:58]About the same time, Morgan became the Godfather and Nuestra Familia formed an alliance with a Marxist-oriented black gang called the Black Gorilla Family, or BGF.

[00:11:07]And the Mexican Mafia formed a loose alliance with white supremacist prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood.

[00:11:14]And the Mexican Mafia formed a loose alliance with white supremacist prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood.

[00:11:19]During the following year, 1972, there was a bloodbath of 36 murders in California State Prison, and gang experts believed La Eme was responsible for as many as 30 of them.

[00:11:29]Meanwhile, the Mafia terror reached out onto the streets for the first time. On December 6th, 1971, the body of Mexican Mafia soldier Alfie Abache Albatres was found lying in a pool of his own blood in a local park in the city of Monterey Park, a bedroom community of 55,000 people that rubbed up against East Los Angeles. Abache, three bullet holes to his head, was executed because he failed to pull off a daring escape plot. He signed to free several incarcerated Eme brothers while on their way to court in San Bernardino County. Police didn't know that, but they found a hand-sized uh blue address book uh in his shirt pocket. Some of the names listed had the letter Eme written next to it.

[00:12:10]Detectives comparing their notes then found there had been an earlier torture-execution-style murder in San Bernardino County.

[00:12:18]Jimmy Lopez had been given some Eme heroin to sell on consignment, but instead he used it himself.

[00:12:28]He was uh methodically shot in the knee, the shoulder, and other parts of the body.

[00:12:34]He was found with his pants down around his ankles and a bloody 14-in screwdriver lying on the ground next to him.

[00:12:41]It had been shoved up his rectum. The coroner estimated that Jimmy was tortured for about 3 hours before he died in a remote canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains.

[00:12:51]A number of Eme brothers were now out on parole, stockpiling weapons, and setting up drug connections. Abache's execution illustrated that the Eme would not hesitate to take out one of their own.

[00:13:02]Along with Jimmy Lopez hit, it showed that the Mexican Mafia could get you anywhere, anytime, not just behind prison walls. On November 18th, 1971, a parolee named James "Japo" Sinclair was found in the Lincoln Park area in Los Angeles.

[00:13:17]Hands and feet tied, three bullets in the head execution-style. Sinclair had been trying to get federal grant money to set up a drug rehabilitation program.

[00:13:26]La Eme didn't like the competition.

[00:13:29]Millions in grant money was being handed out during the 1970s for drug rehab programs. It was Cheyenne Candelaria that they had to take them over.

[00:13:36]And the mafia did infiltrate at least four of these Los Angeles area based projects. MM parolees were hired as counselors and ghost slots were set up for MM members.

[00:13:48]Uh were were paid and never showed up for work at all. Other monies were siphoned off to buy drugs, finance other illegal activities or pay for mafia entertainment.

[00:13:57]All and ironically, the programs gave La direct access to hundreds, if not thousands, of heroin users who would buy their product. It was an effective scam that generated a steady stream of illegal big bucks. By the end of 1972, Cheyenne Candelaria, after brokering a short truce with La Nuestra Familia in 1971, which transferred to Palm Hall, a high-security lockup in California Institution for Men, CIAM, in Chino, an NF stronghold at the time. Candelaria was a visionary and believed that brown men, La Raza, should unite against the common enemy, the establishment.

[00:14:34]Bloodthirsty hardliners like Joe Morgan disagreed. Mundo Mendoza says, "Many of us considered it unacceptable to engage in dialogue with a group we considered inferior, La Nuestra Familia. We consider them as pests that need to be exterminated. Besides, an enemy was an enemy forever. The farmacias should die." Mundo remembers, "While Shy was engaged in dialogue, MM members in different prisons were killing farmacias. In fact, a couple of MM soldiers in a different section in the same uh Chino prison, where Candelaria was seeking peace, stabbed two NF members."

[00:15:10]On December uh 17th, 1972, the NF took its revenge. Candelaria came out of his cell to go out to the exercise yard and was met by a group of angry Nuestra Familia hit men.

[00:15:22]He was stabbed again and again and clubbed with a lead pipe. His near lifeless body was then thrown from the second balcony. When he hit the ground, another NF soldado continued to slash away at his torso. The coroner counted 57 stab wounds. Cheyenne Cadena was dead at the age of 29 and his thought of peace between the NF and MA died with him. The carnage which continued for decades. Mundo Mendoza explained the outrage over Cheyenne eyes killing was deeply rooted in arrogance. We were more offended by the disrespect shown to our organization than the fact that Cadena was killed.

[00:15:56]It was a blow to our huge egos that a former killed a highly placed MA member.

[00:16:01]In 1977, the state of California eliminated indeterminate prison sentences except for first degree murder. All sentences were changed to a determinate number of years behind bars and everyone was given a parole date.

[00:16:14]This ruling released a new wave of Mexican Mafia members onto the streets.

[00:16:20]Released a new wave of Mexican Mafia members onto the streets.

[00:16:24]It became apparent in a 1976 photo at the MA funeral of La Eme's Jesse Chewie Fraijo of Norwalk who died of a drug overdose when more than a dozen Mexican Mafia members posed for a picture.

[00:16:39]They all wore collar jackets or sweaters, not just to protect themselves from the nippy air but to more easily conceal the weapons hidden under their clothing. Morgan's bald head stood higher than others who still wore their hair long.

[00:16:56]Most of them down below the ears in the fashion of the 70s. Half of them supported Fu Manchu mustaches and more than a few who hid their eyes behind dark glasses.

[00:17:08]Mundo explained afterwards that he Morgan and a few others forced heroin dealers to sell only their heroin. If they didn't, he added "We killed them. We sent a message.

[00:17:20]Sell our dope or die.

[00:17:22]We kill someone and then go to a Dodger baseball game. It was strictly business, nothing personal."

[00:17:31]Eddie Lalo Moreno, made in the 1970s and now dead, claimed the average Eme recruit had killed three to four had Eddie Lalo Moreno, made in 1970s and now dead, claimed the average Eme recruit had killed three or four uh had three or four murders under his belt. "You start to enjoy it after a while," he said, "to see a person plead and cry for help.

[00:17:58]Literally pray to you like a saint and you just get hopped up. The blood, everything, it's weird. It's a sickness.

[00:18:05]It was a sickness that would clearly afflict Rene Enriquez in the years to come as he tried to live up to the bloody, ruthless, treacherous history of those who came before him in La Eme.

[00:18:17]There is ways to support this channel and the most important way that you can do that costs you no money is hitting like, leaving a comment, and watching the video in its entirety. So, we're not here asking for money, although we do have merch for sale. I just want to keep it real, folks. That's what this channel's been about. I forgot most of this stuff and it's just jumping at me in the in the pages because there's so much history packed into the book, particularly about the history with NF and the Mexican Mafia and and the objectives of of Shaka and to to unite the NF and the Eme.

[00:18:47]Uh in fact, he was going to be targeted uh had he continued uh to participate in that activity. While Mexican Mafia members are actually going out and killing NF members, he's in house with them in Palm Hall attempting to arrange peace.

[00:19:04]Completely contradictory in the philosophy of the organization. I think he would have fared not well if he had survived. Uh he might have been targeted by the organization for elimination.

[00:19:14]With that said, as always, like, subscribe, hype, peace out.