El Paso defies expectations of violence despite long history of gangs, experts say

April 20-- Apr. 20--Street-gang culture in El Paso dates back a hundred years, but the city does not have the levels of gang violence seen in other cities, criminologists said.

El Paso is a "gang paradox" with lower levels of violent crime despite economic and other challenges, gang researchers said.

"El Paso is the epicenter of all things pachuco and cholo oriented," said Mike Tapia, a New Mexico State University associate professor of criminal justice who studies gangs.

Tapia was a presenter at the "Gangs in the Southwest" symposium Thursday in the Tomás Rivera Conference Center at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Patriotism, religion help El Paso defeat gang expectations

Sociologist Robert J. Durán, an associate professor at Texas A&M University, said his research into gang activity in El Paso found what he described as a "gang paradox."

El Paso has low rates of gang involvement, gang violence and homicides despite poverty and other conditions, Tapia and Durân said.

"I started seeing more things of miracles," Durán said. "Things in which the conditions themselves are at a point that you would think that there would be more gangs, there would be more violence similar to other places where I've done research.

"But the opposite is what I was finding -- patriotism, religion. But overall, I came to a point that this area was a gang paradox."

In El Paso, Durán learned that potential gang members were able to find inclusion in the community, increased opportunities away from crime and outlets through religion and sports.

"The Gang Paradox" is the title of Durán's 2018 book on the topic.

Tapia, who has authored books on the history of gangs in the El Paso-Juárez region and San Antonio, had similar conclusions.

"It's one thing to say that a community, a region, is rich in barrio gang history and culture," Tapia said. "But does that necessarily translate into high crime rates?"

In El Paso, the answer is no, Tapia said.

A history of barrio gangs

Traditional street gangs claiming a barrio or neighborhood turf are fading away, said Tapia, who grew up in the Ysleta area of El Paso'sLower Valley.

"Gangs, barrio gangs in particular, the way we've known them for most of history seem to be going away," he said. "They seem to be changing. They've gone underground. They've gone high tech.

"So, for me, it's more important to study them now than ever," he said. "It's almost an anthropological exercise, preserving that history of urban Chicano subculture."

The El Paso-Juárez border was key in fostering the pachuco lifestyle of the 1940s that morphed into the modern gang styles found across the world, researchers said.

The pachuco style with zoot suits and its Caló slang is embodied in the persona of Germán Valdés, also known as Tin Tan, the famous Mexican movie star who emerged out of Juárez.

Tapia is author of "Gangs of the El Paso-Juarez Borderland," which is set to come out in November.

The book will trace 100 years of El Paso gang history, mapping turfs and an evolution of gangs from teen cliques to drug cartel-associated gangs, such as the Barrio Azteca.

The Barrio Azteca is "the region's perennial street gang, prison gang, cartel-involved hybrid -- the primary sophisticated criminal syndicate in the region," Tapia said.

Marginalized communities

Gangs are born in communities marginalized by race, economics, lack of opportunity and other struggles, researchers said.

It is that marginalization that gave birth to the Irish gangs of the 1800s up to the Vietnamese and Salvadoran gangs in Los Angeles in the 1980s, said James Diego Vigil, professor emeritus of criminology at the University of California-Irvine.

The U.S. government later deported Salvadoran gang members to El Salvador, creating the explosive growth of the Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, gang.

Vigil said that while El Salvador "always had street kids, they didn't have gangs. These guys taught them to form gangs."

"So, now all you hear on TV is President Trump talking about MS-13, right? That's something that came back to bite us in the ass," Vigil said "We thought we were solving our gang problem by sending it to another place, but eventually it came back here."

Blood in, blood out?

There an erroneous perception that gang members are stuck in a gang once they join, said David Pyrooz, who studies gangs in the Texas prison system.

Some prison gangs have what is called a "blood in, blood out" requirement of membership until death.

"There is a popular perception that once you join a gang, you can't leave a gang; that has been thoroughly debunked in the streets," said Pyrooz, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

A study of prison gangs in the Texas found that even members of the state's most violently notorious gangs are able to quit, Pyrooz said.

Members often cite disillusionment with gang life and family responsibilities as reasons for leaving a gang, Pyrooz said.

The biggest obstacle cited by ex-gang members released from prison was not rivals, their neighborhood or fear of retaliation but police, who continue to list them on gang databases and treat them as active gang members, Pyrooz said.

"Talk is cheap on the street, and the police are generally skeptical," he said.

The symposium was hosted by the UTEP Department of Criminal Justice, which announced it is offering a new master's degree in criminology and criminal justice starting next fall.

Daniel Borunda may be reached at 546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.

___

(c)2019 the El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas)

Visit the El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas) at www.elpasotimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.