Richard Swift - Gangs: A Groundwork Guide

Politicians. Police. Teachers. The media. Social workers. The elderly. Solid citizens everywhere. Everyone these days is alarmed about youth gangs. Next to terrorists, gangs are the number two other a manifestation of pure evil. The media is filled with stories about youth in gangs drug-dealing, terrorizing neighborhoods, gunning down each other as well as a growing number of bystanders. In the Paris banlieues (suburbs) they set cars alight, in downtown Toronto they open up with handguns on the subway cars or in crowded downtown streets, in Birmingham and Warsaw they rampage after football matches, and in many parts of the world they turn entire urban areas into no-go zones for the police.

Throughout burgeoning slums of the urban Global South, in cities as far apart as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Nairobi in Kenya, gangs of young men and sometimes women are the most important form of social organization in young peoples lives. They have come to replace the religious institutions that play such a large role in the lives of their parents and grandparents. And as the Global South rapidly shifts its population from the slow, predictable rhythms of rural life to the volatile speed-up of urban life, gangs and their impact are only likely to grow.

For the young, in particular, gangs provide moorings in a world set adrift. The city appears dangerous and exciting but also a rupture from the old certainties of parents and grandparents. Traditional families under pressure of a new kind of confusing urban poverty often end up neglecting or abusing children, driving them out into the street in search of opportunity and companionship. The old ways and customs of respect and belief no longer seem to apply, and youth gangs provide both a social rooting and a sense of identity for young people torn between their dreams and the stark realities of the poverty that hems them in. The economic possibilities provided by gang life (mostly but not all criminal) are a crucial factor in what draws the young into gangs. And economics is behind the persistence of those gangs as a part of the social landscape in the slums of both the Global South and the Global North.

What outsiders call these gangs or what the gangs call themselves varies from place to place. In Latin America they are known as pandillas, maras, bandas, galeras, quadrillas, baras and chapulines . In Jamaica they are known as posses, dating back to the 1970s when Bonanza TV show reruns hit Caribbean television.

What the gangs call themselves reveals how they view the world and their place in it. Gang names dot newspaper columns as well as police blotters and court charge sheets. In countries like East Timor, plagued by youth gang violence since the countrys independence from Indonesia, they go by names like Devoted Heart Lotus Brotherhood and Sagrada Famlia (holy family). In So Lus, capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranho, youth gangs call themselves Messengers from Hell, Mind Organizers, Terrible Nocturnals and Falta de Deus (absence of God).

Gang names serve a number of purposes to strike fear in the hearts of outsiders or competitors, but also to establish an outcast identity and to promote internal loyalty. For example, Amigos dos Amigos (ADA, meaning friends of friends), which controls Roinha, the largest favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro, speaks to group solidarity.

Many gangs have names with religious echoes. They sometimes evoke a rejection of God but more often use terms like disciples, which suggest a longing for certainties in an uncertain world. Others like Falta de Deus speak of a lack of religion or even abandonment by God.

The massive gang-ridden Cape Flats slum near the South African city of Cape Town is home to an estimated 130 different gangs, including the Hard Livings, the Mongrels and the Junky Funky Boys.

The biggest of the Cape Flats gangs is called the Americans, evoking not just the power of US gangs, but the cultural domination of the powerful US film and music industries. A gang in the US city of Cincinnati called the Northside Taliban has its own rap song on YouTube. There is even a website, In Germany and Russia gangs tend to cluster around anti-foreigner activity. One Russian gang calling itself the White Inquisitors Crew has a record of attacking Chinese, Uzbek and other groupings from the east of the country. Skinhead gangs tend toward names that promote a Nazi revival, while some German gangs like the Pomeranian Homeland Association maintain innocuous names to hide their neo-Nazi inclinations.

There are many types of gangs, ranging from sophisticated international criminal cartels to the famous motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels or the Satans Choice that prowl on North American highways. But this book concentrates on the youth gangs that number in the tens of thousands and are present in a growing number of cities around the world.